Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies or How I Discovered My Wings

So Massachusetts was prescribed a snow day today.  I thought it best to use the afternoon to do some baking, as I have promised my friend Cheryl some goodies for her bookdrive on Sunday.  I thumbed through recipes this morning, wanting to match up the required ingredients with the contents of my cupboards.  Not to mention that paranoia about offering nuts in a public setting.  So gauntlet set upon the ground.

I decided to make the chocolate mint brownies again.  Brownies and mint frosting with a chocolate shell never go wrong.  I bought some chocolate chips in my hasty pre-blizzard grocery store run, so I figured I would justify that weather induced shopping spree.  Of course, her recipe collection has several varieties of chocolate chip cookies and bars and assorted desserts.  I picked up one, assessed my butter supply, and then decided on the oatmeal combination.  Because a. it requires shortening and b. it requires oatmeal.

I’ve recently started ordering from my aunt’s co-op.  This is my most recent supply of oatmeal.

Chocolate Chips + Oatmeal Surplus =

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

½ c. shortening
½ c. brown sugar
½ c. granulated sugar
1 beaten egg
1 Tbsp water
½ tsp. vanilla
¾ c. sifted flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ c. oatmeal uncooked.
1 ½ c. chocolate chips
Scribbled in the middle is a note to add wheat germ. I didn’t.  You can, apparently.

Cream shortening + sugar
Stir in egg, water, vanilla + sifted flour + dry ingredients.  Add choc chips.
Drop by teaspoonful  on greased cookie sheet.  Bake 350° 10-15 minutes.  Switch during baking from bottom to top shelf to prevent scorching.

This is one of the first times in a while I’ve baked cookies without using a stone.  So I have to admit my nuance was a little off.  I guess they did in fact scorch a little…. But mostly because there are so many chocolate chips they tend to cook a little fast.  That said, the one that broke in my attempt to loosen it from the cookie sheet tastes pretty swell.

Obviously, I embrace any opportunity to share Gram’s sweet recipes.  It saves me from the temptation of eating a whole batch.  It allows me to share the deliciousness I associate with childhood bliss.  But, there is definitely something very appropriate about these recipes providing refreshment for a book event.

My dad is quite a reader.  I’d say the only thing comparable to his record collection is his collection of books.  A literary gluttony I have inherited.  But as much as baking and gardens make me think of my grandmother, so do books.

When I didn’t have any companions to play with in the attic, I would try to set up a solitary game of house with the tea set… but I usually used up my storyline pretty quickly.  Or I would simply get distracted when I found myself seated in front of the large bookcase between the eaves and the window.  

The library was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid.  But this bookshelf – a mere four or five packed shelves – was enough of a temptation to make me want to push outside of my supposed reading level.  I remember seeing my first copy of a Little House book on those shelves, making me realize there was more to Laura Ingalls Wilder than Melissa Gilbert.  There were Nancy Drew mysteries.  Fairy tales.  Dickens.  A weathered copy of Sybil.  And a paperback of Catcher in the Rye that I still have on a shelf somewhere…

Being able to take home one of those books was being able to take home a piece of treasure from that magical attic.  It was also a bit of victory knowing I was reading something that my grandmother might well have read herself.  

And that pendulum swung back again.  My most favorite gift to wrap up for her on Christmas was usually a book.  Whether it was about local history, essays, something about gardens, or a piece of well written fiction, it was a delight to share it with one of my most favorite readers.

Those books were scattered throughout the house.  Eventually that shelf in the attic stopped collecting volumes… or enough borrowers retained the copies for their own libraries.  But as I started collecting images of the house before it disassembled, there were books in nearly every room.  Her bedroom, the back two bedrooms, the living room, the dining room had a few volumes tucked into the music stand and desk, the kitchen had books carefully displayed on a shelf above the door, the cellar, and the tv room – where she sat for much of her last year – had several stacks of volumes… including the one I wrote.

A picture of her paternal grandmother, Mary McCourt, reading

In the last few weeks, the pieces of that house were collected into rooms so different members of the family could come and take something for our own homes.  It really is not surprising that a whole room was devoted to books.  Children’s books.  Novels.  Garden books.  Cookbooks.  Books given to her.  Books she gave to us.

I took home a few volumes to add to my shelves.  But really, at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s merely those bound copies or the ones I took from the attic in my younger days that are most significant.  It is the fact that she shared that passion for reading.  Even in her last days, we would talk about books and writers and things she found interesting because she read them.  And I suspect that is a lot of the reason her mind was sharp to the very end.  

