I took today off from work because Easter is Sunday and the entire Pomegranate extended branches of fruit are coming for brunch. I've been busy cooking and after a few nights of it, I gave myself a migraine and teetered through a deposition on Thursday on wobbly legs and with pounding head. That is usually my body's way of telling me to cut it out - get some sleep, go to bed early!
Mr. Pom doesn't fully understand this compunction of "celebrating" the holidays [unless it is Christmas Eve and he is The Master of the Lobsters]. Just throw some food on the table, he hectors me. Can't you ever keep it simple?
Simple?
Honey, this is simple! You have no idea how much simpler my holidays are than my mother's generation. I don't spend hours blocking and pressing a hand-crocheted cloth. I don't garner a child to sit at the kitchen table with a cloth and silver polish and service for twelve. I try not to use the inherited crystal or serve a first course of shrimp cocktail in glass compotes that all must be hand-washed.
Easter may be my favorite holiday to have at my house. It's possible, first of all, that it could be warm and sunny (which truly would be resurrecting after the biblical rain of the last few week; more about our basement another time). If I can sweet talk Mr. Pom, the screened porch may get scrubbed down and the kids can hang out in the sunshine and eat at the glass table.
Food traditions bind us as a family through the generations. Monday evening, I caught a second wind after work and called my sister, Maria, to bring over my Aunt Anita's hand-written copy of our great grandmother's cookie recipe, also known as Mananna's (think Ma Anna or My Nana) cookies. They are what I call peasant cookies- 1 pound sugar, 3 pounds floor, 1 can Crisco, baking powder, and my heretical addition, vanilla paste. They are one of the three types of cookies that my aunt made as regularly as rain for every occasion. Simple - Mr. Pom are you listening?
Aunt Anita's method was to roll them into logs, cut, twist, cut with a knife, and add sprinkles before cooking. You can see their free form shape above. But at 8:30 at night, we decided we'd like to go to bed before midnight, so I went looking for some cookies cutters.
Look what I found!
A set of Easter cookie cutters that my grandmother gave me back in 1987! I know this because I wrote it on the box. We do that in my family - annotate our possessions, photos, and papers. (We would prefer that some of our relatives had not decided to add ball point additions to original documents, like correcting the spelling of a witness's name on my grandparents wedding certificate from 1915, but what can you do about it now?)
Although my aunt may not have approved of this twist on tradition, the cookies made darling tulips, chicks, bunnies, eggs, and even crosses.
I don't have room in my freezer to keep them till Sunday, so I went down to the basement to look for a cookie tin. I found what I needed and came up the stairs with a round plastic rub that my aunt kept these very same cookies in. And how do I know that?
Because in very faint script in faded pencil was her handwriting which said, "Vento cookies 12-22-99". Gave me goosebumps! She also had written "Tarala" in bold print, which meant she had used it for those cookies last. (Really, the woman should have been an archivist.) "Vento" was my great grandmother's maiden oops, married (my editor, The Empress, caught the mistake post-pub) name and though I knew my aunt made them all the time, it was moving to find her faint script noting the contents of what was and what would be in her old container. (I took a close up of it, but it may be the worst picture ever taken; you can vaguely see it off to the left.
These are a pretty good representation of the tarala cookies, swiped off the web:
As I washed out the tub which was grimy from the basement, I took off the wedding band I wear since I lost weight and my own doesn't fit anymore. I had to smile when I realized that I was wearing that the simple wide rose gold band belonged to Mananna herself.
So pay attention as there will be a test at the end of the post:
We made my great grandmother's cookies from my aunt's handwritten recipes with my grandmother's cookie cutters, stored them in my aunt's old cookie tin, while I wore my great grandmother's wedding ring on my hand.
Need I say more why food runs so deep in the cultural traditions of my family? Or why I simple isn't always better?
While I was writing this, my cousin in Albany just texted me that she was making the same cookie dough, but using it as a pie crust for casatta, which is a flat pie that is covered in cannoli filling. Too bad she's not coming to my house!
Check in tomorrow when I regale you with another long-winded post about quiche and hand-painting Easter eggs cause I'm crazy like that.