The season of food is upon us
Are you ready for this? The biggest problem that I have at this time of the year is trying to decide what I’m not going to eat, because there simply isn’t enough time in a day or room in my belly for it all.
I used to be able to eat more than I can now, which is a real shame since the list of things that I want to enjoy has only gotten longer. That’s the problem with getting older, the ability shrinks while the wants get larger. But that is true about a lot of things, isn’t it?
My love for food is partly about the nostalgia and memories that it conjures. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my momma’s cream cheese pound cake. It was my favorite cake, and slathered with her cream cheese icing was my birthday cake for many years.
The bundt shape made a perfect Barbie ball gown for one memorable version, but no matter what form it took it was always decadent and delicious and I can just taste it, even as I write.
Thank goodness my birthday wasn’t the only time we got to enjoy that pound cake. It was a bit of a staple in our house and I can tell you that the only thing better than a fresh pound cake still warm from the oven after dinner with the last of a glass of milk, is a thick slice loaded with pats of butter and toasted under the broiler for breakfast.
My grandmother made a really good pound cake too, and I still have her recipe, a photocopy of her handwritten note card that my aunt gave each of us when Maw Maw died.
Hers is the older style, the kind you can tell was based off of the cake’s namesake. Flour, butter, eggs and sugar used to be measured by a pound of each to make this cake and that is almost how Maw Maw’s recipe reads. This version of the pound cake was found in the earliest American cookbook, a transplant from 1700s Europe.
Her cake was delicious in a different way, lighter and sweeter than Mom’s more modern cream cheese version with its twangy dense crumb.
I had a hankering a couple of months ago to make both cakes and try them side by side. I am sure there was a time when that opportunity occurred, probably more than once, but I can’t recall.
How fun would it be to eat these iconic cakes together to compare and contrast, but what in the heck am I going to do with two whole pound cakes in my larder?
As we prepare for our annual feasting day of Thanksgiving, I am always torn about what to bring as my contribution. There are so many things that I would like to share with family and friends.
Over the years we have gathered with my daughter’s other half of the family, my former in-laws, and we always have a wonderful time with a large crowd. From there we would head north to Mom and Dad’s home in Virginia to a smaller meal with just the five of us. That worked out great for me because I had things I would take for one feast, and other things I would make for the second.
Mom has always been a fantastic cook, and she could stir up an opulent feast like nobody’s business. As her ability to get in the kitchen has changed over the years, she has become a collector of ideas to share with us. Her recipe collection is tremendous, and at this time of the year I am likely to get numerous calls from her with the latest recipe that she saw on Food Network that we should be sure to make.
Throw my sister and daughter into the conversation and we could feed an army all year long with the number of, “I found this recipe and it sounds delicious!” ideas we can bring to the table.
But as I said before, there simply isn’t enough time in a day or room in our bellies for all of it, so we must narrow our focus.
Every Thanksgiving I make a cranberry apple chutney that I hope everyone likes as much as I do. I started making it at least 25 years ago from a recipe I cut out of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I still have that clipping but finally had to take it to the virtual archives by typing it into my phone for fear that I might not be able to read it next time.
It is stained and torn and faded, yellow with age and fragile in the way old newsprint eventually becomes. Years ago I am sure I carried it to the store with me to procure the ingredients, but now it is in my handy, tiny, portable computer so I always have it at my fingertips.
Two years ago I tried to double the batch, which filled my inherited Le Creuset pot to the very brim, so it didn’t cook down in the way it normally would, so I decided to cook it again. Unfortunately, that was late on Thanksgiving Eve and I fell asleep, only to awaken to the harsh aroma of overcooked sugar. That pot was ruined, my very favorite one, and it was all my fault for getting greedy with the making of the sauce.
It could have ruined my love for the recipe, but it didn’t. The classics are so important, and I will always make this one, yet there are always new and exciting things I want to try.
I hope that your holiday is filled with many old family food traditions, with a few exciting new additions sprinkled in. And, let’s take this time to indulge in the things that make us happy, because we can always be thin and poorly fed come January, and you only live once.