Tag: holiday cooking

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Away, Away With Rum by Gum

Daily writing prompt
What are your family’s top 3 favorite meals?
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My wife is a night shift nurse, and the last thing she needs after a tough shift is to get home and face cooking a holiday meal. So I am in charge of all holiday cooking. I don’t do anything too fancy. Turkey on Thanksgiving, a roast beef on Christmas, and a pork loin on New Year’s. Some family holiday tradition gets thrown in here and there. In my family, you never eat a fowl ( chicken or turkey) on New Year’s. The tradition has it that fowls scratch for their meal, and if you eat them at the beginning of the New Year, you’ll be scratching for money all year.

Gingerbread

So the main meals are pretty standard, but then there are the holiday special foods. This year, we are planning a gingerbread house event for the family. It’s fun to watch a kind of lopsided gingerbread house transform into a mini palace of candy and decorations. I get to bake the gingerbread and then sit back and take photos.

Poppyseed Bread

Next on the agenda is the holiday Hungarian poppyseed bread. This was my Hungarian grandmother’s specialty. She never taught anyone how to make it, and when she died, it was thought that the tradition died with her. In place of the poppyseed bread, the family debated how they thought it was made. After years of fruitless debate, I decided to experiment. My early efforts were filled with, “No, not this, it’s too much like cake,” or” The filling is off!” At last, with the internet, I was able to comb through recipes and combine methods until I got, ” That’s It!!!” So, once again, the family gets to enjoy the Hungarian Poppyseed bread.

Fruitcakes

The final item is our rum-soaked fruitcakes. I do not mean those nasty, dry as old bones, crack your teeth, excuses for fruitcake. Mine is rich, moist, and tasty. I’ve been baking them since the last time Bell Bottom trousers were popular, and I was a fresh sprig just returned from the Boreal reaches of the Northern Coast…OK, enough hyperbole… about fifty-three years. During that time, I have fine-tuned my efforts. This year, I baked 18 small cakes. After baking, they are wrapped in muslin and receive a baptism in rum. Carefully set aside to “marinate,” I open the first one on Thanksgiving to see how the marination is going. Rum is added as needed.

A word of warning about the fruitcake. I jokingly describe it as our “Don’t eat and drive fruitcake.” I doubt that that much alcohol remains in the cake after a few weeks of marination, but I recall that line from the old song Away,Away with Rum:

“Away, away with rum by Gum, with rum by gum. With rum by Gum, with rum by gum…Oh, can you imagine a sorrier sight than a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight!”

Well, if you visit me during the holidays, you’ve been warned, and as we used to say when I wore bell-bottoms, “Take due notice thereof, and govern yourselves accordingly.”

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Recipe?

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite recipe?
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I used to make a wicked family Spanish Rice, my father and mother’s recipe. I was not a slouch at a great Yankee-style fish chowder that I learned to make while living in Maine. And I could entertain on my Down East Finnan Haddie (a Scottish dish which found a home in Coastal Maine). From my family, I also inherited a rolled stuffed flank steak recipe that was wonderful. On the list of of beverages was a rather alcoholic egg nog that deserved not a cup or a glass, but a chalice, it was that good. Over the years, since our marriage, my wife has slowly taken over the kitchen.

The one culinary item that remains my sole realm is the annual ” don’t eat and drive” Christmas Fruitcake.” My notes on it’s prep are elaborate, and are found in my venerable paperback copy of an old 1960’s Joy of Cooking Cook book. Being that no one can read my writing the process can be called “hermetic.” I taught my oldest son the recipe on year and swore him to secrecy.

Every year, in the fall, my search for the ingredients starts. I become a bit harried, hair all windblown, and bleary-eyed, as I check off the required condiments. And then I search obscure stores and online for the spices. I’m choosy. At last with everything gathered, I expell all slackers, eavesdroppers, and layabouts from the kitchen. Then { THIS CONTENT REMOVED DUE TO NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS. CONTENTS LIMITED TO CLASS THREE AND ABOVE TOP SECURITY CLEARANCES ONLY!!!!! THIS MEANS YOU!!!} And then I wrap the cakes in muslin, and we begin the process of soaking in rum until Thanksgiving! It really pretty simple.

On Thanksgiving, we unwrap the first cake, slice it, and enjoy. Next week, I am busy shipping the cakes to family and close friends. I’ve cut back production in recent years. I think I only produced 18 or 20 last year.