Quiet Joy (Babble)

The first Christmas we got to spend in our house in Milwaukee was crazy.  I had just given birth to my first baby a few weeks before and didn’t feel up to travel, so the whole family came to us.  My parents, brothers and in-laws, all my uncles, aunts, and cousins, all came to our home to meet Aden and celebrate the holidays and have a party for my brothers who were born between Christmas and New Year’s.  Our house couldn’t quite hold everyone and when we lined up all the available tables to seat people for dinner we couldn’t open the front door.  It was hectic but it was great.  My Christmases as a child were big fun gatherings, too, and I was happy that the holiday event had come to Milwaukee.

But as the generation of cousins I grew up with began splitting obligations with new families, and people moved farther and farther away, things have become quieter and quieter.   I’m no longer the relative with the smallest children to complicate travel.  And Ian is home now.  When he was in Iraq there was a distinct need to have additional people here on big holidays to help fill the void.  This year was set to be the quietest yet, but I didn’t realize how quiet.

The plan was for just my parents to drive out on Christmas Eve so we could enjoy the actual day together, and my aunt and uncle from Ohio would come out for a few days afterward.  The irony is that when we were hosting the masses we lived in a house about half the size of the one we inhabit now.  We finally have proper space to fit everyone at the dining table without causing a fire exit hazard, and now there isn’t even a need for the leaf in the table.  It’s strange how that happened.

Unfortunately, even that meager plan has been pruned down further at the last moment.  My father isn’t well and my mother called this morning to tell me he was in too much pain to make the drive.  I feel so helpless, and so does my mom.  They’ve run every test they can run and can’t find the cause of the problem, so now he just has to wait and rest and take Tylenol until he can get in to see a specialist next week.  Some days are better than others, and today proved to be one of the bad ones.  Part of me feels we should go there, but it’s a long drive and a family with three kids is not conducive to the rest my dad needs so there isn’t much point.  So I will stay here and worry and we will have Christmas morning with just my little family alone.

In some ways this makes me sad, because obviously I’d like to see more of the people I love, but my little family is wonderful.  I have such an embarrassment of riches to be thankful for–my three sweet and healthy kids, my husband home safe and sound, a house I enjoy waking up in every day, food on the table, a job I love…. There is nothing I lack and I am profoundly aware of how fortunate I am.  I’m concerned for my parents and wish I could help, but to feel sorry for ourselves is ridiculous.  It’s not the Christmas I was picturing, but there is nothing wrong with what we have.

What we have is different from what we’re accustomed to, but it’s peaceful and nice.  Ian and I took turns going out to the violin store to finish some work there while the kids stayed home and played.  They pretended to sled in the living room for a long time, which is one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.

Aden and I made stollen to put out for Santa.

Mona accidentally broke a wand that Aden had just gotten from the tooth fairy, so the two of us stopped at Target on the way back from the grocery store (neither of which, we discovered too late, was a good place to go on Christmas Eve) and Mona used her own money to not only buy Aden a new wand, but one for her brother as well.  We had Chinese take out in place of the meal my mom had planned to make.  We cuddled up for movie night.  We put out carrots for the reindeer.

And do you know why I’m writing this blog post?  Because I’m waiting for my children to pass out soundly enough that it will be safe to go downstairs and help myself to a piece of stollen and a carrot or two, and then stuff everyone’s stockings.  They are so excited!  Quinn is almost asleep at my feet, and I can hear Aden and Mona tossing and turning down the hall. 

This is the first year we’ve had a real mantel to hang stockings from, and we didn’t need to rearrange the world to make room for a tree in our new living room so it’s been a pleasure to have it up without it being in the way for a change.  The new house is fun to decorate, so we have a ton of lights up this year.  It’s beautiful and fun and I can’t wait to see the kids’ faces in the morning when they finally get to open their presents.  Quinn told me several times today in what order he plans to open them.  The one in the candy cane paper is first, then the one in the reindeer paper, then red one, then the one with the snowflakes on it….

It’s hard finding presents for the kids so soon after their birthdays, but I think I found them some things they will enjoy.  I heard people ask each of my kids this week what they want for Christmas and they all said they just want to be surprised and they will like whatever they get.  How can you not want to give presents to people like that?
So we are having a quiet, private little Christmas.  It’s a different kind of joy.  And it is miraculous. 

Whatever any of you are doing today, I wish you peace and all the love your heart can hold.  Happy Everything.

Cookieland (Babble)

Today was all about baking.  If I’m on some kind of serious baking deadline I have to kick everyone out of the kitchen so I can be more efficient, but whenever possible I try to leave the whole day open for baking so my kids can help, too.  If there is time and space to make mistakes, then baking with my kids is a lot of fun.

There are lots of skills I want to make sure my kids have under their belts before they head out into the world on their own, and baking is one of them.  I’ve often been amazed by how many people I run into, some of whom are good cooks, who are intimidated by baking.  I never have been.  That’s not to say I haven’t had my share of disasters (Quinn’s recent birthday cake involved much airing of smoke out of the house), but that’s just life.  For the most part I bake fine, and I want my children to know how to make cookies and cakes from scratch if they feel like it.  So far they’re on their way.

My most intrepid baker is Aden, who has been making cookie dough almost entirely on her own since she was four.

(Aden with one of the first cookies she ever made.)

She likes to experiment, and even came up with an odd cookie during the summer with a friend of hers that had marshmallows in it which melted into weird craters all over the surface of the cookie.  They tasted pretty good, though.