So really, if you think about it, she didn’t just give me the recipes to inspire this blog.  She gave me the love of words and vocabulary and a good story.  Or maybe this quote she kept taped to a shelf in the cellar describes it best.

She gave me books.  She gave me wings.

Chocolate Mint Brownies or a Layered History

I am behind on my writing.  Although, to be fair, my weekends have been full in January.  Full of the things that inspire this blog – family, food, and the house where these recipes were first transcribed and tested.  A mix of nostalgia, grief, happiness, and hope.  Not to mention a huge shift of reality.

The occasion for which I made this entry’s recipe is definitely the superlative of these moments.  Family celebrating life and the accomplishment of three decades.  My sister turned 30 two weeks ago.  Last week, her husband planned and executed a happy birthday party surprise for her.  Friends from throughout her life and family members gathered to celebrate the milestone.  And of course… true to family tradition… there was a lot of food.

It was a happy celebration in the middle of visits to my grandmother’s house when we all started to organize objects, furniture, and memories so we could take them apart and bring them into our own homes.  This is one of those times when I realize how very lucky I am to be in this family.  It is one of those shifts that could create rifts… but the humility, grace, and generosity with which this was done has and continues to fill me with awe.  We are truly a family that loves one another… and loves the woman who made that happen.

I was very happy to get a baking pan from the kitchen and decided the best inauguration for its use in my own kitchen was a bar for my sister’s party.   Remembering that once upon a time chocolate and mint were a preferred combination for her, I decided to make chocolate mint brownies.  Maybe I was projecting my own tastebuds on her palate, because they were definitely one of my favorites to come from my grandmother’s recipes.

Of course, being this insane month of January, I was nervous I wouldn’t even be able to make the bars… but serendipity landed me with a free Thursday before the weekend so I could make the brownie base.  This recipe comes in two steps, plus the half step in between to cool things down.  So when I’m juggling a week of rehearsals, dinner plans, and the performance those rehearsals were to lead up to, it’s a wonder I could cook anything at all.  But cook it I did.  Thursday I made the brownie.  Friday it had the chance to cool down.  And Saturday morning, it got the peppermint treatment.

One could, of course, just as easily do this in the course of an afternoon – maybe even with the help of a refrigerator… which is indeed necessary at the end.

Chocolate Mint Brownies
Ingredients:
½ c. margarine (Oleo)
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
2 1 oz. sq. chocolate melted
½ c. flour
½ c. chopped nuts

Heat oven to 350°. Cream margarine and sugar.  Blend in eggs.  Stir in chocolate: ad flour and nuts.  Mix well.  Pour into greased 9 inch square pan.  Bake at 350° 25 min.   Cool.  Frost with peppermint frosting.  Let stand until firm.  Melt chocolate with margarine.  Spread over frosting.  Chill 30 minutes until chocolate is set.  Cut into squares.
Peppermint Frosting
2 Tbsp. margarine
1 c. sifted confectioners sugar
1 Tbsp. milk
¼ tsp peppermint extract

Melt 1 ox. unsweetened chocolate +  1 Tbsp. margarine

I thought it said Tbsp not tsp of peppermint extract.  It didn’t seem to matter much.  I only had two small squares left at the end of the party… and that was because I was sneaky.

It’s a thin layer of frosting… and a thin topping of chocolate… but it definitely makes it a different brownie.  The chocolate all by itself would have been well enough.  But the extra flavor makes it so much more than a simple brownie.  Layers add a lot to flavor.  Sometimes we know they are there.  And sometimes, as with this brownie, I never actually thought about the separate pieces before I actually made it last week.  The peppermint is an important piece of this, as is the hardened chocolate on the top.  But none of it would matter without the base of that very basic brownie.

I found myself thinking about layers and foundations this weekend – well after the hubbub of my sister’s birthday had passed, but as I entered my grandmother’s house as its identity was making a shift from my grandmother’s house to my aunt’s house.  The furniture was removed in different stages throughout the day.  I was there to take home the dining room set.  As the buffet, china closet, and table were removed, the room looked much… bigger… looser… without the compact fitting of those three pieces and the other tables that filled all the wall space.  Even with the haphazard placing of chairs, it was as if that loosening had shook out the memories of those walls.  I could see and understand for the first time how that room was once not a dining room.  

I’ve seen it in the old home movies when there was a chair and couch and someone dodging the camera.  I know the history of the house is that the dining room was the original TV room, where Nana Rose and her sister held court.  But it was always so difficult to see when the dining room I have always known, always seen was locked into my vision.  But that removal of the major pieces made the room a different space, with more space… and the possibility of a couch and the positioning of the TV console that was eventually hollowed out for us to play in.  

