To Life, To Life with Chocolate Chips

The week before I went to UMASS Memorial to have that surreal, I will never forget farewell, I got a call on my cell phone while I was at work.  Now if you don’t know me very well, you might not know how much I despise my cell phone.  How much I try to avoid using it at unnecessary moments, like work.  My friends still do call and text me… but are pretty sensitive to the fact that I work.  And of course I saw this call come up as I was wrangling with some annoying customer service person on the phone for work.  Some seeming disaster that actually eludes me now.  I just know my head clouded as I saw a friend’s name show on the caller ID and had to let it go to voicemail while I dealt with that other annoying matter.  But I made the callback… already with the sick feeling in my stomach of the news it was going to reveal.

It was just about a year ago exactly that my friend Lisa was given the grim diagnosis that her cancer had come back with a vengeance.  I met Lisa through theater – kind of appropriately considering the kinship and mutual love of social justice, feminism, politics, and art - during a production of the Vagina Monologues.  I can’t even remember which monologue was hers.  Maybe she was just part of the ongoing ‘chorus.’  But she wore a pink feather boa.  It’s one of the most vivid details about that show in my memory.

Lisa had a family and a full time job as a social worker.  She lived in Sturbridge.  I still lived out the Boston way.  But there was great opportunity for political empathies on Facebook… and the occasional run-in at a theater production.  Then somewhere in the Facebook postings and invitations, she found my supper club and wanted in.  Because I was having a pumpkin themed dinner.  Unfortunately her best intentions did not get her to that dinner, but she saved the bottle of pumpkin wine until she was able to come to a supper early last November before heading over to work.  

I think it is a curious thing – coincidence – timing –whatever that Lisa and my grandmother left this life within a week of one another.  They were both such dynamic women.  Full of love, love, love.  For their children.  For their spouses.  For their friends.  They both were genuinely interested in people… and in the world.  Smart, sassy women without whom this world feels a little empty.

Tonight the Sturbridge theater community is paying tribute to Lisa.  I am happily attending… but also happily contributing to the night’s refreshments.  When the call was put out to offer up baked goods, it seemed a perfect opportunity to bring together my love of these women.  

In honor of her love of pumpkin, I opted to make my own recipe of pumpkin chocolate chip bars.  I didn’t even think about this blog much as I got up first thing this morning and made a batch… so no pictures, I’m afraid.  BUT in spite of the fact this is not a Mary Brennan recipe, I will post it here.  I know these bars have visited her kitchen once or twice… and they are pretty good.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

Ingredients:
2 ½ c. flour
1tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. cinnamon
¾ tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 c. butter, melted
1 c. white sugar
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. semisweet chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375°.  Grease 13 x 9 pan (I use my favorite Pampered Chef stoneware brownie pan)
2. Stir together first six ingredients.
3. Blend butter and sugar until smooth.  Add pumpkin.  Add eggs, one at a time.  Gradually blend in dry ingredients.  Fold in chocolate chips.  Spread mixture evenly into prepared pan.
4. Bake 35-45 minutes.  Best served warm (with a cup of coffee).

(I did not take pictures of the making of or finished product before packaging them into pieces for sale tonight.  BUT I did think to take a snapshot of the crumbs I sampled with my morning coffee)

The second recipe for today’s blog is what I made for the reception after my grandmother’s wake.  It’s the first recipe I made from this recipe box.  I chose it, mostly, because it can be made without nuts.  In fact, that’s how I’ve made it – mostly because I haven’t had any in my kitchen.  But the mandate for tonight is no nuts.  It’s something I remember from that pantry closet – maybe even more vividly than peanut butter bars.  And while the recipe is Nestle, to me it is my grandmother because she was the supplier.

Original Toll House Pan Cooky (Gram’s spelling – she also gave credit where credit is due by inserting Nestlés underneath)
1 c. pls 2 Tbsp unsifted flour
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ c. butter softened
6 Tbsp. sugar *
6 Tbsp. brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 c. choc chips
½ c. nut meats  (I found this descriptive term amusing considering Gram and my mutual disdain for squirrels)

Preheat oven to 375°.  In small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.  In large bowl, combine butter, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla.  Beat until creamy.  Beat in egg.  Gradually add flour mixture.  Mix well.  Stir in chips and nuts.  Spread into greased 9 in square pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes.  For crisper cookie, spread dough in 13x9 pan.  Bake at 350° 12-15 minutes.

