812-Unca*ttr Farming, Saturday, December 14,1985
On being
a farm
-And o
bazar
Joyce B
To bake or not to bake... that is
the question.
Apologies to Shakespeare, but
the sentiment pretty much cap
sulizes the holiday goodie dilemma
in this farmhouse.
“Mom, are you gonna bake
fruitcake this year?”
“Mom, did you bake fruitcakes
yet?”
“Mom, WHEN are you going to
make fruitcakes?”
How about late the afternoon of
December 24? Given the disap
pearance rate on such appetite
attractions to the Hungry Horde (a
pair of teenagers), that timing
might allow just a few slices of this
family favorite left by Christmas
Eve.
Now, I’d like to confide to you
how I spend hours chopping,
dicing, blending, and baking
fruitcakes. But that would be a big,
fat fib. My famed family fruitcake
equals the simplest one-bowl
applesauce cake recipe ever in
vented, liberally laced with ad
ditions of raisins, nuts, candied
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fruits, etc. Its life expectancy is
greatly enhanced by storage in the
freezer, with the label “liver”
marked on the outside.
Simple-to-make holiday goodies
seem to be a preferred part of the
times, with women busier than
ever both in and outside of the
home. But the tradition of holiday
baking seems a firm one, just
modernized with easier, up-to-date
methods.
There weren’t quite as many
shortcut methods when I
remember sliping in the door from
elementary school to a kitchen
warm with the heavenly smell of
holiday cookies.
Such memories always lead to
other, more guilt-ridden ones.
Baking supplies that weren’t
needed on a regular basis were
sometimes stored in a sort of
pantry, an unheated room off the
kitchen. This nifty hideaway held
all sorts of childhood food
treasures near the holidays:
maraschino cherries, chocolate
chips, coconut. Forbidden fruits,
you might say. Stuff that a mother
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never had quite as much of as she
thought should be there when the
time came that she needed it. If
you know what I mean.
It’s a fact: no maraschino cherry
made today tastes half as sweet as
those filched from the pantry
stores years ago.
Confessions reveal that such
outlaw behavior existed as well on
the paternal side on this farm
family. Only the farmer’s for
bidden fruit was coconut, the long,
chewy, stringy kind you can’t seem
to find any more. Seems that this
kind of coconut, if properly located
in the side on one’s cheek, in
proper quantities, remarkably
resembled a grownup’s wad of
chewing tobacco. And you didn’t
have to spit.
Either Santa never got either of
us on his list of bad kids, or took
loving mercy on us, because we’re
still waiting for the proverbial
lump of coal in our stockings for
childhood misdeeds.
So perhaps our Hungry Horde
has inherited this tendency to
demolish baking supplies.
And where are the fabled
fruitcake ingredients, I ask?
Someone nibbled away all the
raisins. The nuts still need chop
ped. A jar of maraschino cherries
holds three lonely ones left in the
bottom. Even the bag of chocolate
chips suffers from the law of
diminishing returns: each time
they return the level diminshes.
Candied fruit has been left in
safekeeping on the supermarket
shelf ‘til closer to the time it’s
needed.
There is a bit of coconut flying
around the refrigerator. It’s there
because the bag got misplaced,
behind a container sprouting a
forest of something green and
fuzzy.
To bake or not to bake? I may not
have tor
The eldest Hungry Horde has
announced plans to “bake at least
15 kinds of cookies before
Christmas.”
And the youngest has cheerfully
volunteered to eat ‘em.
Is that what you’d call working
together as a family to set up
holiday traditions?
Christmas traditions
(Continued from Page BIO)
day, because Christmas comes
during the deer-hunting season,
and it is traditional for men to go
hunting that afternoon. <
Recent Developments
This is not quite as radical a
notion as it might sounds
Samuelson found in her research
that until the coming of the 20th
century, Christmas was not
celebrated primarily as a religious
holiday in this country. In fact,
among some religious groups such
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FORD LAWN & GARDEN EQUIPMENT
NO PAYMENTS
TIL APRIL, 1986*
HUGE SELECTION
»OF TOYSom
For Christmas
70% OFF
It 419 between Schaefferstown and Cornwall,
Lebanon County, Lebanon, PA 17Q42
717-949-6501 OR TOLL-FREF -
as the early Puritans, it was
frowned upnfr< to celebrate
Christmas, becausilthe holiday
was thought to have a pagan
history.
But as the holiday became linked
with a religious theme, another
tradition developed: griping of a
specific kind.
“If you read the mass magazines
back into the 1890 s,” says
Samuelson, “it’s interesting to see
the articles complaining that
Christmas is becoming too secular,
too commercialized.”
Traditions like that tend to linger
on.
Answers
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