Most of us have special Yuletide memories. Nothing evokes Christmas more for me than traditional food – and by that I mean the goodies my mom used to bring forward each year.
A lot of planning went into the hard work it took to prepare the seasonal grub. It would begin in early fall with the baking of the annual Christmas cake. Mom would mix the fruit, nuts and little jujubes. She used to make several dark cakes – the only kind she considered worth eating. She’d let the fillings sit overnight and the next day bake the cakes low and slow. I always liked them until I ate my brother-in-law Randy’s rum-soaked confections and then Mom’s became second place. I suspect Randy’s were the variety Queen Victoria frowned upon in 1870 when she banned the Twelfth Night celebrations where the cakes were served. Prior to that they had merely been cakes; Victoria’s edict resulted in clever bakers renaming the loaves Christmas cakes.
In addition to the cakes, Christmas meant German coffee cakes, poppy strudel and cabbage rolls. Now my mom came from a tradition where cabbage rolls were made of sour cabbage (soured in vinegar water, in our case) with a filling of white rice, onion and bacon. In my not-so-humble opinion they were bland, so once I was an adult I doctored up the rolls by adding ground beef to the filling and napping the rolls with a tomato sauce. The first time one of my younger brothers tasted them we almost came to blows. “Those aren’t cabbage rolls,” followed by some nasty adjectives led to a rather un-Christian silent night.
The poppy strudel was unusual too in that it was made with yeast dough rather than the Austrian version of thin stretched pastry. I liked it. Neither it nor the coffee cakes were overly sweet. In fact my step-daughter was most displeased with that sweet bread the first time she tasted it; she was used to a breakfast treat that made my teeth ache looking at the recipe.
The other foodstuffs my mom loved included hard candies (ugh) and mandarin oranges (yum). They were always in great supply on the big day. I look back in amazement at her ability, as a single mother who had nine kids to look after, to feed and clothe us.
For those of us who are struggling to feed ourselves or our families, life can be sorrowful at any time of year. So here’s food for thought. No matter what your traditions, add a new one: make a thoughtful trip to your local food bank. Merry Christmas.
