The Pantry Closet

Typically you enter my grandmother’s house through the kitchen.   Up until a few years ago, you would enter from the breezeway that connected the house to the garage.  There was a steel shelving unit with gardening gloves, a few pots, and usually an egg carton or two full of the balls that were from poorly aimed strokes on the golf course across the street.  A few years ago that breezeway was incorporated into the kitchen.  But it didn’t change the view of the stove and counter that meet your eyes when you come in from the cold.

This is the stove where all these recipes began… and have been perfected to innate nuance.  Often you would walk towards that stove still warm from baking the pan on the oven.  But sometimes it was cool, with just enough aroma to indicate there was something hidden under foil in the pantry closet.

If you walk out of the kitchen, a few steps into the hall, beyond the mirroring doors of the cellar and bathroom (the one where the whisky keeps company with the toilet bowl cleaner), you will face two doors.  The one directly in front of you goes into the TV room – which was originally a shared bedroom.  Beside that door, just as the hallway turns to lead you into the living room, is the pantry closet.  

This closet once provided additional storage for the three young women who occupied that bedroom.  So it has a sort of built in set of dresser drawers, now holding table cloths and extra napkins and such.  Above it are several shelves where extra plates sit in wait for large family meals and gatherings.  Plenty of mugs for tea to follow ample buffets.  The tea for those mugs.  A miscellany of serving dishes and storage containers.  Even the door into the closet has a special purpose, holding the calendar of birthdays so every single member of the family, near and far, gets a birthday card.  But that was a treat that came to my own mailbox.  The treats in the closet rested some place between those plates and mugs.  And one of them usually involved a metal baking pan covered in foil.

The recipe boxes are full of the sweets one discovered under that foil.  Chocolate.  Butterscotch.  Oatmeal.  Blueberry.  Or… peanut butter.  This weekend I expected to attend a meeting where I could bring a plate of one of these sweets to share.  Unfortunately a flat tire stood between me and that meeting… but left me at home to still make peanut butter bars.

If you have a sweet tooth, these bars will definitely satisfy it.  They also bring together one of the greatest edible combinations.  Peanut butter + chocolate.

This was my first attempt at peanut butter bars.  Several of my cousins have preceded me and done very well.  I… well… I took some liberties with this recipe (again) and while I definitely have a sweet delicious treat, they aren’t exactly the same ones that were underneath that foil.

My poetic licenses:
1. I used butter.  Mostly because that’s what I have in my fridge.  But that’s mostly because I don’t really do margarine any more.  In fact I have to give Gram a bit of credit for that when in a discussion about WWII rations, she described how they made margarine by adding yellow dye to lard.  Mmmm.  Yum.
2. I used quasi natural peanut butter.  And by quasi, I mean it’s not the stuff from Trader Joe’s that I normally eat – where the ingredients are peanuts and oil.  This peanut butter wasn’t Skippy, but the second ingredient on the list was definitely sugar.  Not that I really needed it because…
3. I used organic sugar.  Again, that’s what I keep in my cupboard… because that’s what I buy at Trader Joe’s, which I’m sure time will show you is one of the main suppliers of my kitchen.  But I did stick with the recipe and used corn syrup. 

Those disclaimers made, here’s the recipe that I found on a very weathered, still textured with some flour, type-written with plenty of handwritten notes index card.

Peanut Butter Bars
Ingredients:
1 stick of margarine
1 c. peanut butter
¼ c. corn syrup
1 ¼ c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs beaten (add one at a time
1 c. flour (there is a parenthetical note about wheat germ - ? included so ??)

Mix together and put in an ungreased 13 x 9 pan.  Bake 15-20 min at 350°.  (My gas oven took closer to 30 minutes)

Frosting:
½ lb confectioners sugar
2 Tbsp. margarine
2 Tbsp. peanut butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. cocoa
1/3 can evaporated milk

Mix first five ingredients.  Add milk gradually.  Spread on cooled brownies.

I finished this recipe and started to look it over for transcription when I noticed the bottom left corner folded over on the back of the card.  Underneath was the name Nancy Perkins.  My initial investigation (also known as my mother) yielded no answer to who Nancy Perkins was… except that we are in fact related to a whole lot of Perkinses.  But how a Nancy is connected to them, we have yet to resolve.  Stay tuned.

One postscript to this entry.  I did mention treats in the pantry closet.  My grandmother was not the only supplier of sweets to the grandchildren of Mt. Pleasant Ave.  On the next to the highest shelf there has always been a large jar, rather like a vase, full of hard candies.  It was always pretty to look at the rainbow of Brach’s candies with which my grandfather would fill it.  Butterscotch, red and white peppermint.  The shiny maroon of hot cinnamon.  Wintergreen.  If you were lucky… or proved yourself good after a day at Ma and Bubby’s, that magical jar would come down off the shelf with an opportunity to pick one sugary jewel for the road.  The jar is still there with the birthday calendar and the extra plates for Christmas, as if frozen in happy anticipation. 

Who needs a wardrobe into Narnia?  I had a pantry closet.