Magic and grandparents and tea

It always startles me how swiftly the days between Christmas and New Year’s pass.  Even when I find myself attempting somewhat of a normal routine by going to work… it really is seldom normal… and the days just melt into the other.  Maybe that’s my excuse for taking a lengthier holiday from this blog… or maybe it’s because I knew this post had to be about something that makes me tear up even at the first paragraph.  Saying goodbye.

Now, I realize the finality of our Christmas tradition is not actually final.  The house that has housed every Christmas feast I have attended since infancy is not going any place.  I am grateful… and excited to see the new life that it will start to have as my aunt and uncle make improvements and warm it with their love and smells from the kitchen.  It’s just… well… change.

I am glad I see it coming, so I could relish the minutes of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family.  It was sad without my grandmother pointing her finger and cackling at the noise of her children.  But… it was every way an affirmation of her being… seeing all our love, our volume, and our recipes spread over tables carrying on her spirit.

 (that is the Kugel on the right)

I spent Christmas Eve once again preparing the meat dressing with my mother and cousin.  The house was full of light and the shadows seemed to give way to the little things that reminded me of what makes Christmas and grandmother’s houses so magical.  

It’s funny.  When I think about Christmas as a kid, I think less about the stuff that I opened up under the tree.  I think more about the gap between opening presents and eating dinner when I would go up into the attic and play with my cousins.  Indeed, sometimes it was a huge letdown to have to break away from our scenario of some Parisian apartment where we were hiding out from an evil stepmother, setting up tea with the colored cups and Snoopy teapot, and go downstairs to eat the real food on the real dishes.

I went up into the attic last Monday to retrieve the little table and chairs for the little people eating the Christmas feast.  Standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up those stairs is such a vivid step through time.  The worn carpet, the drawings on the wall, the trunk on one side and the old school bench on the other… and the smell.. put me back to 1982.  There is nothing like the smell of that attic.  Well, maybe there is.  There was a room in Beauport that came close.  Old wood that is heated by the sun, cooled by the winter, and locked up for more than half the year.  A little bit musty.  A little bit dusty.  But ever.so.completely.magical. 

The toys are all still there.  The tea cups and saucers.  The desk with the alphabet chalkboard.  The green jewelry box full of clip on earrings and broaches.  The shiny black plastic cabinet with glass doors and silver knobs.  The stove made from crates and a set of drawers.  The straw monkey thing that hangs on the wall.  A thermometer.  Names etched into the ceiling.  Plastic magnetic letters.  A blue, yellow, and red wooden canister.  So many memories.  So much of what is glorious about being a kid, about being a Brennan is locked into the essence of every one of those objects.  That attic – even for the two minutes I spent retrieving the table  and chairs – was like stepping into a room of Christmas.  

My grandfather made that attic as a playspace.  First, for his children.  And then for his grandchildren.  My great-grandfather who helped to build the house, supplied it with the school furniture.  Indeed, I believe he also supplied the chairs and table that I retrieved for the dining room.  He was a custodian in the Worcester school system and recycled some of the furniture for his grandchildren.

My grandfather recycled materials from his three decker to build the attic.   I recognize the carpet from pictures of the living room in their first floor apartment.  The walls that made storage eaves were from the cellar where he had those crazy parties.  One of the party guests drew some very… interesting chalk pictures… on the wall.  My grandfather took the pressed cardboard wall coverings and flipped them so they were hidden inside the eaves… except for one random foot.  It’s funny.  I spent years in the attic and I never saw that foot until this year after going through all those party pictures.

It was an afternoon full of nostalgia and trying to figure out what was missing from our traditional Mt. Pleasant Ave. Christmas.  I kept looking in the refrigerator as if that was supposed to inspire me as to what needed to be there… aside from the most obvious absence.  And probably on my third or fourth peer into the fridge, I realized what we needed was some Bubby tea.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet – for my non-family readers.  I called my grandfather – my Irish Catholic French Canadian grandfather – Bubby.  I don’t know if it was because my mother was friends with a woman at the time who was in fact a Jewish grandmother – or because I just had fun sounding out the ‘b’ syllable with him, but my grandfather became Bubby.  And he liked it so much he had it made into a vanity plate for his car.

