If you’re like me, when I offer to bring a dish to a party
and the hostess says, “ooh, can you make your stuffed mushrooms?” I am so very
flattered. Most of my family members and friends are foodies. It seems that
everyone is connected with a special recipe or two that we look forward to
sharing when we get together.
Although Finnish, my Auntie Evelyn was famous for her
Italian red sauce with fennel sausage. My other Auntie Evelyn was famous for
her blueberry torte. My mom’s best
recipe was lemon meringue pie, using fresh squeezed lemon juice from lemons
from our enormous lemon tree in our backyard. When relatives visited from
Michigan they insisted on getting a picture by the lemon tree. Old neighbor
kids reminisced jokingly about my mom having them take an entire grocery bag of
lemons to their mother after a play date.
Whether you share from your lemon tree, tomato garden, herb
pot or even a hand written recipe on a pretty card, food invokes wonderful
memories and emotions. In 1971 my parents sold our house and beloved lemon tree
and built another house that was also near the San Francisco Bay. My mom was
good about keeping in touch with our old neighbor friends for several years.
Little by little, many of our old neighbors also moved, some close to us once
again, some far way.
My mom’s friend, Ruth Haeckler had 3 sporty girls and one
little boy. I had 2 older brothers, so the 7 of us, along with the other kids
of Coventry Court spent all our sunny days playing outdoor games like Red Rover
and TV Tag. Shortly after we moved, the Haeckler’s moved to Oregon. Our moms
kept in touch, and one summer we made the 420 mile drive to visit. They had a
sprawling ranch on an apple orchard. We
spent our visit running through the orchard and swinging on a tire. It was
heaven on Earth!
Mrs. Haeckler gave my mom a cookbook as a gift for visiting.
My mom’s name is also Ruth. I still have “The Melting Pot: Country Kitchen
Recipes from the Pink Ladies Hospital Auxiliary” from Grants Pass, Oregon.
Inside the cover is faded cursive in a pink felt tip pen. It says: To Ruth, Thank you for visiting-June 1975 Love, Ruth
My mom died when I was 14 and my dad remarried shortly
after. Once when I was visiting as an adult his wife offered my mom’s cookbooks
to me. As I thumbed through “The Melting Pot” I came across Mrs. Haeckler’s
recipe for double butterscotch crescent rolls. Immediately I remembered my mom and I making
the crescent rolls- mostly the night before Thanksgiving so that we could have
a sweet butterscotch crescent roll for breakfast while we stuffed the turkey
and prepared Thanksgiving dinner.
The Melting Pot Cookbook is falling apart and the pages are
stained- a sign of a well-loved cookbook.
Mrs. Haeckler’s rolls take a good
part of a day to make. First, cooked butterscotch pudding, then melted butter,
yeast and flour…time to rise. Then 3 circles rolled out & cut into 12
wedges each. A filling of brown sugar, pecans and coconut is rolled up into
crescents and set aside to rise once again. After they are baked, a glaze of
brown sugar, butter, evaporated milk & powdered sugar is drizzled over the
warm crescents.
A few years ago Ruth’s youngest daughter, Sue, reached out to me via facebook. We reconnected and reminisced about our childhood in Coventry Court, playing dress up, lawn games and my family’s visit to Oregon. I mentioned that I still had the cookbook that her mom gave to my mom when we visited and that I still love making her mom’s butterscotch rolls. She told me that before her mom passed she shared with her that I still had The Melting Pot Cookbook and made her recipe often. I hope when I am gone people will think of me when they make the recipes that I shared with them and tell my stories when they pass my recipe onto a friend.
