Posts from the ‘Favorite Foods’ Category
Jay Leno bestowed Marie Rudisill with the name “The Fruitcake Lady,” when she appeared with him on The Tonight Show.
Having just published her latest cookbook, Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook, Marie was sick and tired of Leno denigrating fruitcakes. His jokes went from bad to worse.
Photo by: sarsmis
Q. What do you do with a Christmas fruitcake?
A. Try eating it! Hey! It’s one way to get rid of it!
Then, there was this one:
Q. How many fruitcakes are there in the world?
A. Just one, and it keeps being passed around and around from person to person.
All fired up, like a wood-burning oven on a cold winter morning, Marie wrote Leno a letter. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve,” she lectured. “A good fruitcake is a labor of love, a work of art. You don’t have any idea how good a fruitcake can be.” Well, she caught someone’s attention, and the next thing she knew she was mixing nuts and sifting flour on the fruit in front of a live studio audience.
As funny as the Fruitcake Lady is, she’s serious about fruitcakes, calling them “true ambrosia – the queen of cakes.” In her cookbook, she includes over twenty recipes. Can’t wait to get started? Here’s one Martha Washington is said to have used.
Cream together a 1/2 pound butter and 1-1/2 pounds sugar. Gradually add six beaten egg yolks until creamy; then dissolve one teaspoon of soda in one pint of sour cream and add, alternating with 1-1/2 pounds of flour. Next, add the whites of the six eggs, beaten stiff.
For the final steps, add one pound of raisins, one pound of currants, a 1/2 pound citron dredged with a 1/4 pound of flour. Add the juice of one lemon and the rind of two lemons, one grated nutmeg, and a sprinkling of mace.
Bake in a greased ten-inch tube pan for five hours at a slow, steady heat. Cover with buttered paper while baking.
A fruitcake makes a nice addition to your Christmas table. Or you can always pass it along to a neighbor or friend who’ll pass it along to a neighbor or friend who’ll pass it along to a neighbor or friend…
If you don’t have neighbors or friends who are keen on fruitcakes (I know, it’s hard to believe, but not everyone is), they might enjoy the Fruitcake Lady’s memoir, Ask Me Anything. It’s a special treat.
© 2014 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Certainly, no one more than comedian Jim Gaffigan.
“I’ll have fries with my burger,” says Bob’s Big Boy. Photo by: Jennifer Cachola
The cover story of the October 19 issue of Parade magazine explores Gaffigan’s relationship with food. Quotes from his new book, Food: A Love to Story, fill the article. As a personal historian, I particularly like his family stories past and present.
“For my fifth birthday, my sister got me a package of Oscar Mayer Wieners and a six-pack of Dr. Pepper,” Gaffigan recalls. “She knew how much I loved my hot dogs.”
The youngest of six children, he tells of having supper when he was growing up: “You had to eat it before someone else ate it.”
Now with five children of his own, he makes a point of sitting down to a meal with his family. It can be an ordeal with unruly offspring. “Eating with your kids is nurturing, but it’s not relaxing.” He further explains, “There’s a lot of negotiating, the anxiety of things being spilled, kids missing their mouths. If you can get them to sit in a chair successfully, you feel you’ve achieved something.”
So, dinnertime might not be the best time to trace the family tree, relate the day’s activities, or plan a vacation. But it’s still the best time of day to come together.
© 2014 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
No one is in the kitchen, not even Dinah. Nor is anyone making dinner, not even “simple, easy, everyday meals,” per chef Mark Bittman in the October 20 issue of Time.
No one’s in the kitchen. No one’s home. Photo by: designbuildinhabit.
That’s a shame for a lot of reasons.
As Bittman points out, it’s so much healthier to eat at home. A home-cooked meal, compared to the same served in a restaurant, has two hundred fewer calories. It’s less expensive, too.
Sure, eating out is convenient. That’s why fast-food restaurants are so popular. But, when was the last time you had a real conversation at MacDonald’s or Burger King or even Chipotle? Do you even remember your last meal in an In-N-Out? Who were you with? What did you talk about? Did you try something new?
Currently, Del Webb, the retirement community developer, is running a slice-of-life commercial narrated by a young-looking senior citizen who proudly claims, “I never cooked Thai food in my life, and now I’m cooking it for twenty people.” Well, I used to laugh at the ad, thinking the spokesman had nerve treating his guests no better than guinea pigs. Now, I think, why not.
Why not step out of your comfort zone? Why not learn a new skill and make new friends? As a personal historian, I’m all for creating memories, as well as recording the past.
By the way, those of you who didn’t catch my reference to “Dinah in the kitchen” probably never had the pleasure of singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” around a campfire. You can make up for lost time by listening to Muffin cartoon characters here. I’m sure any resemblance to “Hell on Wheels” is purely coincidental.
© 2014 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Today’s Parade magazine in the Sunday morning paper was all about “What America Eats.” It was loaded with statistics.
Fish tacos with mango salsa. We love to try something new. Photo by: jpellgen
Sometimes I was with the majority and, other times, with the minority. For example, 71% of us take supplements. That’s my husband and me. He meticulously dishes them out to take with meals. If we’re eating out, he puts them in old film canisters to take with us.
However, only 12% have a sweet after dinner. We fall in this category, too – his influence. He saves room for dessert. As much as I like sweets, his portion is almost always larger than mine.
95% said they had started diets on either a Sunday or a Monday. Nope, that’s not me. I start diets every day of the week.
11% said they don’t have anything at all at breakfast. Nope, that’s not me either. I always have a cup or two of coffee.
The Parade article doesn’t go into how we eat. We’re all too aware that we don’t often sit down as a family at dinnertime anymore. Who has the time? As Marie Rudisill notes in her memoir Ask Me Anything:
“So much has changed since I was growing up or, even later, raising a family, and not necessarily for the better. That probably sounds like an old person’s point of view, but today, young or old, it’s rush, rush, rush. Go to school. Go to the office. Go to band practice or football practice or yoga. Go to the dentist. Cut the lawn. Wash the car. Do the laundry. Study, study, study. Pay bills. Pay attention. Meet that deadline. Work, work, work. And don’t forget to do your homework. Whew! Does that sound like a good way to live to you? Who has time to peel a carrot? Dice an onion? Chop up a melon? I guess no one, since everything now comes in little plastic containers already peeled, diced and chopped.”
Even as family rituals have changed, everyone has a favorite food or oft-visited restaurant. What are yours? They can be a meaningful part of a life or family history.
© 2014 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Your Biography 2 