Very excited to be featured in this month’s issue of Revue! Thanks to Missy Black for the fun interview and for letting me share a little hygge-love with GR.
We’re all pretty excited around here!
All in the family
Finishing up my series on food, nostalgia and coziness… the ultimate — my mom’s chocolate cake recipe. Oh my word you guys, all the praise hands and heart eyes for this cake and frosting.
The story on this cake is that it’s literally an answer to prayer. Mom had been on the lookout for a good chocolate cake recipe, sending up periodic requests for the right one to come her way. Then at a family reunion she had a piece and KNEW she had found it. She traced the cake to her cousin and the rest is delicious, fluffy, chocolatey-euphoric history.
The women in my family have a thing for desserts. We come by it honestly. My brother-in-law tells a story that when he and my sister were dating, he came over one night to find my mom walking on the treadmill… eating a piece of homemade fudge. I was doomed from the start. HA. There was another time she had just finished baking the most beautiful Oreo cheesecake and dropped it. We grabbed forks and ate it right off the kitchen floor, giggling the entire time. My mom has always made so many amazing desserts and pies from scratch, that for our birthdays we actually requested boxed cakes – FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL. (face palm) Now we know better. My other sister regularly cuts the recipe in half for an 8×8 pan like I did tonight. Otherwise, danger. We know the damage we are capable of.
Thanks Mom, for so many sweet memories topped off with a “Shelley-sized portion” of tastiness.
Mary’s Christmas pickles
Continuing this week’s focus on the coziness of nostalgia and food… As a fan of all-things-vintage, I loved my future mother-in-law’s idea of throwing me a bridal shower complete with teacups, antique family heirlooms and her closest friends. It was a special, sentimental day I cherish.
But my dearest moment of the day happened just as I walked through the door. Mary – a retired college professor and family friend – immediately came to greet me carrying a small box. She was in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s, at the cruel and bittersweet intersection of complete lucidity and constantly losing words. Between her nervous laughter, hanging sentences and my focused listening, I was able to piece together that she was giving me a gift they’d received for their wedding… a stack of pristinely pressed (and seemingly unused) cloth napkins. So dear.
It wasn’t long before the disease robbed her from us. At her funeral, each person received a handwritten recipe card for the pickles Mary had always made during Christmas. I’ve been obsessed with these pickles since our dating years when I shared my first holidays with Kyle’s family. They’re simple to make, deliciously crunchy, and dill but sweet — basically the best of all pickle worlds. I look forward to the batches my father-in-law now makes in her honor. So today I pass Mary’s recipe on to you, typos and all.
Sweet nostalgia… and bread
You know that one dish you simply must have every Thanksgiving…? Or maybe you occasionally travel back to a place you once lived and eat through a list of foods you can’t get anywhere else. I personally believe nostalgia has a lot to do with coziness. Especially when it comes to food. We make sentimental attachments through all of our senses and taste is one of the strongest.
All this week I’m going to feature foods that carry a deeper story for me. Today it’s this bread. I make this beautiful round loaf for company, for us, for holidays, basically anytime I remember to start it the day ahead.
A few years ago I was part of a cooking club. It was a special group of women – brave, vulnerable women of substance. We’d have a meal theme and each person would contribute a dish… But pretty much ALWAYS this bread. Someone would volunteer to bring it – and instantly be my hero for the evening. Now every time I bake it in my own kitchen, I think about those evenings we literally “broke bread” together, slathered in butter and honest conversation.
Let us feast
I’ve had some trouble getting into the Fall spirit as it’s still 80 degrees here in West Michigan but I’m sorry, I just can’t bear the thought of sweating my way through a pumpkin patch. Lots of people love this weather and I’m not complaining — it IS beautiful — I’m just daydreaming of throw blankets and slippers, and rain boots and plaid scarves, and hot cider and apple pies, like a civilized Midwesterner. 😉But even with our unseasonable temps, today was decidedly cozy – because of my people.
When the babe fell asleep just as church let out, we decided on a Sunday drive out in the country to let her rest. We saw old barns and new fences, bumped along gravel roads and happened upon a small pond. We held hands and made jokes and enjoyed the feeling of having an almost 7 month old who has finally grown to tolerate an afternoon car ride.
It felt a little more like transitioning out of newborn survival mode into becoming a family — to a backdrop of passing orchards and changing leaves.
Then this evening we popped over for dinner with friends. We arrived expecting to order pizzas to keep things simple – but she’d prepared a veritable hygge feast! Italian sausage soup, challah bread and yummy roasted veggies with feta and farro a la Smitten Kitchen. We caught up on work life and ate seconds and basked in the safety of being known, juggling kids and stories and making plans to do it all again next week. It was that good kind of chaos we all need a little more of.
As we transition into the season of gratitude and harvest, make space for a little savoring. Don’t put off making plans with those you really love. It doesn’t have to be a holiday, pizza on any old Sunday will do. Thanks for filling our hearts and bellies, Havilah.