Woah Nellie!
Memories in the kitchen, while not always fun, are still to be treasured
by Mary Jo David
About once a year, Nellie Maxwell’s recipes have to take a backseat to strong memories this writer just can’t suppress. This is one of those months. Writing this column in time for the December issue of Stockbridge Community News falls right in line with my mom’s 100th birthday this week. Although she is no longer with us, her presence is regularly felt by her seven kids and her grandkids—and nowhere more poignantly than in the kitchen, especially as we prepare for big holiday celebrations.
Mom was never one to enjoy company in the kitchen while she was cooking. Cooking dinner each day was probably the only time she had to herself, so none of us can really credit her for teaching us how to cook. I recall one time when my fun-loving dad decided to sneak up and tickle her in the ribs while she was browning some meat on the stove. Startled and caught completely off guard, she reacted by spinning around and smacking the intruder—poor Dad—on the cheek with the hot metal spatula! Needless to say, nobody messed with Mom in the kitchen after that.
She would, however, allow us to help in the kitchen if there was a particularly torturous job that needed doing—like using scissors to cut up mounds of dates for Dad’s favorite sandwich cookies at Christmastime. Luckily, we were usually on school break by then since we generally lost all feeling in our fingers and couldn’t hold a pen or pencil for a few days after that.
Mom scheduled a day each year to have our grandma join her to bake Christmas cookies. It was always a school day so they’d have the kitchen to themselves—until my youngest sister was born. Believe it when people say the youngest ones are usually spoiled! From the time she was old enough to spin a story, our baby sister came down with a mystery illness so she could stay home and bake with Mom and Grandma. She is also the sister who happened to inherit my mom’s pride and joy—her KitchenAid stand mixer—and Mom’s “Betty Crocker Cooky Book.” Despite how it sounds, I bear my youngest sister no ill will; she’s a great cook and always willing to send samples from her kitchen to extended family!
Occasionally before the holidays, cousins and siblings in our extended family get together to bake traditional pork pies and meat pies (see January 2023 Woah Nellie!). I’m happy to say, later in life, Mom did invite us, as adults, into her kitchen to learn how to make these.
The David siblings also have our grandma and our mom to thank for knowing how to make plum pudding (not a “pudding” in the more modern sense of the word). Although I’ve made them a few times, I find them to be labor intensive, mixing the extra thick dough and then filling cans with the mix, covering those cans with foil and string, and steaming them for hours on the stove. However, one bite into a dish of plum pudding with “hard sauce” (a definite misnomer) is all it takes to whisk me back into my childhood to relive memories of the happy times we spent with extended family at Christmas.
One staple we grew up on was my mom’s homemade biscuits. They were best right out of the oven, which was fine because there weren’t often leftovers. As we grew up and left home, Mom was good about sending batches of biscuits for us to put in the freezer. Thawed, warmed, and slathered with butter and/or jam, these treasures provided us each with a little taste of heaven without all the hard work. After my mom passed away, I found a bag of frozen biscuits still in my freezer. I thought long and hard about what I could do to honor my mom with this last batch. That’s when I had a brainstorm—I turned these biscuits into Christmas ornaments for everyone in my family.
This, the year of my mom’s 100th birthday, also marks 30 years since she passed away. And still, to this day, our biscuit ornament is one of the first to be hung on the tree, always front and center. And every year, someone in the extended family notices it—and that’s all it takes to start sharing the memories.
