Baking always makes me happy.

My Kitchen makes me happy.

Flour on the butcher blocks, trays and pans ready to go.  The oven pre-heated and oddly smelling of a combination of recently baked items.  I even have my good friend——the pie safe.  It safe-guards what we’ve baked from house cats and hounds, but not husbands, until they are cooled and safely secured.

Most of the drawers are brimming with what-nots and doo-dahs specifically made for special/specific left-handed/right-angled folds in filo or nips & tucks on pecan halves.  There are things in those drawers from my Mother and Grandmothers that I’m not sure what they do.  I could probably rule the world with them.  Things way beyond the average ricer or garlic press.

You know———-things you can’t live without.

There’s a pierogi crimper, a chest of frosting tips, assorted pie-crust steamers and at least one corker.  I suppose it’s an antique.  I just know it’s old and my Mom and Grandma used it for corking homemade sodas (and things that probably had fermentation involved somewhere in the process).

I also recall a sour cherry tree on our farm, that my father was very possessive about.  He would protectively cover it with cheese-cloth when the fruit was ripening to keep the birds away.  He would flail and curse when the birds just wore the cheese-cloth as babushkas and kept on plucking the fruit.  I didn’t need cheese-cloth to keep me from eating the cherries.  They were nasty sour.

Come to find out it was the basis of his slivovitz concoction that should have used plums, but we could never get the plum trees to produce enough.  But the sour cherries worked out.

There were always crocks in the basement that were fermenting in the “wine room”………………….really?  Who has a wine room in their basement?  It was great for hide-and-seek, and snacking on the bloated, oddly-tasting cherries (that were now very sweet) in the crock…………………..(and cracking my teeth on the pits).

Well, I didn’t just snack on the slivovitz cherries.  I also snacked on Happy’s (the basset hound’s) dry dog food, which was stored in the trash can in the same room.

My Mother and Grandmother were always baking.  There was always good food available in the kitchen, or at least a beater or a bowl to lick out.  But Happy’s food was still a draw for me as a snack…………………..

Odd child……………..very odd child…

And why is it that dog food and dog treats always smell better than they taste?  Huh?  They do!  That eternal trick to the nostrils!  Snausages still get me to this day!  And the Milk Bones that are different colors?………………………they all taste the same……………………don’t bother………………………been there/ate that.

Come on, you know you’ve all tried them too!!

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But Kitchen-Khemistry is always great therapy for the soul or just about anything that ails you.

Licking bowls & beaters. Tasting.  Spoon slurping.  Breathing deeply.

I come from a lineage of people who believed and still believe that the heart of the home and a family emanates from the kitchen.

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With the Holidays arriving we have pulled out old recipes and we’re trying new ones.  I love the ones from my Grandmother that are still on the original newspaper page where she tore it out and added her notes in the margins.

We don’t have to sift flour anymore (although we’re ready for the task if we ever do have to—–I think we have three flour sifters here)-(did you know flour sifters are different than powdered sugar sifters?…………….and we have those too).

My Grandmother’s fruitcake recipe calls for butter………………………..in the size of a medium walnut……………………….no measuring cup or spoons…………………….just the size of a medium nut.

And we DO make real Suet Pudding…………………………..don’t ask………………………….don’t research what suet really is……………………………..just eat and enjoy.

So…………………….who wants a Rum Ball?  (Grandma’s recipe makes your eyes water………………………………)

In my world, the kitchen is the heart of it all…………………………………