Nutty as a Fruitcake

I made fruitcake for the holidays. I know – Ick.  Many people hate it. I like my mother’s dark fruitcake recipe, which I make without the icky stuff she put in her version. I use dates, dried apricots, raisins and walnuts. No red or green candied cherries! As a result, I feel disgustingly superior and virtuous.

Only my daughter and I will eat fruitcake these days. I could easily skip it, but this is my first Christmas since Mom died. I miss her and I really wanted to make it. It will make my daughter happy. Maybe I can talk my granddaughter into trying it? Stranger things have happened.

Mom made fruitcake every Christmas I can remember until the slow progression of that hateful Parkinson’s Disease made it impossible for her to bake. Then I started making the Christmas fruitcake. I would send her one in the mail, just like she used to to do for me after I got married and moved far away. They weigh a ton, so the postage probably cost more than the ingredients; but it was my special gift to her. I felt I was honoring her in the making of it, and I knew she liked that I was carrying on her tradition. As a mother and a grandmother I understand that now.

Food-related holiday traditions are the legacy of the common woman. As long as someone is still making our recipes we have achieved some form of immortality.

Of course, as a daughter (or son), you have to make these things a little different than your mother did. We must put our own spin on it to reflect our uniqueness, our modernity, our necessary and never-ending rebellion. Who among us actually wants to BE their mother? Not many.  We adjust and tweak to insure we are different. How much we have to tweak depends on who our mothers were.

I must confess that I stopped making them a few years ago, in 2012 - that fateful year when the fruitcakes I made went moldy. It made me so mad, that mold.  I threw a big, stinkin’ fit and stopped making the effort in subsequent years.  I guess I showed them! Now I regret that and so many other things. I was not the best daughter I could have been.

I cannot go back and make my mother a fruitcake for 2013 and 2014. Instead, I made a memorial fruitcake in 2015. I am storing it in the fridge because in Florida I do not have a cool basement, or any basement for that matter. I am going wild with the brandy. If it gets moldy I am going to throw it out without saying a word. I am keeping my anger in check. This is now a ritual, a sacrifice, an act of love. From here on in it is the making of fruitcake that is important, not the eating of it.    

It occurs to me that she may not have liked my version of the fruitcake. As I shamelessly bragged above, my version does not include candied green and red cherries, and who knows what other carcinogenic or candied crap she used to put in her version. She never believed those things could be bad for you. She liked the bad stuff, my Mom. It used to drive me crazy.

She definitely did not soak her cheesecloth in brandy. She used apple juice and wrapped the cakes in muslin. I am quite sure she also liked thinking that her fruitcake was better than mine. And, of course, it was. To be completely honest I miss the red candied cherries. I probably should not admit it or the thought police might come and haul me away. Out of sheer orneriness, let me say it loud and proud: the red candied cherries were my favorite part. I was a fool for not realizing that earlier. Next year I will put them back in.

I just realized that instead of giving her the fruitcake she wanted, I gave her the fruitcake I thought she should have. Aaaack! It is a good thing she loved me, because I can be insufferable.

Mothers understand these things, though. At least I do when my daughter now makes many of "my" Christmas cookies just a little bit different than I did. To become our grown-up selves we must separate from our mothers.

I am beginning to understand why a mother will always love her children more than her children will love her. Otherwise, none of us would ever leave her and no one would ever grow up.  It is as it should be.

Strip Malls

When you move someplace new you are adrift.  Nothing is familiar and everything involves taking a risk.  This is especially true with food.  It takes a long time to find the best places to eat. 

I guess you have heard there are many transplanted New Yorkers in Florida.  Central Florida is no different.  And yes, we realize native Floridians dislike and resent us.  Apparently we have a reputation for being rude.  Probably because we are hungry and we cannot find good food!  Whoops, there I go with my rude self again.  It takes so little for me to be off and running.

First of all, not every New Yorker is from New York City.  It is a big state.  Secondly, when I meet other New Yorkers the very first thing we talk about is the dearth of good, inexpensive restaurants in Central Florida.  Sometimes we whisper this to each other so that the locals do not hear us.  See, we are not really all THAT rude. 

The truth is T and I live near Disney World, the Land of Mouse, a place where French fries and chain restaurants reign supreme.  The challenge lies in hunting down the Mom and Pop owned restaurants.  They ARE here, they are simply hidden away in strip malls - a place I would never have thought to look for good restaurants before moving down here.

I have not located a bagelry. I miss fresh, crusty bagels. Perhaps if we travel to one of the Florida retirement havens on the Atlantic coast we might find a Northeast style bagelry?  We would definitely make the drive to get there if we knew FOR SURE a good bagelry existed.  I might even abandon the grandkids and move there permanently if I could buy a decent bagel.