*In case you’re wondering, there are 16 Tbsp. in a cup.  I doubled this recipe – so 12 Tbsp = ¾ of a cup.

(Basically in the end, you end up with a bowl full of cookie dough.  And you could make cookies, I suppose.  But they are easier to package as bars... and I actually like them better.)

As I went to pull off the pictures from my camera for this post, I found I still had one of Lisa and me at brunch raising our mimosas and smiling.  A woman with so much spirit and love.  She lived the mantra Carpe Diem, even through this last bittersweet year.  I am grateful for the visits I had with her in 2012.  And, this may be a tangential detail to this post… but I broke down and bought a device that will enable me to take pictures – mostly for this blog… but because of this blog, I seek to capture the stories of my day to day.  I had the option to inscribe it on the back.  I chose Carpe Diem.  

Dressing for the Soul, or the recipe that is really great to read and all, but you kind of have to be there

I admit I lost count.  Or, rather, I can’t remember when we started.  I just know that it’s Thanksgiving and that means today, the day before Thanksgiving, I have to make dressing.  I know I can give credit to my mother for deciding this was the thing we would do together – with Gram.  I suspect early on I was recruited because I could easily be assigned the task of making bread crumbs (the truly unique story of this recipe that you shall learn shortly) so Gram and my mom could sit upstairs in the kitchen and chat over bacon grease and chopped onion.

It is probably my most recent and thereby vivid memory of cooking with Gram.  I remember not leaving work early enough and getting to Jefferson well after the appointed time of my arrival.  I remember my coat smelling of that bacon several days after.  I remember being sent (on that insane grocery shopping day either before Thanksgiving or Christmas) to get some more onions and then not ten minutes later back again for the Bell’s seasoning that was no place to be found on the shelves… and then just as I was about to give up found a whole big display of it.

I remember having this every Thanksgiving and Christmas in the blue and white crock pot.  It isn’t stuffing.  It’s dressing.  And it’s got meat… so this dish is not for the non-meat eaters… not even, really, for the meat less eaters like myself.  But it is a family tradition.  And it is so good.

Fact is, this is not Gram’s recipe.  This is another Nana Rose tradition.  I don’t know where she found it, but it’s pretty classic French Canadian.  Boiled ground meat and seasoning?  You got it.

It’s actually a pretty easy recipe.  And I suppose you can read this and copy it.  But, trust me, it ain’t gonna taste the same.  Why?

    1.Chances are, you don’t have a nifty turn of the century meat grinder, bread crumb maker.

    2.You don’t have THAT roasting pan for the bread crumbs to land in.

    3.You don’t have THAT cast iron skillet, flavored with years of bacon fat and fried meat dinners she prepared for my grandfather.

    4.You don’t have THAT crock pot.

But, still, you can probably come up with an alternative.  And if you make it an excuse for family socializing… maybe you can get some of the flavor.

Gram’s Original Recipe:
 7-10 onions, cut up and fried in bacon fat until tender
2lbs. hamburger, handful of salt sparingly
1 ¾  quarts of water approx. until cooked – boil down to less liquid
Roasting pan of bread crumbs (for bread use Claire Baker rye bread loaf– watch amount, add gradually)
3 to 4 Tbsp sage – add gradually

But, let me elaborate a little…

The Claire Baker rye bread loaf is no longer available.  So we get the Swedish Rye from Darby’s Bakery in West Boylston.  (How very classic Worcester, using Swedish bread to make a French Canadian recipe.)  Now this bread you need to DRY.  And I mean dry to the point you can use it as sandpaper.  Because from it you make bread crumbs.  Now… that can be achieved any old way.  A food processor would be easy.  A plastic bag and a rolling pin not too much more difficult.  But to make it the Rose Alba way, you get a meat grinder (which has a separate piece for bread crumbs), hook it up on the basement counter, and grind those pieces of bread to dust. But… if that bread isn’t dry enough (as was the case today) the holes gum up and the thing doesn’t work. 