Anyway, I had a talk with her again today about some baking basics, like creaming the butter before adding the sugar, and a little about respecting the chemistry of baking so that she keeps the proportions of things right.  I reminded her about not dumping in big cups of flour all at once to keep it from flying everywhere, and to remember to scrape the bottom of the bowl.  She knows all of that, but I’m her mom so I have to say something, and she listens politely.

Aden and Mona are both good at cracking eggs (I usually have them do that in a separate bowl so I can inspect for bits of shell even though most of the time they crack clean), and I feel bad that Quinn hasn’t mastered that yet but there is so much competition for cracking a couple of eggs that he gets edged out.  (We’ll have to make omelets for lunch sometime when his sisters are in school.)

Today’s baking was in preparation for next weekend which is when we’re going to my grandmother’s memorial service.  My grandma wanted to be cremated, so there was no rush to burial after she died.  We’ve had some time to plan which I think has been good.  I’ve prepared some music to play on my viola while people are arriving, most of it pieces I used to practice at her house on the weekends when I was in college.  At first I was worried that I might be too distraught to be able to play well, but now I think I will be glad to have something specific to do.  My grandma was important to me and I wanted to do something for her service, and music seemed like the appropriate contribution for me to make.

However, big family gatherings, whether in celebration or mourning, mean food.  And it’s hard to get away from the fact that this time of year is also when grandma did most of her baking.  For Christmastime to feel right to me it needs to include my grandma’s cookies and stollen.  I decided the best way to remember grandma at her memorial would be to make some of the desserts that I associate only with her.  This coming weekend is also Mona’s birthday party and I promised her I’d make a dragon cake (which sounds involved, but I’ll figure something out), so I wanted to get as much baking for the memorial service done today as I could.

The things that would keep best are the spritz cookies and the stollen, so those are what the kids and I tackled today.  Spritz cookies we make regularly.  Grandma showed me exactly how she made her wreath and tree cookies many years ago.  Spritz cookies are crisp little butter cookies that you squeeze out of a cookie press.  Grandma’s was incredibly hard to use, and she told me not to carry on that annoying part of the tradition but to get one of the more modern ‘gun’ shaped styles which we did.  For Christmas she would make little wreaths sprinkled with green sugar and decorated with two tiny bits of red candied cherry for bows.  The trees she sprinkled with tiny colored balls.  There are lots of other shapes that come with the cookie press, and we have lots of different kinds of sprinkles in our decorating arsenal, but I told the girls for this particular batch of cookies I wanted them just like their great-grandma used to make.  Aden helped me mix the first batch of dough, and then when I needed a second one she did it completely by herself (even doing the math correctly to double the recipe).  Mona decorated all the wreaths, and Quinn did a tray of trees.  I should have enough to give a box to each of my uncles and cousins at the service, plus a plate to have out for everyone.

The stollen was a funny experience.  For those of you not drowning in German heritage, stollen (pronounced ‘SHTUH len’) is a bread-like little cake with dried and candied fruits inside and topped with a simple sugar frosting.  I don’t know if anyone in the family actually likes stollen, but if there was ever a year to break out grandma’s recipe and make it, this seemed like the year.  I remember grandma’s stollen at Christmastime being something we kind of ate while we played cards because it was there.  It had those weird red and green candied cherries on it.  It wasn’t bad, but I never craved it.  This year its nostalgia value outweighs everything else about it, so it’s baking as I type.  It takes forever!  I’m amazed grandma took the time to do it.  It has yeast in it, and you have to scald milk and add sugar and everything rises for a couple of hours, and then you add candied cherries and spices and raisins (and citron which I didn’t have so I left out) and let it rise again, and then you knead it and cut it into three loaf pans where it’s left to rise again before you can finally bake it.  One loaf I’m going to share with my kids this week, and the other two will go into the freezer before the drive to Ohio.

My hope is to bake two more of grandma’s cakes right before we go.  One is called a Jersey Coffee Cake that’s made with sour cream and cinnamon and pecans and was the kind of thing she used to make when her bridge club was coming over.  The other is a coconut cake that kind of screams of the era when my grandma learned to cook.  The first ingredient is yellow cake from a box.  There is a strange step of poking the cake to death with a fork and then pouring a heated mix of coconut, sugar and milk over the top of it.  Eventually you top it with cool whip mixed with coconut and then top that with more coconut.  Sounds odd but it’s delicious.

There are few ways of conjuring up old memories better than with food.  I hope these foods help other people at the memorial service to picture grandma more clearly even though she’s gone.

And in the spirit of sharing and cooking, I want to pass on my grandma’s pie crust recipe for anyone out there who may want to use it.  We make quiche regularly, and I always like to have crust on hand in case I need to throw together a pie at the last minute, so we use this recipe a lot.  It’s a pie crust that you can store in the freezer so we always have some on hand.  It’s convenient and it tastes good.  I have no idea where my grandma got it from, but here it is:

Perfect Pie Crust

Combine:  4 cups flour, 1 Tbs sugar, 2 tsp salt, 1 3/4 cups shortening

Then add:  1/2 cup water, 1 Tbs white vinegar, 1 large egg

Once it’s all kneaded together (we do all of it in a Kitchen Aid) cut it into 4 equal parts.

Wrap each ball of dough with some plastic wrap and then again in foil for freezing. 

It thaws in less than an hour usually, but I’ve even warmed mine up in the microwave for 20 seconds and it works fine.  You can roll it out or just press it with your fingers into the pie plate. 

I know pie crust purists who don’t believe in over handling dough and that people can be scared of shortening anymore, but for us it’s convenient and tasty and it reminds me of my grandma every time we make it.  Maybe someone else can use it to start some new memories!  How nice would that be?  Happy baking.