The House That Built Me

It is my favorite song. Sung beautifully by Miranda Lambert. It is about a 20 something (she must be young) who is trying to find herself and goes to her childhood home. Well I'm not 20 anything, I found myself a long time ago, but for some reason as I plan my next move to our 8th residence in a 24 year marriage, I get a little nostalgic. This is the house my kids will most remember. But it is the house that "built" me I lovingly remember.
I spent my preschool and elementary years in Clinton, Iowa. By the time we moved I was entering high school and was the only child at home. So the house in Clinton that was full of family is the one I pine for. It is a gorgeous English Tudor sitting on a large hill with views of the Mississippi River. It was once a retreat for an order of monks which explains the cross mowed into the lawn. It sat on an acre of property, most of it woods, and had a beautiful stone patio, an enormous screened in porch and a balcony from my parents room. The wood was heavy and dark, and every room had built in closets, dressers and shelves. The windows are were all leaded glass and there were 2 huge picture windows. In the spring there were dozens of lilac trees and bushes of peonies. In the summer we would have thousands of monarch butterflies and in the fall we would collect hedge apples and pine cones.

Christmas was magical. My dad would string the big Charlie Brown bulbs all over the hedges and when the snow would fall they would glow in bursts of color. Our huge tree would proudly stand at the living room picture window. We would have cut it down ourselves and decorated with the dozens of family ornaments and tossed tinsel all over it. I never thought to look for the Christmas presents hidden on the screened in porch, but many years later I learned that was my mom's favorite place to hide them.

Of course the house had a basement, and a pit in the garage that my brothers used to learn to work on their cars. And my favorite spot was the breakfast room with its octagonal shape and all the leaded windows. No one could come in either driveway without being seen. My last bedroom (I had to wait until the older sisters went to college), had a wall of windows that looked out over the river. It was such a magical place. I have the photographs and the memories, and this time of year makes me think of a particular cooking memory. In the Betty Crocker cooky cookbook that is falling apart, are the many recipes we made. I blogged about it before and decided that it was the perfect time to make Pumpkin Cookies. These are the cookies I made on September 24, 1976. The note next to the recipe says "couldn't go skating". It was a sad day. Every fall we had a roller skating party and it was the one night a year a 7th grade girl (in 1976) could hold hands to a Shawn Cassidy song and roller skate a memory. But alas, I didn't clean my room, and the meanest mom in the entire world made me stay home. She probably launched my love of baking and journaling through recipes. I remember the night clearly. It is, after these many years, a very happy memory. Needless to say I couldn't make the recipe as it is written, so here it is with my changes.

PUMPKIN COOKIES
1½ cups brown sugar
½ shortening (I'm using butter)
2 eggs
1¾ canned pumpkin (this is one, 15oz. can)
2¾ cups flour
1 T baking soda
1 tea cinnamon
½ tea nutmeg
½ tea salt
¼ tea ginger
1 teaspoon vanilla (this is my addition)
1 cup raisins (yuck!) (I'm using 1 ½ cups mini chocolate chips)
1 cup chopped pecans (I am using walnuts)

Okay, my changes. Shortening does make a really soft cookie, but butter just tastes better. And I think raisins are yucky in a cookie, so chocolate chips, perfect replacement. The recipe says the cookies can be iced with a thin butter icing. Would you ice a chocolate chip cookie? I mean, the recipes are very similar. I say enjoy the pumpkin! This recipe makes about 6 dozen and they do not spread, so you can really cram them on the baking sheets.

So, what are ya waiting for? Get in there and bake!

Betty's Chocolate Drops

So after I wrote my tribute to my Mom blog, I got a little hankering for those Chocolate Drop Cookies we made in the day, from the Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook. This will be a shortie because I have already given the history of my beloved cook book, and the future of it should I pass first. Morbid sister of mine! I do remember these cookies fondly, and funny, but you don't really see drop cookies around much. I do understand a little about baking chemistry, and the shortening is crucial, it keeps the cookies fluffy and soft whereas butter would make them spread out and give them crunch. So as unfashionable as it is, I'm am yanking out the Crisco. The rain seems to have passed, and I can easily whip these up before we head off to graduation parties.

The dough comes together easily, although I was a little short on ingredients. I had no unsweetened chocolate, so I used 3 Tablespoons of Pernigotti Cocoa and a Tablespoon of shortening to substitute for each ounce called for. I a was also a little short on sugar (yea, I'm a baker who has no sugar), so I filled the measuring cup with what I had, and added Lyle's Golden Syrup to top it off. Experience tells me that a little corn syrup also keeps things soft, and although Lyle's is cane syrup, same effect, way better taste. And finally, no buttermilk. So again, I punted and used milk soured with lemon juice. The batter got very curdled when I added the sour milk, but came together when the dry ingredients were added. They are a little shaggy and sticky when you put them on the cookie sheet, but they bake into these perfect rounded mounds. We used the recipe for Marie"s Easy Chocolate Icing, but I was a little low on confectioner's sugar, so the frosting was a little thinner than I would like, but we made due. These are cakey cookies, and I enjoyed the cocoa lightness. If I pick a cookbook to cook, this will be it. All those cookie recipes. It's fairly obvious that it is my favorite thing. We'll see what the summer brings! Happy Baking!

