Let the Holiday Baking Begin

‘Tis the season to indulge in all those things we try to avoid for our good health during the rest of the year.  We (Gene especially) are quite fond of baked goods and at the top of the list might just be the chocolate chip cookie.  Today, I put a batch in the oven just as we sat down to our lunch sandwich.  By the time the sandwich was gone, the cookies were out of the oven.  There is nothing as good as a straight from the oven, melt in your mouth, chocolate chip cookie.

I enjoy cooking (and eating).  It must be my grandmother’s fault.  As my mother was growing up on the farm, she was assigned to house cleaning type duties, not kitchen duties.  Those jobs fell to her older sister.  As a result, when my mother married, she didn’t know how to cook.  It apparently was a handicapping condition in those days because she made sure I learned how to cook.  From the time I was big enough to stand in a chair without falling on the floor, I was doing tasks in the kitchen.  She was always a “working mom” and from the time I was in what would be called middle school now I was helping to prepare the evening meal.

My learning to cook went something like this—When I was about 12 years old, my mother would prepare a meal to be cooked in the oven (this was before the invention of the crock pot).  She would get it all together in a roasting pan and my job was to take it out of the refrigerator and put it in the oven to cook.  Easy.  As time when by,  I was given more of the prep responsibilities like adding already sliced and diced vegetables and a can of cream of chicken soup and give it a stir.  Then I could put it in the oven.  By the time I was out of high school, she could call from work and say we were having friends for dinner—“fix something”.

And I’m not the only one who learned to cook in the family.  My brother is an excellent cook—especially country cooking—barbeque, greens, and beans.  I have an uncle who is pretty handy with yeast breads and another whose talent lies in tenderloin—beef or pork.

There were always cookbooks around the house.  I am one to kind of skim a recipe and cook by the picture.  Sometimes that turns out okay, sometimes not, but I have really learned a lot about cooking using that method.  I still find a picture that looks good, decide I want to make it, shop for what I see in the picture, and am often totally surprised when I finally read the recipe.  Just this week, for example, I was shocked to learn that what I thought was squash in the picture was rutabaga in the recipe.  I don’t even know what rutabaga is.  I’m still gonna make it—with squash.

As far as I’m concerned, this is baking season.  It is the time to keep cookies in the house in case you see somebody who looks like they need a cookie.  It is the time to make banana bread and strawberry bread to give to the folks at the campground office or take to a friend.  And I always volunteer to make dessert for Thanksgiving dinner.  This year it will be buttermilk custard pie—a recipe that is always a hit that I got from my cousin, Carl.

From now until the end of the year, the sweet smell of fresh baked goods with accost our nostrils and perhaps those of our neighbors.  But after all—tis the season.