Lake Hall
The other day I went back to Lake Hall, a place that was my home away from home when I was a kid. I brought my camera and walked around and took pictures and thought about old times. Lake Hall is a small freshwater lake …
Tag: childhood memories
Star Jasmine Time Machine
I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite plants—star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), a fast-growing woody vine with evergreen leaves and, now, in late spring, loads of small, white, pinwheel-shaped flowers. Star jasmine is lovely to look at, but the real reason you’ll want …
More Easter Ornaments
It’s only January and I’ve already started sewing Easter ornaments and making them pose for photos. Obviously I’m a big Easter fan.
I always have been. When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny came every year, bringing me and my sisters and brother baskets brimming with candy and colored eggs. He also brought us each one small present–maybe a cute duck or bunny figurine for the girls and a Nerf football or some other little toy for Jacob, my brother.
The candy was artfully arranged in each basket and always included a coconut nest, a peanut butter egg, a Cadbury egg, Peeps, jellybeans, bubblegum eggs, malted milk eggs, SweeTart eggs, and a large, handsome chocolate bunny.
We’d spend some time admiring the beauty of our baskets, but pretty soon we’d dig in. I was an obsessive eater of candy and usually managed to polish off my entire basket by the end of the day. I ate steadily, methodically, using the bubblegum and SweeTarts as a palate cleanser between the numerous courses of chocolate.
Dad and Mom didn’t usually participate in the day with us, so we kids took it on ourselves to invent and observe our own Easter traditions. We’d hide eggs multiple times in very, very hard places. The hiding places were so difficult that many of the eggs were inevitably given up for lost–until the neighborhood raccoons found them days later. In the mornings after Easter, the lawn would be littered with bits of colored eggshells, remnants of the raccoons’ midnight feasts, and one time Mom even spotted a nice, chubby raccoon washing a purple Easter egg in broad daylight in our backyard goldfish pond.
Since Dad and Mom often spent Easter doing very un-Easter-y things like fighting while cleaning the garage, we kids would try to counter that by behaving in what we hoped was a reverent manner. My sister Kris and I would sit with our baskets and imagine the kind and gentle life of the Easter Bunny, or I (as the oldest) would endeavor to read the Bible to the other kids. I’m sure my attempts at providing religious instruction were quite funny because I was not at all knowledgeable about the Bible.
One of our rituals, a very important one, was to say at the end of the day, “This was the best Easter ever!” I would say it, and then Kris would immediately agree. She’d say, “Oh, yes, it was the best Easter ever!”
Vegan Christmas Holly Cookies
I had a hard time concentrating at work this week—simply because I was feeling too Christmassy. I wanted to string popcorn and listen to “Last Christmas” by Wham, not sit at my computer. So anyway, I was happy when it was finally Saturday and I could do a little Christmas baking.
Vegan Moravian Pumpkin Muffins
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| Moravian pumpkin muffins |
Sometimes I bake things to help me remember, to transport me to another place in time. This weekend I was thinking about our family’s rare trips to Granny’s house in Winston-Salem when I was little, so I made some old-fashioned Moravian pumpkin muffins (veganized, of course) to help take me back. Granny and all of Dad’s family were Moravian.
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| Granny and Dad in 1939 |
As a child I didn’t know much about Moravian culture and traditions, but what I did know fascinated me. My knowledge was limited because, like I said, we seldom visited our Moravian relatives and because there’s no Moravian church in Tallahassee. There are Moravian congregations in 13 states including Florida (South Florida), but Winston-Salem and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, are the major Moravian centers in America.
The Moravian Church is a protestant denomination founded in 1457. Two things that make it special, I think, are its emphasis on music and on the brotherhood and equality of all church members.
We used to go up to Winston-Salem at Christmas sometimes, and all the front porches (it seemed) were decorated with Moravian stars. These are large, white, many-pointed paper ornaments that glow in the night. (Star-shaped paper lanterns is what they are, essentially.) At home in Tallahassee, we had our own Moravian star, but ours was always the only one on the block. Winston-Salem was another world. We’d drive through town and see the stars everywhere, all over, in profusion.
Naturally, there were special cookies to eat at Granny’s house at Christmas—Moravian ginger cookies. Dark with molasses, they were unbelievably thin, as thin as autumn leaves. Oh, I could eat so many! Ginger cookies were my favorite treats. Sometimes Granny and Great Granny baked their own, and sometimes they bought them from the Winkler Bakery in Old Salem. Winkler’s sold all the well-known Moravian goodies—ginger cookies and pumpkin muffins and Lovefeast buns. . . .