So I thought about that as I took one of my trips in the U-Haul yesterday trying to think how to capture this transition, this bittersweet leap between past and future… and connect it to a recipe of chocolate and mint.  Chocolate and mint together is always great in my book.  But sometimes the layers are on their own and have their own flavor.  Their own sweet deliciousness.  

  

And so that room – now seeming so empty without the pieces that made it the room I knew – has its layers.  The room I never knew that changed seven or eight years before I was born.  The one in which I remember watching my grandfather mash a potato.  And the one yet to take shape with new paint and wood and furniture.  But just like all the layers of that brownie, they are sweet and full of flavor and the perfect way to celebrate with Brennans.

A Tale of Two Nanas or Chocolate Mocha Dot Cake

The truth is, inspiration for this blog (my passion for cooking and challenging myself with a new recipe), comes not just from my grandmother, but also my mother.  I suppose it doesn’t require a huge leap of logic to understand how both women influenced me – and quite probably influenced one another.  My mother has always been a skilled and unbelievable cook.  If you’ve ever been to Epiphany, you will know what I mean.  From her roast chicken dinners to her cookies to her meatballs to her spaghetti sauce, she created the kitchen in which I grew up… and for that matter, now cook.

This week my mother had a pretty significant birthday.  I know a lot of the Brennan women like to forget there is an age beyond 30, so I won’t disclose the number.  But it was a life changing day, when she got to officially become a Nana.

So, maybe there is no small coincidence that the recipe I ended up choosing might actually have been one of Nana’s recipes.  The original Nana was Rose Alba, my grandfather’s mother.  She lived at Mt. Pleasant Ave. with her sister and was a major contributor to the kitchen.  My grandmother continued making many of her recipes (come back here next week for Thanksgiving) and the tales of her personality are as vivid as if I actually met her – even though she died 15 years before I was born.

 Rose Alba as a young woman - early 20's I imagine

My mom in her early 20's.  I see a lot of Rose in my mother.  Maybe that's because my grandmother once made that comment to me.  Gram remarked that my mother even had her gestures.

 

 Rose Alba is on the right.  According to my Gram, she and her sister would crash the cellar parties at midnight... bringing the necessary tray of coffee and sandwiches so everyone could go home and get up for church the next day.

When I visited my grandmother’s house the first time after the hospital and before the funeral home, I searched through shelves and drawers for pictures.  Next to an envelope of vintage photos, I found a cookbook.  It was an old community cookbook, with names attached to some of the recipes and advertisements of Worcester businesses long gone on each of the course separators. It had fallen apart completely – maybe one or two bits of glue coated string remained of the binding, but all the pages were out of order – desserts blended with meats.  But the best part – the ABSOLUTE BEST PART – there were notes and recipes written all over it.

 

It reminded me at first of a cookbook I found when I worked at Beauport, on a high shelf of one of the dining rooms.  We talked a lot about the housekeeper and her cooking skills.  But that was all myth until one day I searched through the cookbook and saw notes… and realized that kitchen we walked through once had warmth and aromas and spills and drips that made the pages dirty as the ingredients were measured into a bowl.  It was like a sealed up treasure box of memories – memories of cooking, of meals consumed, of the conversations shared over the table.  I felt the exact same way when I found this recipe book and decided I needed to start cooking to find those memories hidden between the grease spots and flour residue on the pages.

But the thing is, I’m not sure who wrote those notes.  Some of the handwriting resembles the letters and birthday cards I have received over the years.  Some looks a little rounder.  I wonder if that was because a more youthful hand – or a hand holding a baby in the other arm – wrote it.  Or maybe… maybe those were Nana Rose’s scribbles.

Anyway, I took this recipe out of the book.  It wasn’t really one of the type-written recipes printed when the book was new.  It was written at the bottom of the page – apparently with a pen running out of ink.  So… there was some room for interpreting the directions.  And for that matter, what this cake is called. 

Choc Mocha Dot Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350˚
Grease two 8 in round layer cakes (I used a 13x9)

Sift together:
1 ¾ c flour
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ c. cocoa
1 ½ c. sugar

Add:
½ c. vegetable shortening
⅓ c. buttermilk (or sour – really? - milk)
½ c. cold coffee

Beat for 2 minutes.   Pour into cake pans.  Bake for 30-35 minutes.

(The kitchen smelled of cinnamon for hours after sifting with the flour.  Better than scented candles.)

 

There is no frosting for this recipe.  I chose the basic chocolate butter frosting off the sugar container. 

This best part of this cake (after the candles and little people singing Happy Birthday to Rita), was the cinnamon.  Clearly we had a tough time eating it.