That’s why his iced tea recipe is called  

Bubby Tea

Ingredients:
18 c. water
1 tea cup of sugar
2 shot glasses of lemon juice
Caravan Teabags – non clouding – 1 oz.
Directions:
1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Add teabag and remove from heat.
3. After tea cools (2-3 hours), remove bag.
4. Add sugar and lemon juice.  Stir.

As you can see, this is definitely a recipe of nuance.  That said, in spite of some empty cupboards, all the ingredients for Bubby Tea were waiting for us in the kitchen.  All, except, the special pot.  It was believed that the secret ingredient to this tea was a white pot.  But… this pot was used for decades and had a number of chips and dings… and who knows what chemical was in that chipped paint.  The pot was banished from cooking in the last year… and disappeared in recent months, but not before I took a picture of it.  

We still manage to make the tea delicious without the special pot.  Maybe the delicious is slightly different (as I’m sure it would be without the right tea cup or shot glass, too).  But it is still a constant in winter, spring, summer, and fall.  A Brennan gathering is not complete without it.  

Likewise, I know we have the ingredients of a magic Christmas, no matter what changes.   Maybe it’s the influence of hours spent in that magic attic… or maybe, it’s the influence and love from a pair of grandparents who made that magic real.

When life hands you the seasonal plague, find the lemons and whisky

I had intentions of making cookies this past weekend.  The second runner up to Tropical Gingerbread from the previous weekend.  I was going to a cookie baking party where I could share stories of this recipe box with friends over a cup of eggnog.  But alas, my body had other plans… finally caving in to the seasonal plague friends and co-workers around me have been sniffling through the last few weeks.  So I sent my regrets and spent most of Sunday sleeping through almost the entire first season of Downton Abbey on the couch.

I tried to fight this thing.  I hate being sick.  I hate putting pharmaceuticals in my body… so I figured I would do my best to soothe the symptoms with ingredients from my kitchen.

I actually discovered the wonders of lemon water earlier this summer.  Maybe it’s psychosomatic… but there were a couple healthy months when I was starting my day with the juice of a lemon and some lukewarm water.  It’s supposedly a good way to get toxins out of the body.  Whatever.  I like water.  And I like lemons.

 

Wait.  What?

Yeah, I like lemons.  As in I will actually eat them, or at least suck the juice from their pulpy flesh.  And you know where I learned this behavior?  My grandmother.  I was thinking about this as I drove home from the grocery store today, fully stocked with almost a dozen lemons to help get out the rest of this sniffly business.  I remembered how she came to a birthday brunch with my parents and sister a few years back.  She got these mouth watering peach waffles, that I remember my nutritionist mother was pleased she ate completely.  And then she finished off the meal by eating the lemon from her water… and several others from the table.

The woman lived to be 91.  Maybe the lemon de-toxing notion is a myth… or maybe it was a healthy habit.  But I definitely have her taste for the tart flavor of lemon juice.

I owe my grandmother another debt of home remedy from this week.  After a discussion at Thanksgiving when I asked my father and uncles the favorite drinks of my grandparents, I decided my liquor cabinet required a bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon and Seagram’s V.O. Canadian Whisky.

I’ve only started to appreciate whisky in the last two years as a drink.  It has been a few years more than that when I’ve appreciated the idea of it as a cure for the cold.  Okay, maybe not cure… but definitely a calm to the sore throat… and an easier path to sleep when prone to coughing.  And that proved true with both the Wild Turkey and the V.O. this week.

I am glad that I spent a couple cold Sunday afternoons with my grandmother going through that stash of photos I found last Christmas (when I found that album of pictures from my grandfather’s Air Force training in Miami). After a little eye squinting and pursed lips, she could tell me something about everyone in the photos – from her brother to my great aunt Rhea to the woman who lived on the second floor of the three decker with 8 children to her head shakes at the goofy pictures of my grandfather… saying he had a little too much.  

It amazed me that in a day when there wasn’t the impulse of Facebook or digital photography that some of these pictures… were developed (sometimes in duplicate), never mind kept for over fifty years.    How much of that bourbon or whisky was ingested on those evenings?  When the parties would end well after midnight and they would get up the next morning and bring their five, six babies to church?

But… it wasn’t the goofiness that struck me most about those pictures.  It was the community.  They weren’t going out on the town like the characters of Mad Men… but they were happy amongst spouses and friends on the evening of a day off from the work week.  A cellar transformed into a popular destination with a bar, a ping pong table, and some Canadian whisky.