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| You can buy Moravian ginger cookies online at shop.oldsalem.org. I bought some last Christmas and took this picture. |
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| At Granny’s house, with Great Granny Davis |
I never attended a Christmas Eve Lovefeast, but I knew about them. I knew what would happen—that everybody in church would be served a sweet, golden bun and a mug of milky, sweet hot coffee amidst music and singing. And I knew that at the end of the service lighted beeswax candles would be passed around, symbolizing the light of Christ. Every year my dad would receive one of these candles in the mail from Home Moravian Church, his childhood church, and we’d set it out in the living room as part of our Christmas display. I don’t know if the church sends candles to all its members or only those who live far away—but Dad got one year after year. The candle was pale yellow, its bottom end wrapped in a red paper frill to catch the drips of wax after you lit it.
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| A Moravian Lovefeast candle |
A Moravian Easter celebration is as wonderful as Christmas; it has all kinds of rituals associated with it. Days before Easter, Granny and Great Granny would go out to God’s Acre, the cemetery belonging to Home Church, and clean the family gravestones with toothbrushes. (All the stones in the cemetery are the same—flat and pure white—symbolizing our equality in death.) On Easter morning a Sunrise Service was held in God’s Acre, and afterwards, at Granny’s house, there would be Moravian sugar cake for breakfast. Sugar cake is a sort of pillowy, soft coffee cake topped with lots of butter and sugar. It’s heavenly, a child’s dream food, especially when served with Coke, as it always was.
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| At God’s Acre. I believe it’s 1974. |
I would have liked to bake ginger cookies or sugar cake this weekend, but those recipes call for some pretty advanced baking skills, skills I just don’t have. So I decided to go with the pumpkin muffins just because they’re easy. They’re easy and delicious and they make great little time machines.
Vegan Moravian Pumpkin Muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
4 Tbls ground flaxseed
12 Tbls water
¾ cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
¼ cup molasses
½ cup almond milk
1 cup canned pumpkin
½ cup golden raisins
Directions:
Stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and spices. In a small bowl, mix the ground flaxseed and water with an immersion blender until thick and creamy. Set aside–this is your egg substitute. In another bowl, mix sugar, oil, and molasses. Add the milk, egg substitute, and pumpkin. Blend well. Stir in the dry ingredients and the raisins. Be careful not to over-mix. Pour into paper-lined baking cups and bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Be sure to test with a knife–it takes a while for these muffins to fully cook.
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| A pumpkin muffin with a glass of Meyer lemonade and our homegrown satsumas |
Homemade Cranberry Sauce
In fall, during cranberry season, I try to make cranberry sauce as often as I can. It’s beautiful and delicious—and it’s so good for you. Cranberries have more antioxidants than any other common fruit. When I was little, it was always my job to make …
Mom’s Christmas Pecan Balls
I’d like to take time out from my England-trip posts to say how happy I was to be home this weekend. I got to do all my favorite things: play with the cats, garden, and bake cookies!
Vegan Jam Bars
A strawberry-fig jam bar posing with some Turk’s caps
The other day Mom gave me some homemade strawberry-fig jam that was way too good to eat on toast or anything boring like that. So I made delicious vegan jam bars with it! I’ve been eating them every morning for breakfast. They have a crumbly, buttery, sugary, oatmeal-y crust, and the recipe called for the whole jar of jam. I keep coming across whole strawberries and nice big chunks of fig. That jam is high quality, I tell you.
I also came across this great old picture last night. I like how ghostly Kris and I look in it. It’s my ninth birthday, and I was nervous about my upcoming party, I remember. (Every year I worried that my party would be a bust.) Anyway, I think this picture is cool. It looks like it was taken so long ago, just before we died . . . of scarlet fever.
Leslie and Kris, 1975
Strawberry-Fig Jam Bars
Ingredients:
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
¾ cup vegan butter
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 jar strawberry-fig jam
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and butter in a bowl until a crumbly dough is formed. Mix in the oats.
Press about 2/3 of the dough firmly into a greased 9×13-inch pan. Spread the whole jar of jam evenly over the top. Sprinkle the remaining third of the dough over the jam.
Bake about 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool and cut into bars.
*This recipe isn’t original; it’s just a slight variation on Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s Raspberry Jam Bars in The Joy of Vegan Baking, one of my very favorite cookbooks.
