It's cookie day. My sister, before she became a nurse and started working 70 hour weeks, used to bake a brazillion Christmas cookies every year. And because she wasn't making nursey money, which is much nicer in the US than in the UK, she gave trays, bags and boxes full of them as Christmas presents.
In honour of my visit, she's suggested we stir up a few batches of sweet holiday cheer, and I'm jittery with anticipation. I borrow my step-father's car today, and we hit the supermarket, which is called Giant Eagle. (My niece works there, safeguarding and entertaining the children of busy shoppers in the Eagle's Nest. See what they did there?) We also stop at the Aldi. I'm surprised to find Aldi in the US, let alone in Ohio. I"m even more surprised to find out it's almost exactly the same. Weirdly, it's also the only place I've seen since I got here that stocks a truly international wine selection. I grab a bottle of Bordeaux as we snap up baking ingredients.
All in, we've gathered around $100 worth of sugar, butter, vanilla, chocolate and butterscotch morsels, molasses (treacle), nuts, coconut etc. We heave it onto the kitchen table.
I spend the next four hours sipping 50/50 coffee (half decaf, half caffeinated) with Bailey's and rolling buttery (and/or peanut buttery), sugary balls in my hands. Each one needs to be rolled in white sugar and placed on a baking sheet about three inches (7 cm) from its neighbours. The chocolate chip cookies are applied to the sheets with the 'two spoons' method. The chocolate drop cookies need a Hershey's kiss deposited in their centres within a minute or two of coming out of the oven, then they're carefully scooped off the sheets and placed gently on my sister's miracle, stackable cooling racks.
My mother turns up about half way through, and we form an impromptu cookie manufacturing centre the efficiency of which rivals that of a Mercedes Benz plant.
My sister gives me a thank you card from my niece. She's customarily written notes to everyone who came to her graduation. 'Sorry it all got a little insane,' she wrote, 'but you didn't think we'd let you come all this way without giving you a little real-life entertainment, did you?'
We're all doing the best we know how, and some of us are even succeeding.
The cookies are strewn about. There's something like five dozen of each of seven types of cookies by the time we finish. Stacks of them are tucked into every corner of the kitchen. We've sampled at least half of one of each kind, and we're all in a sugar slump that coffee can't cure. My mother is the first to go home.
My sister's kitchen looks like Dresden after the fire bombing, but she doesn't mind that I can't go on and won't hear of me staying to help with the washing up. She's an angel and I realise again how much I love her.
I drive home via the local truck stop on Route 5, where I'm looking for some chewing gum. Forgetting where I am, I ask if they have any Airwaves. The woman behind the counter gives the customary forehead wrinkle. I apologise and grab some Extra, explaining that I grew up just down the road but now live in England.
Her eyes light up. She gasps and takes my hand as she tucks the change into my palm. "You're so lucky. I envy you so much. Please take me back with you!", she laughs.
I roll over the bridge crossing the swollen Mahoning River, past the abandoned, farmed-out fields, the vast marshlands that dot this floodplain and fill the place with mosquitos in late spring, and past the small, rickety houses that shelter impoverished families. "Please take me back with you!" I would if I could. I really would.
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