‘Tis the season to be watching Christmas movies by the dozen! There are so many silly versions of what usually turns out to be basically the same story: someone needs an attitude adjustment and gets one by learning the true meaning of Christmas. Typically this is a variation on the theme of “good will to all, sharing and caring for each other” often featuring a Santa Claus character of some sort, but unfortunately rare is a mention of the central character of Christmas: Jesus Christ. These films often feature people celebrating their family holiday traditions or dealing with changes as they try to cling to such traditions, and as often as not there are a lot of food-related traditions involved.
Being part of a big cosmopolitan and multicultural family introduces challenges to food-based traditions because each culture represented has its own unique food traditions. Some foods we once thought really said “Christmas” have been sidelined or replaced entirely by something new. I speak from experience here.
I married a girl from Viet Nam, my younger brother married a gal from Peru and our younger sister married a Persian (Iranian). Imagine the sights and sounds when all of these in-law’s families came together one Christmas. What sort of food tradition could we possibly choose? In the end, we enjoyed something of a potluck dinner that year with many flavors and much love.
Hear the sounds of Vietnamese, Spanish and Farsi mixing with our native English and some French. You can imagine the variety of flavors in both food and phonology!
Since then, things like specific traditional dishes along American lines have become somewhat rare. Some typical dishes and even the ingredients have been reinterpreted by our various cultural influences. Somehow it doesn’t seem to matter much. It’s the love and joy of each other’s company that matters most now.
With all that introduction to the fact that I really don’t have any specific food traditions in the form of a special dish, I dug out an old recipe box, and found two recipes from my youth that stirred memories. In the picture you can see the recipes laid out by that box.
The small card details the preparation of my maternal great-grandmother’s sugar cookies that we sort of grew up on. The handwriting is my older sister’s, but somehow I have the recipe card. I can’t say that I ever helped Grandma Lee make those cookies because she died when I was just nine years old. But my sister (who was named after Grandma) and I did make them when we were in our teens. Pleasant memories there. The aroma of the baking cookies, and the delicious calories and the fun we had in the process! But still somehow, they sort of lacked the magic of Grandma Lee’s renditions.
The larger sheet is in my own hand (quite messy, to be sure). It features the recipe my maternal grandmother used for apple pie. There has never been a commercially produced apple pie that compares favorably with Grannie’s. My every effort to reproduce it has been suboptimal at best.
There just isn’t a substitute ingredient for the love that both my grandmother and her mother put in those simple, familiar desserts. That is surely the secret sauce in every holiday tradition and the foods that remind us of our early Christmas experiences.
At the end of the day, it is the love embedded in our hearts by the way our families have celebrated the season together. With all our frailties and failings; with all our hopes and heartbreaks; all our fears and dreams; all our varied skin tones and accents. Together.
Smiles and laughter speak the same joy and cheer in every language. And food prepared with loving kindness is always the most delicious. Keep cooking with love!
Merry Christmas to all!
Grannie’s Apple Pie
Ingredients:
Filling:
- 2/3 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1/3 cup butter
- 2 lb tart cooking apples
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp flour
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- Dash of salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Crust:
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup shortening
- 4-5 tbsp cold water
Instructions for the Crust:
Step 1: Sift flour and salt, cut in shortening, till size of small peas.
Step 2: Add water by the teaspoon and toss till all particles are barely dampened. Stop!
Step 3: Turn onto square of wax paper. Gather corners and squeeze from outside to for a ball. Chill for easier handling.
Instructions for the Filling:
Step 1: Peel and slice the apples thinly (no big chunks, the finished product will look like fine layers in a stack when you cut a piece). Coat the sliced apples with lemon juice to preserve the color and texture. Set this aside while you prepare the dry ingredients.
Step 2: Mix together the 2/3 cup of unsifted flour with the 1/3 cup of brown sugar and the 3/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a dash of salt.
Step 3: Pour the dry mixture into the apples a little at a time to assure that each slice of apple is evenly coated. Use the reserved 2 tablespoons of flour to add as needed (if needed) to coat the apples and bind the mixture.
Instructions for the Pie:
Step 1: Pour the apple mixture into the waiting pie crust, spreading it evenly. Dot the top of the apples with bits of the 1/3 cup of butter. Place the top crust. Then lay a second sheet on top of the apples, pinch the edges together to seal them all the way around. Next, use a fork to poke several steam vents in the top of the pie, but not too close together nor close to the edges – maybe five or six pokes should suffice.
Step 2: Finally bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until the vent holes on top of the crust have some evidence of the liquids in the pie coming through (around 45 minutes).
Fred Davis is a retired educator who enjoys his time with family, singing with the William Chunestudy Men’s Chorus, and participating in the Liturgical Service at the La Sierra University Church.