I must admit, this is the most absurd part of this.  And yet so delightfully unique.  How THRILLED was I when one summer I was giving one of my tours at Beauport and saw this same contraption set up on the table, hands off and surrounded by plastic food.  When I make this dressing, I actually get to touch one with my bare hands and put the organic matter of food in it.  Preservation schmezervation.

The grinder in pieces

 Making the crumbs

Anyway, back to this process…

Meanwhile, while one is grinding up breadcrumbs… someone else can be chopping up onions.  We chopped them today – but Gram cut them lengthwise.  …. Huge sigh… I don’t think it was last year… but the year before… and one of those times when Boston traffic interfered with my timely arrival.  Gram asked me to cut up the onions before grinding the bread because her grip wasn't what it used to be.  It was then when I realized how important it was to be there  - even when the traffic was so so so so annoying.  Traffic goes away.  Gram was there with me, filling the air with stories or listening to me tell of whatever seeming importance filled my brain.

And you know… this dressing is great and all.  That museum piece is certainly a fun twist.  But the best part of making this dressing was the incidental conversations.  Her comments about Rose and her making pies for Grampy Frank.  Or her frequent comment about a trip to NH when she came back engaged and an aunt raised an eyebrow asking why they were getting married so suddenly.  Or what one cousin was up to in Colorado or another cousin on the west coast.  Or trying to explain to her why I decided to write a vampire novel… the sun would go down early.  The ingredients were all resting in the crock pot… but those conversations stretched the afternoon into evening.

But about that crock pot.

This, too, can happen while someone is chopping up onions and someone else is grinding breadcrumbs, and someone is telling you about her trip to New Hampshire.  Put the two pounds of beef in a large pot and boil in 1 ¾ quarts of water… which for those of us not measuring in Old English is about 7 cups.  Simmer until meat is brown and liquid is less.  And this, honestly, is an eyeball trick.  This is great instruction, isn’t it?  But it has to be a small enough amount to absorb all those bread crumbs without still being soupy.

While that meat is boiling and someone is still very likely grinding up crumbs, fry up 3-4 pieces of bacon in a cast iron skillet.  Take out the bacon.  Leave the grease.  Cook those onions until they are clear and brownish.  

When the water is boiled down, add the bread crumbs.

Then add the onions.

Then add the Bell’s.  The recipe calls for 3 Tbsp.  But, you know, if you feel the need to taste it after 2 Tbsp… why not?  Even better if everyone has an opportunity to offer an opinion and in fact confirm that it needs another Tbsp.

Lay a turkey thigh or drumstick on the bottom of the crock pot.  Fill the crock pot with the meat, crumb, onion, seasoning mixture.  Cook on low overnight and fill your house with that smell.  Bring to the smorgasbord of a typical Brennan holiday feast… where even if all you can sample is one little spoon so you can sample every other dish… and enjoy.

If you don’t have a Gram to tell you stories, it’s really great to have a cousin, her son, and an aunt to keep you company.  Because the best ingredient, of course, is family.

 Love you, Gram.

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. 

Pie, Take One... or Food Blog Meet Supper Club

Three years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to not just talk to my friends on Facebook and over text messages.  I decided to start a supper club that would meet (mostly) once a month for a themed dinner.  The idea is to sit around a table and look at people (not little blue screens you hold in your hand), talk, and share a good meal.

So, naturally, this is a perfect audience for the experiments of my cooking.  I choose the theme of each dinner… and it just so happened that I selected pie for the theme of this dinner - even before I started the blog.  But the theme is made for my grandmother’s recipe collection because it is full of pies.

I don’t know if it is cliché to say that pie makes me think of my grandmother.  It seems a very grandmother thing to make pies.  But let me tell you, my grandmother made them and made them well.  Apple pie is probably the one I remember most.  And lemon meringue.  And vaguely in the back of my memory, there was mincemeat.   Some of the more unusual varieties came out at Thanksgiving… but pie plates occupied that not so secret storage for sweets spot in the pantry closet as frequently as a tin of cookies.  