CHOCOLATE DROP COOKIES
½ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 squares, unsweetened chocolate, (1 oz. ea.) melted and cooled
¾ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1¾ cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Mix shortening, sugar, egg and chocolate thoroughly. Stir in buttermilk and vanilla. Sift together flour, soda and salt and blend in. Chill at least an hour.
Heat oven to 400° and drop by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2" apart on Silpat or parchment. Bake 8-10 minutes or until they spring back when lightly touched. Do not over bake. Cool on racks before icing them.

MARIE'S CHOCOLATE ICING
1 Tablespoon butter
1 square (1 oz.) unsweetened chocolate
1½ Tablespoons warm water
2 Tablespoons cream
1 cup or more confectioners sugar

Melt butter in chocolate in double boiler. Blend in warm water and cream then beat in confectioner's sugar until it is proper spreading consistency.

Happy Mother's Day

What can a grown woman buy her Mom for Mother's Day? Flowers? Perfume? Candy? Well if you thought of any of those, you don't know Jo very well. Jo, as I affectionately call my Mom, just isn't the average mom.

Married at 19, she and my Dad have been together 57 years. I am the youngest of 5 kids that are all pretty well adjusted and happily married. Proud grandparents of 11 grandchildren she never misses an occasion to email them, drop them a note or a message on Facebook, yep, she's on. She was an early entrepreneur, and owned a "figure salon" back in the 70's. It was the first generation health club, only women, with belts and rollers and she would lead an exercise class to an album she had. She has always been a volunteer and writer and at the age of 70 she graduated from college with her BA in Creative Writing. These days you are likely to find her volunteering at the Salvador Dali museum in Florida. So how about a tribute blog for Mother's Day? After all, she must be part of the reason I am a devoted writer, a good cook and a good mom. Here's to you Jo.

I was a lucky kid growing up in a small Iowa town. My mom was no June Cleaver, but she did do it all. She sewed beautifully and had the most adorable sewing room. It was a small round room in our old English Tudor house. She made clothes for herself, for us kids and for Barbie!

Baking in my memory was my mom handing my older sisters and I the Betty Crocker Cooky Book, Copyright 1963, and I still have it. It is taped together, but the stained pages are filled with notes on the recipes we made as a kid. Chocolate Drop Cookies: good, Brown Sugar Drops: good, Pumpkin Cookies: 9/24/76 Excellent, couldn't go skating. I remember that day like yesterday. She told me to clean my room so I could go to the skating party with my class. I crammed everything in my closet, and she found it! I was sooo mad I couldn't go roller skating, it was the one opportunity to hold hands with a boy! So she suggested I make cookies, and I did. Amazingly I soon forgot about the party I missed, and I will never forget that night.
It very well may have launched my passion for baking, but it certainly started my journaling. I have never been a devoted journalist. I have tried, especially after the kids were born, to keep a journal. My method is from that night in 1976. Every cookbook I own has handwritten entries when I make the recipes. It could be as simple as the date and my substitutions, or a note about the events of the day. Our Sloppy Joe recipe that my family loves was first made when Nic broke his leg. I have a chicken and apple dish I made for our last dinner party in Michigan before we moved. And of course the many cake recipes I've made for birthdays over the years.

My Mom's cookbooks were also filled with letters, photos, notes and invitations. There was no rhyme or reason for where she tucked these, but they were forever encapsulated in her cookbooks. You'll find the same things in mine. In Betty's Cooky Book is a note that declares "if Susie dies before Lori (she's my sister), Lori gets this book". Nice, right? But other books are filled with notes from my kids, hand drawn pictures, postcards, wedding invites, small bits of my life that get tucked in only to be found one day when I am looking for a recipe.

My Mom also always put her name in her books. It didn't matter if it was a cookbook, a paperback or a hard bound novel, her distinct signature is on page one. One year she gave me The New Basics Cookbook and wrote me a note on the inside cover. "Grand Rapids, March 18, 1990. To Susie, a great cook, from your teacher. Love, Mom" That book is falling apart at the binding, spilling out hand made cards, Hallmarks, handwritten menus and novenas. I have a brand new copy on hand, but have never used it, there is too much history in that well used book. Christmas Eve Dinner 1995 is found on page 498, Waffles from Easter 1992 on page 452, and in Jan. 1997 we had a snow day in Memphis, it was a Friday and we baked Olive Bread, page 616.

In 1992 my Mom must have gotten tired of handwriting the family recipes every time one of us misplaced one. For Christmas that year she gave us all a cookbook called The Kitchen on Market Street. The kitchen in the big old house on the corner of 10th and Market is the setting for this book. This is where my Mom grew up and how she paid tribute to her Mom, but unfortunately Grandma was no longer with us. The book is filled with recipes and stories from her childhood and even from motherhood. So I have decided to honor my Mom, my Grandma and my heritage. I bounced the idea off my sisters, and they are in. Guess what Jo? We are writing our own cookbook as a tribute to you, as a way to document these memories and pass them on to our kids someday. Perhaps it will be ready for Christmas, or Mother's Day 2010. Either way, it will be signed by me (and Lori and Patti) with an inscription for my Mom, dated of course. And I know that eventually my Mom's little notes, cards and letters will find their way into the pages of this book as well. Happy Mother's Day!