The bagels they sell at Publix, our ubiquitous regional grocery store, are soft.  I assume they are made from a prepackaged mix Publix probably distributes to all its in-store bakeries?  Anyway, I see my granddaughter chowing down on one of those for breakfast and my heart hurts.  I feel like we have all let her down on a deep, cultural level. 

Chinese take-out can be found at virtually every strip mall, and there are plenty of strip malls.  In fact, it seems like every few blocks there is a strip mall with a Publix, a hair salon, a liquor store, and a Chinese take-out.  I am only exaggerating the teeniest little bit. 

Unfortunately, the Chinese restaurants here serve a milder version of what is served up north, and without shitake mushrooms.  I guess shitake is too weird?  Needless to say, we stopped ordering Chinese take-out early on.  I mean, who wants Hunan Chicken that has no zing and includes white button mushrooms instead of shitake?  I experience cognitive dissonance over this one. 

Pizza?  Well, we are lucky with pizza.  There is a place where the owners are from Buffalo, NY.  Although it nicely approximates NY-style pizza, the crust is not exactly the same.  The owners bemoan this fact and claim it is because of the water.  I understand.  Hey, the crust is good enough for me and I am grateful for this pizzeria.  The sauce is flavorful.  Thankfully they do not serve pizza with raw, chopped green peppers on top. Good thing, too, because my rallying cry regarding green peppers on pizza is: "Give me greasy roasted green pepper strips or give me none."

Happily, there is a lovely Thai Restaurant in town, and they are not afraid to spice things up. I have no complaints there. There are lots and lots of really good Mexican restaurants everywhere. And at a new strip mall down the road we discovered a Cajun place that makes a mean shrimp and grits. Yum.

There is a barbeque joint downtown that we like.  Part of what I like is that it is downtown instead of in a strip mall.  Of course their BBQ is not half as good you might find in South Carolina, but hey - half as good as South Carolina BBQ is pretty darn good. I hear there is another good BBQ place at one of the local strip malls, the one with the medium-sized Publix.  We need to check that out.

South Carolina style BBQ with collard greens, stewed tomatoes, coleslaw, and sweet potato

We found several interesting Cuban restaurants in the area. We frequent a Cuban place in a charming tourist town less than a half hour north of us. The picadillo is sublime.  

Picadillo with fried plantains and yellow rice

As far as the Greek experience, I live in hope. We may have to drive to Tarpon Springs on the Gulf Coast for an authentic Greek food experience. Tarpon Springs has the highest percentage of Greek Americans of any city in the US because of their sponge diving industry. I am looking forward to going there soon.

I am grateful to the Ancient Greeks for all the things they did well including democracy, philosophy, medicine, theatre, sculpture, and architecture.  But I think they reached the apex of their ancient civilization when they adapted baklava from the Ottoman Turks and made it their own.  Without the Greeks we may only be eating syrup with pancakes! Think about the perfect baklava, oozing honey syrup and melted butter with each bite.  It is so moist, almost like eating and drinking at the same time.

We stumbled upon a fabulous Greek Restaurant with our granddaughter the last time we went to St. Augustine.  She had avgolemono (egg and lemon) soup for the first time and fell in love with it. Of course the restaurant was in one of those homogenous strip malls that have no distinct sense of place, so I am not sure I can find it again.  The other two Greek restaurants we found are both about 30 minutes away in opposite directions.  Also in strip malls...  Neither of these two restaurants make their own baklava, they use the same pre-packaged variety they must purchase from their distributor.  I was disappointed, but I still ate the baklava.   

Anyway, the good, cheap restaurants we have found to date are only the tip of the iceberg.  They are out there and they are in strip malls.  The search continues.

Deep Thought

The other morning I almost made pasta sauce with peppermint instead of oregano.

I decided to make red sauce in the slow cooker for a change.  I have two friends who are sisters.  I have known them since high school.  Their Italian mother used to make a memorable sauce wherein she simmered it all day.  It was the best thing I had ever tasted when I was 16.  They keep telling me her sauce only consisted of tomato paste and veal, but I cannot bring myself to cook with calf meat; it is too sad.  I wondered if I could get a similar intensity of flavor with my own red sauce if I used the slow cooker for, say, 7 hours?  I figured while it cooked I could go to the Farmer's Market and buy veggies, and perhaps even purchase the Gardenia I have been dreaming about.  Maybe two.