Nana Rose was also a pie maker.  In fact I think she was the one who initiated the practice of using torn up bed sheet strips to line under the edge of the crust as it baked in the oven.  Gram told me that Rose baked two pies every Sunday, one for the house.  And one for my great-grandfather Frank – my grandmother’s father.  

I am fascinated by the relationship between the widower and the divorcee.  My great-grandfather lost his wife in 1939, while my great-grandmother divorced her cad of a husband… leaving them both single parents who became so much a part of the lives of their grandchildren.  Rose was there during the week, but Frank would take the whole brood out for long walks on Sundays (exhausting them plenty for Sunday night).  And in return, he would get one of Rose’s pies.

 Grampy Frank with his daughter and six of his grandchildren.

I decided to make Gram’s pumpkin pecan pie.  Knowing it was a one-shelled recipe, I followed her instructions for two so I could use the second to bake a brie for the pre-dinner snack.  Normally I use a pre-packaged phyllo dough for that recipe.  But pie crust works just as well.

Now, full disclosure, pie crust is not my specialty.  I can make pizza dough in my sleep.  I can create a lasagna from random ingredients in my fridge or pasta sauce out of beets.  Anything with cheese… well, okay, I have to give cheese most of the credit.  But pie crust… well… pie crust is an art I have yet to master.

Remember that paste story I mentioned at the beginning of this blog?  Well, it turns out that is an actual step… and maybe that’s where my pie making skills went south.  Apparently I got stuck on that step and never made it to the dough part.   I should have taken a picture of the paste – but, well, unfortunately I have serious focus issues when I cook and prep my house for a dinner party… so for that part you just have to use your imagination.

Pie Crust Recipe (forms two shells)
Ingredients:
2 c. flour
1tsp. salt
2/3 c. Crisco (I admit I am not a purist here.  I get my pretentious organic vegetable shortening from Wegmans)
1/3 c. water

Directions:
1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl
2.  In separate bowl, take out 1/3 cup flour and blend with water to make a paste
3. Cut the Crisco into the remainder of the flour until it is in pieces, the size of peas.
4. Stir the flour paste into dry ingredients to make a dough that will hold together.
5. Form into a bowl
6. Roll to desired size

So like I said, I used one to make the brie, baked with caramelized onions and an apple.  That was the messiest and not one connected piece… so I didn’t photograph it until the plate was nearly demolished.

The second shell I used to make a pumpkin pecan pie.

The shell (with a little bit of the batter)  At least it was one piece.

Pumpkin Pecan Pie (made better as 9 in pie, rather than 8in) – did I read this instruction?  No.

Beat 2 large eggs in a bowl.  Stir in 1 can 1lb pumpkin, ½ c. brown sugar, ¼ c. sugar, ½ tsp. each salt, ginger, 1 tsp. cinnamon, ¼ tsp. ground cloves.  Whisk in 1 ½ light cream.  Pour into unbaked pie crust.  Bake 400° 45-55 minutes until crust is brown, filling set.  Cool pie.  In small pan melt 3 Tbsp butter, stir in 2/3 c. brown sugar, 24 pecan halves of 2/3 c. coarsely chopped pecans.  Put pecans on top of pie.  Broil 2-3 minutes until brown.  Serves 8-10.  Serve warm.

Cooking with pumpkin always makes me happy.  Adding fragrant spices to it, so much the better.

In spite of my lackluster product, I must say I would rather a sloppy homemade crust than one from the store.  It’s like pizza dough – basic (cheap) ingredients… and the only way to confront this demon of imperfection is to just keep on trying!

That said, I can identify two imperfect things from this day in the kitchen i.e. the way I did not follow directions.

1. I broiled my pie while trying to track down extra pie servers.  So… those 3 minutes went a little long… and the pecans were more black than golden.  But that didn’t stop us from eating!

2. I did not heed the advice about the pie plate size – so I had too much filling.  What does one do with batter of eggs, spices, and cream?  Make French toast of course!