FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Cookbooks are not just for cooking…Cookbooks are for inspiration, for lifting the spirit and freeing the mind, for brightening the outlook as well as your parties and table conversation…for understanding people and places, for revelation of the past and for the interpretation of the present…for culture, education, for inviting the soul, reviving memories, reliving experiences. Cookbooks, like poetry, are for the intensification of precious moments. Where, except in cookbooks and in lyrics, does one find so much emotion distilled, charted and recollected in tranquility? ---
(Anonymous, quoted in House Beautiful.)

‘Tis the season for cooking and baking. Actually I don’t know any season that isn’t for my family. But you know what I am talking about. The winter holiday season is upon us. And it is time to leave the computer and turn on the oven.

Each November I make a dozen fruitcakes from a recipe handed down by my paternal English grandmother. This one is a light, melt in your mouth, lemony, almondy, fruity, raisiny, shortbready, yummy cake. It keeps for months in the refrigerator and had been declared “better than fudge.” Now, if you are a purist and prefer your fruitcake rum-soaked and heavy with currents and fruit peal, then my cake may not interest you.

Perhaps I could offer you some of my shortbread. I make several batches with finely chopped pecans, shaped into small log shapes, baked and rolled in white sugar. On the other hand, if you prefer the traditional Scottish shortbread, (butter, sugar, flour and nothing else, for heaven’s sake), made in large circles that are then cut into individual serving pieces, you might not reach for my "pecan logs."

Instead of plum pudding for Christmas dinner, I like to serve lemon meringue pie or cheesecake or a lovely concoction of meringue, fresh berries and whipped cream. All are deceptively light and luscious after the capon. Oh, did I say capon? Yes, after too many winters of eating leftover turkey and broccoli casseroles I finally began cooking a capon as the alternative option for our family Christmas gatherings. While a plump, twelve pound capon, with wild rice and almond stuffing and a maple syrup glaze, may seem like something of a sacrilige, it suits us just fine.

Most of the time I cook without a recipe. Having spent enough years learning the rules, I can now modify then at will. It is just more fun that way. But when it comes to Christmas fare, I follow my old recipes carefully. Each year, I drag them out of their folders, spattered, yellowed, mutilated scraps of paper. And each year I think, I really must rewrite these recipes, better still put them on a computer file. But there is something precious about seeing my mother’s handwritten notes for the pecan logs, and my grandmother’s barely legible scratching of her fruitcake recipe. And the capon recipe is one I clipped out of a newspaper at least a decade ago. When I pull it out of the file, all crinkled and stained, I am reminded of all the past Christmases to which this little recipe has contributed, and has never failed to delight.

Sometimes, ritual is repetition; other times it is a variation on a theme. I subscribe to both. But when it comes to my favourite Christmas recipes, there is no substitute for the original. Once the seasonal baking is past I will carefully return each little piece of paper to its appropriate cardboard folder. I know I should transfer them to a document in my computer. I just don’t know how to archive memories.