I think that ping pong table is in my cellar.  My grandfather gave it to us so many years ago, I don’t know when it got here.  It never left.  I think now that I have the V.O., the cellar needs a bar.

Tropical Gingerbread and Antics in Florida

So I confess yesterday was a bit of a sloth day.  I didn’t have much motivation for my one un-scheduled Saturday of the next several months and got to 4pm before I contemplated doing anything for this blog.  And as such, I didn’t really have much motivation to go to the grocery store to supply my kitchen with any missing ingredients.  

I went through the recipe cards, casting aside anything that required chocolate chips or chocolate baking squares… and then found one ginger cookie recipe (with the note not to make on a humid day – perfect for December when the wood stove is roaring) and one for Tropical Gingerbread.  Well, I did supply my kitchen with coconut a few weeks back (prompted by holiday baking sales and my initial perusal of recipe cards).  Plus, that recipe was slightly less involved… so the choice was made.

 

Even though gingerbread is clearly an appropriate selection for December, I couldn’t think of a good story to tie into my family – especially when considering the word ‘tropical.’  I mean we are as New England as it gets.  We aren’t really the grass skirt and lei kind of family.  But then as I was contemplating the thesis of last night’s blog, I was reminded of my grandfather and how he spent several months in Florida during WWII… where this photo was taken.

 (The handwritten caption is 'Tarzan.'  The page is dated December 1942 - could well have been 70 years ago today)

When I discovered the stash of party photos last Christmas that prompted a few Sunday afternoon reminisces with my grandmother, I also found a thick black photo album, labeled U.S. Army Air Forces. It is full of labeled photos – time stamped as Sebring, Florida Oct. 1942 – Jan. 1943.  My grandmother wasn’t much interested in explaining this album to me.  She wasn’t there… and if you look at the photos, you can tell there were a lot of other women there, who were undoubtedly struck by my grandfather’s good looks.  Indeed, folded in the back of this album is a pencil drawing of a nurse enclosed in a heart.

This is one of those stories I wish I had thought to pursue when I had the chance.  But my grandfather died when I was 18.  The last year of his life his memories near and far were severely compromised.  Most of what I know of him in his youth came from my grandmother… who, I always found it interesting, heartwarming, would refer to him constantly as ‘my husband.’  Very seldom, if at all, ‘your grandfather.’  As if he was always hers.  And maybe that’s why this album full of other women was not her favorite story to tell.

 (The back of this photo is stamped as an official photo of the Mobile Air Service Command Photographic Dept.)

So I can’t say I know tons about his military story… but I suspect my father and one or two uncles could help me fill in the gaps.  Especially about this intriguing newspaper clip I just discovered folded in that same scrapbook this morning.

This leads me to wonder 1. Why was he in the hospital?  2. This is dated October 1940… why was Worcester doing a puff piece about the draft a year and two months before December 1941? 

I remember at his funeral a childhood friend came and told my grandmother about a tobogganing accident he had.  I think it messed up his knee or back… something my grandmother never knew about.   But there was some speculation as to how that is what kept his military involvement in the second world war off the battle lines.

There are a whole lot of stories in this scrapbook, most of which I will never know.  But it something to think of Vincent Brennan – whom I only knew as a stern (albeit fun and loving) grandfather – as a young, mischievous, dashing soldier.  It’s no wonder when he stopped my grandmother as she was walking home one day, she accepted his offer for a ride home.  Nor is it any wonder that her father and aunts were a little wary of this young fella trying to woo her off her feet.

But before Mary, there were these months in Florida.  My grandmother did mention that he was friendly with some people of considerable wealth… and there was much fun to be had - though the pictures indicate that much is a lot.  I don’t know if they ever had tropical gingerbread, but maybe there were a few coconuts.

Tropical Gingerbread

½ c. shortening, melted
½ c. sugar
1 egg
2 ½ c. sifted all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. ground cloves
½ tsp. salt
1 c. Brer Rabbit Molasses
1 c. hot water

Cream together shortening (melted) and sugar; add egg; beat well.  Sift together flour, baking soda, spices and salt.  Combine molasses and water; add alternately with flour to first mixture.  Pour into a greased waxed paper lined 9x9x2 pan.  Bake in moderate oven, 350˚, 50-60 minutes.  Cool 5 minutes.  Remove from pan, cover with white frosting and sprinkle generously with coconut.

