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. 

Baked Beans or Adventures at the Senior Citizen Fair

I know there are probably quite a few first Saturdays of November when I didn’t attend the Best of Friends Fair, but as I try to scan through my memory, I can’t remember what was so important that it kept me from going to the senior center and helping my grandmother sell her jellies, my aunt’s pickles, and the quick to disappear cartons of baked beans.

The Holden Senior Center is on the property of a former junior high school (that was de-commissioned as a school after a mysterious fire in the early 1980’s).  In the early days of attending their annual November fair, I remember taking all my babysitting dollars and spending them to mere pennies on the jewelry table and of course the used book table, where I bought everything from Judith Krantz to Plato.

All these were acquired between stints at my grandmother’s table, which was front and center across from the entrance.  We always had a big sign, lots of canned goods, pumpkins, sometimes plants, sometimes vegetables, and a blue and white crock pot with those baked beans. Most of those things came from her kitchen or her yard - sometimes a combination of the two, if you figure the grape jelly is always made with grapes growing on the property of Mt. Pleasant Ave.  

She supplied and manned that table for 25 years.  The other cooks in the family would supplement the goods, as well as the manpower to help make change or bag the jam jars so they weren't too heavy in a solitary bag.  All the proceeds went back to the senior center.  

 

I was one of those cooks who added to the bounty of the table.  I’ve been making my own baked beans from scratch (I forswore the canned variety) for about seven or eight years now. I decided to investigate my own recipe on the Internet when I took on that first endeavor, getting so comfortable with it that I often just throw the ingredients in the crock pot now with little intention of accuracy. This year I thought – well before I decided to do this blog – that I would make HER beans.

That was part of the reason I took home the recipe box, to find her original writing, even though I have it in a neatly transcribed family cookbook.  And low and behold, I didn’t just find that recipe for baked beans.  I found four.

I decided I would make the traditional batch in her blue and white crock pot.  I also thought I would try one of the other recipes in my larger, more modern, silver crock pot.  There’s not a lot of difference between the two, it turns out.  One uses ketchup.  One uses vinegar.  And they both use salt pork.

Now the key to making a good batch of baked beans is not using anything from a can.  Buy them dry.  Soak them overnight.  The most difficult step in that process is remembering to do that the night before.  I have forgotten on occasion.

I did remember to do it this time.  I didn’t get home until almost 9pm the night before…which meant I was putting the pots on to boil the second I got home.  The hour or so it took those soaked beans to soften was a good opportunity to work on my other recipe, as well as prep the onions and salt pork.  This was the first time I’ve ever used salt pork.  I use bacon in my beans.  But salt pork was in all four of Gram’s recipes.  So I knew I would have to use it.  It’s not much different from bacon – but is a pretty traditional ingredient in old school cooking. 

When the beans were soft enough to mush between my fingers, I drained them, saving all that liquid.  I put them in their respective crock pots with all the ingredients.  It was at this point – somewhere between 10 and 10:30pm that I realized I did not have enough dry mustard.  So that’s when I decided to stay true to myself… the part of myself that is pretty consistent with my grandmother's philosophy – and not actually make the exact recipe.  So what is listed below is definitely a good guide.  But feel free to improvise.

I put the crock pot on high for the two and a half hours I was still awake because I didn't leave myself enough time for the 13 hours of the recipe. Then I left them to cook on low for the six hours I went to sleep.   When I woke up, the house smelled like baked beans.

Recipe 1 - the one in the blue 7 white crock pot
Ingredients:
1lb 2 yellow eye or pea beans (I just used Navy beans)
1 medium onion - chopped
1/4 lb salt pork - cut in 3-4 pieces
1/2 c molasses
1/4c brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp dry mustard
2 tsp vinegar (use in last 2 hours)
1/2 bean liquid

Directions:
Wash and pick over beans.  Soak overnight in the water to cover (generous).  Drain.  Add fresh water to cover.  Simmer until skin breaks when you blow on one (30-40 minutes).  Drain and reserve 1 1/2 cups of liquid.  Combine liquid and all other ingredients (except vinegar)  Put in a crock pot on low for 10-12 hours or on high for 4-6 hours.  Stir occasionally.  Check liquid and add more sparingly.   2 hours before done, add 2tsp of vinegar.  Good if made the day ahead and reheated.  Use plenty of water but watch at first for overflow of water.

Recipe 2 
3 c Michigan Navy beans (which apparently is just the fancy term for Navy beans)
9 c water
3tsp salt
1/2c chopped onion
1/2 lb salt pork cut in 1 in cubes
1/4 c molasses
1 c catsup
1/4 brown sugar
2 tsp dry mustard
Wash and pick over beans.  Put in slow cooker.  Add water, salt, onion & salt pork.  Mix well so beans cover pork.  Cover and cook on low 13-15 hours or until beans are tender.  (Cooking time can be reduced if beans are soaked overnight before being cooked.  Then cook on low 8-10 hours)

Crock pot one – the original recipe was true to tradition and gone by 10am.  So quickly I never took a picture of the finished product.  Just the dregs of the empty pot. 
  

The second one (of which I did a double batch) lasted almost to the end, but we did sell out, as we did of most everything else.

It wasn’t the same without my grandmother at the table this year.  And yet she was very much there.  The fair was dedicated to her. The people who came to purchase items all remembered her and remembered her well.  I confess I was really tired from my late night cooking, but it was worth it.  Because having something that tastes good is one thing.  Having something that tastes good and is home-made with love is quite another. So, thanks, Gram for inspiring me to make beans from scratch.  And for inspiring me to follow your cooking footsteps.