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'Tis the season for family feasts
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
The holidays are coming, and this time of year means that every woman with a stove is thinking about some special cooking or baking. Even women who burn coffee can remember a special schnitzel from Germany. Men who live at the drive-through windows of life have flashbacks of turkeys loaded with butter and stuffed with exotic spices. Working moms who are so busy they will wear long skirts in August rather than replace run pantyhose, daydream about baking those delicate cookies, then take all the decorators out and let their preschoolers pour silver balls all over frosted Santas. Single dads, with no clue as to what a spatula is, have gone to Safeway and bought a roll of holiday cut-out dough.
The associations food brings into our lives as the weather cools are myriad, wonderful and important to who we are. Gathering together on cold nights to share hearty soups and tell tales of our summer days is an American cultural keystone. But before you can share all that familial warmth and Kraft family special camaraderie, there has to be someone who can cook.
To be a "cook" in the more-than-microwave sense requires three things. First, you have to have utensils (things with names like jelly roll pan, double boiler (no, you don't just do it twice), serrated, spring form and stoneware (although if anyone tells you about their serrated- spring form stoneware, do not eat anything they give you).
The next thing a good cook should have is great ingredients. Fresh is best. With worldwide fruit and vegetable markets everything is available year round and, so, fresh pear tart on Christmas morning is more than just a pipe dream.
The third thing a cook needs is a recipe. The "natural" cooks, like most athletes, just seem to "know" what goes together and can create a four-star meal from a package of baking soda, orange juice and three fruit roll-ups. We all hate them. They make us look bad. The rest of us have recipes. Lots and lots of recipes. Whole shelves full of books with everything from Moosewood (yes, I kid you not) to Betty Crocker. I have an 1880's White House cookbook that I can't use anymore--apparently, the ingredients "bottle mash," "sour gum" and several other quaint middle American edibles are no longer FDA approved for human consumption. Pity.
I started collecting recipes as a kid. My best friends' mom gave me her chocolate chip cookie cowboys recipe and I was off. I had 3X5 cards all over my room, each filled with the recipes for everything from waffles to ice cream. By the time I left home I had a whole recipe box of them--and I still needed my mom every holiday. I think the best recipe was in her brain, about how to cook the turkey.
From 1980 until 1990, we vacationed in Tahoe with friends every Thanksgiving, and every year we would take all the fixings up the day before and check into our room or cabin.
On the great morning, Teri and I would be up at dawn, grinding stuffing and filling the bird, preparing the mighty beast for the evening's feast. In those days, we would need just one meal to last five days or more. Our turkeys ranged from 28 to 33 pounds, and one was so heavy it actually broke the rack in the oven.
Every year, no matter how diligently we girls took the task to heart, we had to make at least one frantic phone call down the hill to mom's house, usually to verify some fine point of stuffing or bird trussing (Wings up? Wings down? Do the hokeypokey and turn yourself around?).
Inevitably, the day would deteriorate into a It's a Wonderful Life television marathon while we baked brie, scraped potatoes, boiled peas, baked breads and set the table with our fine china, silver and crystal, all lovingly packed up and driven for five hours through the snow for one meal.
The two of us would spend all day cooking this feast, and always felt overwhelmed with the bounty when we served dinner. We only needed to cook the one time during our entire stay. Leftovers would last for four to six days, depending on how much time we spent in the casinos and the snow.
These days, with a child and commitments, parties and shopping, I nostalgically look back on those wonderful meals as I pick up the phone and order the fully cooked turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy combo for 12 while the sweet odor of slice and bake cookies comes from the kitchen. The process may change, but the sharing is forever.
Contact Deborah Taylor-Hollis at dthollis@metronews.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