*Melt shortening in 3 or 4 qt. saucepan over low heat.  Remove from heat; let cool.  Then add egg and sugar; beat well.

 Mmm melting shortening. Never done that one before

One of my favorite part of these recipes is sifting spices with the flour.  It makes the kitchen smell delicious.

 It looks like a plate of snow - kind of funny considering it is tropical.  My only additional note to this is that so many of these recipes call for a 9x9 pan, which my modern baking supplies does not include - the norm is 13x9 these days.  I used an 8in cake pan and put the extra batter into a muffin tin... for tropical gingerbread cupcakes!

I suppose it is no accident I ended up writing about WWII when I have spent some time reflecting on December 7th this weekend.  And I think part of that reflection comes from thinking about my grandparents' life stories and how that shaped the family into which I was born.  But before that, before he picked my grandmother up in a car, Vinny Brennan was a soldier once and young. 

A Little More About Slop

I feel badly that Slop did not get its just desserts last weekend.  It was a bit of an afterthought to my manic weekend, when I hastily wrote my blog in order to claim it accomplished for the end of Sunday.

In truth, Slop does deserve a vignette of its own… and not just as the footnote of weirdness and a supper club menu.  Slop is, afterall, a Brennan family tradition.  Well… sort of.

Anyway, I decided to make it again.  Mostly because I’m trying to empty out my refrigerator this weekend and I had the pineapple, cherries, and whipping cream to use.  So why not make some more and actually take pictures this time?

As I mentioned, my only real memory of having it myself was at one of my grandmother’s birthday celebrations, when many of these ‘traditions’ were placed on a spring buffet in the dining room.  Never you fear, I will explain some more of those in essays to come.  But this was both amusing… and kind of a flop.  I think the whipping cream wasn’t whipped and just added… so it was really, really sloppy and unappealing.

But I revisit this intriguing recipe not merely as a way to give it a more just due, but to reflect on the fact that some of these ‘traditional’ recipes come from frugality.

It is something that is frequently laughed at now.  Something that is amusing in the retrospect of my mother and her siblings.  But you figure, this family had to live off the income of my grandfather (and he was very enterprising, not to mention HARD working - but just one man).  This family consisted of seven kids and four adults.  Not to mention continual visits from cousins of various degrees and other children in the neighborhood.  Slop was undoubtedly an easy way to satisfy the sweet tooths of many a child who settled in one of the kitchen red chairs at Mt. Pleasant Ave.

I think about how they made it work when I am just one person contemplating how I can splurge on an iPod or a nice pair of shoes… and I think wow, they had seven pairs of feet for whom to buy shoes.

When I sat down with my grandmother last spring to go through some of the pictures, every once in a while she would point to a dress and say she got it from a friend of my great aunt Marga or some other friend of the family.  It was kind of humbling and equally admirable to hear her talk about that… especially when it was pointed out in my absolute favorite picture of her and my grandfather.

But the thing is… you look at this picture and you see it doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, or that this bar is in the basement of a three decker haphazardly decorated to hide the fact it’s a cellar.  What takes my breath away every single time I look at this picture and several other pictures of them together is how much love there is between them.  And that, a lesson I am feeling leak into my soul quite a bit this year, is a wealth that is very very simple to attain… and yet one we overlook so often.

So back to Slop aka Rice Delight.  I didn’t type out the recipe before.  Here it is in simplicity.   

Rice Delight
(the parenthetical notes are hand-written on a weathered and somewhat dingy typed recipe card – mis-spelling of Marshmellow intentionally kept)
½ c. uncooked rice
½ c. sugar
Whipped cream (1/2 pt all purpose)
Marshmellow fluff (1 jar – which I discovered is SMALL jar)
Crushed pineapple (small can drained)
maraschino cherries (6 or 8 cut up)

Chill

(Additional handwritten instructions on the back)
Heat 2 ½ cups water, dash salt.  Add ½ cup regular rice when boiling (cook on low heat for 20min).  Stire rice after coming to boil.  Cover and simmer on low heat until tender.  Drain.  Stir in sugar, pineapple (drained) + marshmallow fluff when warm.  Chill until cold.  Add whipped cream and cherries.

It is simple and pretty basic to make.  A very good thing to make life sweeter.  But isn’t it the most basic and simple things that make life sweet?  Not to mention,  with whipped cream (REAL whipped cream – none of that squirts from a can crap) and cherries on top, how can you go wrong?