I had just finished watching a 20 minute long YouTube video of Oprah interviewing the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh.  Just to give you an idea about how special this guy is, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.  His thoughts on suffering and compassion, anger and love are pretty logical; not the least bit goofy.  I was feeling kind of spiritual, hopeful even, after watching the video.  Considering my nearly constant struggles with the issues he raised, I was a bit preoccupied as I subsequently started to make the red sauce. I was deep in thought.

We have both oregano and basil in large pots on our lanai, as well as spearmint and peppermint, cilantro, and thyme.  I need some dill.  I am trying to grow tarragon from seed, but I am not having any luck.  I know it is because tarragon cannot grow here; they don't even sell it at Lowe's.  What is wrong with me that I cannot surrender to reality?  Even though Lowe's does not sell French Tarragon, they do sell something called Mexican Tarragon.  I imagine it is really Mexican Marigold Mint.  I should stop being so damned stubborn and give it a try. 

I am usually too lazy to cook with fresh herbs.  T is the master cook around here.  But I just had my mind blown by a holy man and I was determined to be uber-cool and make dinner with fresh herbs.  Yeah - "cool."  I got it all wrong as usual.  I am not bragging.  Sometimes I cannot stand myself.

Anyway, I was deep in thought about issues of great spiritual import while I was harvesting herbs.  Thinking does not make for mindfulness, by the way.  The peppermint is right next to the oregano.  I happily snipped peppermint sprigs and brought them into the house to clean them alongside the basil.   Luckily they did not smell right when I washed them and my olfactory senses brought me back to reality.  I thought, "Wow, this is really odd oregano" before recognizing it for what it was, reliving the snipping experience in my mind, and realizing I had been hacking away at the wrong herb.  Sometimes I forget that I need to pull my head out of the sand once in awhile and come up for air. 

I am almost sure I don't have dementia, nor was it a Senior Moment.  I have always been like this.  I can be a very sloppy thinker.  On the road of life I am more of a daydreaming passenger than a focused driver.

I took a break from writing and went to the Farmer's Market to buy that Gardenia.  I am sad to say the Gardenia vendor was not there.  It was disappointing; however, I will try again next week.

The best part of my trek to the market was stumbling upon a new vendor, a lovely middle-aged, red-headed Belgian woman.  Her red hair was pulled up in back and she had long, straight bangs.  She was elegantly slender, as so many of those Northern European women are, and she was wearing a simple, sleeveless white cotton dress with a nice, tasteful green design that looked to be stamped on the fabric.  I want straight hair.  I want that dress.  I wonder if they make it in a size 14, petite?

She was selling French Madeleines, Dutch Specaloos, and Belgian Waffles.  I was beside myself with joy.  Her accent was heavy and her command of English was weak.  Still, I persisted in engaging her in conversation.  I discovered she had only been in the States for 5 weeks.  She had a French/English dictionary lying on the counter in case she could not remember a word in English.  That just about broke my heart. T and I did a stint at the Farmer's Market last winter selling homemade candles.  I know how rough some of those customers can be, even when English is your first language.  I was a little in awe of her courage in managing the kiosk alone.

She was a stranger in a strange land and by all that is holy I wanted to make her feel welcome. Talking to her reminded me of the multicultural landscape I used to inhabit over the 37 years I worked at Cornell. 

Getting to interact with people from all over the world was the very best part of my working years.  I was a staff member, not an academic.  Being in a place where I could actually interact with people from other countries was heady stuff for a working stiff like me.  I often shepherded new and confused foreign faculty or graduate students through the workings of a complex university bureaucracy. I always felt honored to help them. 

Like me, the pastry vendor had recently left her home, a place she loved, to move to this strange place called Central Florida to be near her grown child.  Unlike me, she has two other children.  One still lives in Belgium, and the other lives in Vietnam.  She will be visiting her son in Vietnam this summer.  What a brave soul she seemed to be.  It is interesting, living a life.  When you live for love you never know where life might take you. 

Speaking of which, I bought a bag of madeleines and a bag of specaloos and I drove home.  When I got inside I wondered why I had not bought the Belgian waffles, too?  She had told me she made with Belgian Chocolate chips!  I got back in the car, drove back down to the Farmer's Market and bought the waffles. Good thing, too, because those were T's favorite.

Our tween granddaughter, E The Magnificent, was spending the night with us that night.  She imagines herself a foodie.  I looked forward to sharing them with her and T.  Perhaps someday, many years from now, she will be eating a madeleine and will suddenly, inexplicably remember her dear old grandparents.  I understand eating madeleines with a hot beverage can invoke these special powers.  Of course, I forgot the tea!

I recently started counting calories again.  I rode my bike in advance to make room on my balance sheet for pastry.