Mama's Cookbook

I don't recall the toys Santa left under the Christmas tree when I was still young enough to believe. I do remember the days leading up to the big day when we would feast on a smorgasboard of exotic foods, like turkey, tangerines, apple turn-overs, brunswich stew, Brazil nuts, and the fruit salad that Mama let me prepare.


My brother and I would fill a two-gallon lard bucket with pecans found under the trees in our backyard. Apples, picked from the mountain orchards of the Blue Ridge, were brought up from the cellar; along with Mason jars filled with snap beans, butter beans, and canned peaches. The Christmas tree would go up, covered in silver icycle tinsel, so thick you could barely make out the glass ornaments underneath. Plastic candles would go in the windows, each with a different color lightbulb. Lighted garland was wrapped around the metal columns on our front porch.


In the evenings, we would sit at the dining room table and watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas", Miracle on 34th Street", and, my favorite - "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol". We'd use the time to crack pe-cans (not pecahns), walnuts, hazelnuts, and Brazil nuts. Mama stood behind the ironing board pressing the linens for the Christmas table, while Daddy scrubbed the Irish and sweet potatoes we'd grown in our own garden.

Mama prepared the desserts first so that the oven was free to cook the foods that wold be served hot. The graham cracker cake, pineapple upside-down cake, coconut cake, chocolate, pecan and sweet potato pies were stored in the cool, dark closet under the staircase.

We had no original family recipes, except perhaps the fruit salad, which I'll tell you about in a moment. Mama used the Searchlight Recipe Book which she'd ordered form Household Magazine. Today it sits on my shelf along with dozens of other cookbooks. Some of the pages bear stains in the shape of the tablespoons used to hold the pages open to the recipes she wanted to prepare.



There is one stain next to the Ginger Ale Cocktail, a drink we'd serve after the church's Christmas program. The corner of the page is turned down where the recipe for Honey Peanut Butter Fudge is found. Page 160 is stained where a newspaper clipping was used as a bookmark for Water Ices. The advertisement is from 1968, and announces "SINGER presents ELVIS...SEE ELVIS IN HIS FIRST TV SPECIAL! WATCH SINGER presents ELVIS ON NBC-TV...IN COLOR." Elvis was my idol as I was growing up. Mama kept the clipping for me.

The indexes that are curled the most indicate which recipes Mama used the most: Icings and Fillings, Meats, and Pudding.




A pink sheet of notepaper is tucked behind the last page of the dessert section. On it is my mother's recipe for fruit cake. While many people confess they don't like fruit cake, to me the fruit cake is to Christmas what the lighted tree, the mistletoe, and the nativity scene are. In her words, here is Mama's recipe for a Southern fruit cake:


"1 lbs - Negro toes (Brazil nuts)
1 lb - English Walnuts
1 lb - Green Raisins
1 lb - Candied fruit
1 lb - Marsh mellows
1 lb - Graham crackers
1 can of Bordens (condensed milk)
Eagle brand milk
Heat milk in a double boiler then put in marsh mellows and let melt. Then add all to gether and pack firmly in place...in foil paper."

That's all. No oven temperature, no baking time, no prep. Those things were understood by anyone who knew anything about cooking and baking. (Actually, I don't think this kind of fruit cake is baked. There's no batter. The milk and marshmellows must hold it together.)

On Christmas Day the Searchlight Recipe Book would go back in the drawer under the kitchen towels and wash cloths, and the table would be set with linens, placemats, real napkins, and Mama's china reserved for Christmas Day. A platter containing a glazed sugar-cured ham, sliced at an angle and surrounded by slices of fresh tomatoes anchored one end of the table. On the opposite end was a matching platter with a sixteen pound golden-skinned turkey. When carved, the scent of oranges and bayleaves wafted from the turkey. The turkey cavity had been stuffed with whole oranges and its skin had been bathed in a wine-olive oil mixture and topped with whole bayleaves, Italian seasoning, and celery and lemon salts. Thick, brown giblet gravy was ladeled from Mama's white gravy boat over the turkey and mashed potatoes.

Oyster crackers floated in yellow bowls of tomato soup. There were corn fritters in the shape of ears of corn in an oval yellow dish. Blue Dutch pattern serving bowls contained steaming butterbeans, green beans, pinto beans, and brunswich stew, barely leaving room for the congealed salads - one a cranberry, and the other a jellied vegetable salad the kids wouldn't touch.

The sideboard and kitchen counters were loaded down with dinner roles, deviled eggs, collard greens, clam dip, jugs of sweet tea, pies, cakes, pumpkin rolls, cookies, apple turnovers, the fruitcake and my fruit salad. Mama had slaved over every dish, and it didn't matter that it was too much food; none of it would go to waste. But before I could eat the fruit salad, I had to finish enough meat and vegetables to satisfy Mama.

The Southern fruit salad is simle. In a large bowl, throw in bite-sized chunks of slicked oranges, tangerines, apples, purple grapes, canned pineapple chunks, and sliced bananas. Next, add a cup of Duke's mayonaisse, the juice from one can of pineapple, and a cup of sugar. Stir until all the ingredients were covered, then taste. Add more sugar - this is Southern fruit salad. When it's to your liking, sprinkle with a handful of coconut. If you like raisins you can put them in. I don't, so I didn't. Then you grab a cereal or soup bowl, not one of your mother's crystal ice cream dishes, and kick back in front of the TV and watch "It's a Wonderful Life".

Christmas, to Mama at least, was more about family than about gifts. She and Daddy had survived the Great Depression, so material things never had a hold on them as they do on us today. We ate simply all year long. We were never hungry, but Christmas was the one time out of the year when our parents splurged. They did it for the kids, and as we grew older, they did it for our wives and their grandkids. Mama tried to make that Christmas table look like the dishes depicted on the inside cover of the Searchlight Recipe Book. It was how she expressed her love and devotion to her family.

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