A Christmas Memory: Day Eight - The Kitchen
When I was a boy one of the greatest things about the holidays was my mother's baking. Once Thanksgiving was past (and THAT is where it all began! All those pies!), we could count on coming home, every day, to the most amazing smells in the kitchen. It didn't matter where we were living, the kitchen of that house was the birthplace of happiness in the form of comfort food.
Mama would make her Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies, her Holiday Fruit Drops, her Holiday Nuggets, her Banana Bread, her Oatmeal Lacies and her Rum Balls. Then she would fill Christmas tins with them and spread them around the house. Each day, the Mosher kids would come home from school to smell the treat of the day and run to the kitchen to see every surface covered -- with sacks of flour, bags of sugar, big bowls full of batter, cookie sheets waiting to be unloaded and re-stocked for baking. A dust layer of flour was on the table, the counters and even the floor. The scent was maddening! And nothing would do til we had sampled either a cookie, hot from the oven, or a few cookies, off the top of the pile inside the tin!
The vision I have the strongest is the one in the photo above. We were living in Switzerland and I came home from High School to find my youngest brother, home from elementary school AND playing in the snow. He was still in his snow suit and sitting amidst the kichen chaos, eating candied cherries right out of the jar. Happily, I was at a point in my life when I had a camera with me at all times and I was able to snap that photo of Jimmy.
And as far as smell and taste recall goes ... only yesterday I was eating a slice of banana bread with a spread of soft butter on it. The moment it hit my mouth, I was a 16 year old again.
People who know me well, who have been in my home during the holidays, have seen the way I do my home.... with tins of cookies everywhere; and in the tins are all the cookies I named above because, I am nothing if not my mother's son. All my friends and family have tasted them.. the lacies, the fruit drops, the nuggets, the peanut butter chocolate chip.. all of them...
Except for the rum balls
Mama would make her Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies, her Holiday Fruit Drops, her Holiday Nuggets, her Banana Bread, her Oatmeal Lacies and her Rum Balls. Then she would fill Christmas tins with them and spread them around the house. Each day, the Mosher kids would come home from school to smell the treat of the day and run to the kitchen to see every surface covered -- with sacks of flour, bags of sugar, big bowls full of batter, cookie sheets waiting to be unloaded and re-stocked for baking. A dust layer of flour was on the table, the counters and even the floor. The scent was maddening! And nothing would do til we had sampled either a cookie, hot from the oven, or a few cookies, off the top of the pile inside the tin!
The vision I have the strongest is the one in the photo above. We were living in Switzerland and I came home from High School to find my youngest brother, home from elementary school AND playing in the snow. He was still in his snow suit and sitting amidst the kichen chaos, eating candied cherries right out of the jar. Happily, I was at a point in my life when I had a camera with me at all times and I was able to snap that photo of Jimmy.
And as far as smell and taste recall goes ... only yesterday I was eating a slice of banana bread with a spread of soft butter on it. The moment it hit my mouth, I was a 16 year old again.
People who know me well, who have been in my home during the holidays, have seen the way I do my home.... with tins of cookies everywhere; and in the tins are all the cookies I named above because, I am nothing if not my mother's son. All my friends and family have tasted them.. the lacies, the fruit drops, the nuggets, the peanut butter chocolate chip.. all of them...
Except for the rum balls
posted by StephenMosher at 4:32 PM
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