24-Hour Salad (Overnight Fruit Salad)

This recipe is from Alvina Crawford. She and her husband, Fred, were my parents’ dear neighbors across the street on Isherwood. For many years, she would make overnight salads for friends and family at Christmastime. She’d make so many, over so many days, she’d freeze them so she could deliver them all on the same day.

So this is a holiday recipe for me.

I can replay the scene in my memory: our doorbell would ring, we’d go down the stairs to the front door, open it, and there’d be Mrs. Crawford, holding a big container full of salad. It would be a reused plastic ice cream tub, or a disposable aluminum foil casserole container. Her warm, mild voice, with its notes of rural North Dakota and Scandinavian ancestry. Her Christmas greetings—you could hear the smile in her voice. . . . We’d give her and Mr. Crawford a big platter of our homemade Christmas cookies, covered with foil, decorated with a Christmas bow.

There are lots of versions of this dish online; it’s a classic 1950s salad that doubles as a dessert. In this way, it is a lot like a Jell-O dish: “Is it a salad, or a dessert?” How can you tell? If it’s a salad, you serve it on a lettuce leaf—that makes it a salad instead of a dessert. As a dessert, served in a pretty bowl, it’s great with cookies. After a hearty Christmas meal, you might not want a heavy piece of pie or pudding. A fluffy fruit dessert like this is just the ticket! It’s perfect with Christmas cookies!

Grandma Renner made overnight salad, too. I’m not sure if anyone has her recipe. To the best of our memory, she used large, round, juicy red grapes instead of canned sweet cherries. In those days, you couldn’t get seedless red grapes, so each grape needed to be sliced in half, and the seeds picked out with the knife tip. Tedious; a labor of love. If you use seedless grapes (and why not?), slice them in half in memory of the labors of the past.

Other recipes, by the way, use things like drained canned mandarin orange slices, or real orange or tangerine slices, chopped bananas, and nuts. (Though if you’re making it for me, please don’t add nuts.) This recipe is a lot like an ambrosia salad, which has shredded, sweetened coconut, citrus, and pineapple.

My tips and comments are at the end.

24-Hour Salad (Overnight Salad)

Recipe adapted from Alvina Crawford

Dressing ingredients:

1 c. half and half
4 egg yolks, well-beaten
1 T. butter
1/4 t. salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups (1 pint) heavy/whipping cream

Make the dressing first (see notes at end, however). Use a double boiler, or use a heavy saucepan and heat gently. Heat the half and half first. Then add the next ingredients (except for the whipping cream), adding the eggs slowly and carefully so they don’t curdle. Cook, stirring, until definitely thickened. Then, set it aside to cool. This is a good time to prepare the fruit ingredients.

Fruit ingredients:

2 cans (20 oz.) sliced pineapple, drained and sliced (see notes below)
1 can (17 oz.) sweet cherries, drained and halved (or further chopped) [or whole]
[optional: large red grapes, halved and seeded if necessary]
1/2 lb. (24 count) regular-size marshmallows, quartered (or halved)
juice of half a lemon (fold in with the rest)

When fruit ingredients are ready, and collected into a big bowl, and when dressing custard is cooled, whip the heavy/whipping cream until well-whipped. Add the custard/dressing to the fruits, then fold in the whipping cream. Let it stand in the refrigerator for 24 hours (this is an important step).

Serve on lettuce, as a salad, or in dessert dishes as a dessert.

Yield: about 2½ quarts.

Julie’s notes:

Mrs. Crawford noted that, in order to divide the labor, she sometimes would cut up the fruit the day before, then make the custard and whipped cream the second day. “It doesn’t seem like such a long process when divided up.”

Why do you need to buy canned sliced pineapple, and then cut it into smaller pieces? Why not just buy pineapple tidbits? . . . Well, do what you want, but you get prettier pieces, and fewer little blobs of pineapple fragments, if you cut them yourself with a nice sharp knife. (Your knives are sharp, right?)

Also, as I mentioned above, you can freeze this and give it to people frozen; they can decide when to thaw it and enjoy it.

This recipe dates back to the days before they made "mini marshmallows." So you have to buy "regular" marshmallows and cut them! Okay, use mini marshmallows if you want, but quartered or halved "regular" marshmallows are much more fun to eat.

How do you know when the custard is thickened? . . . You will know; it may take a while, but when it thickens, it will happen quickly, and you'll know.

Finally, regarding the canned fruits: in the 1950s, all the canned fruits were in heavy syrup, so that’s the kind I suggest. But use what you want. Although not overly sweet, this isn’t a low-calorie dessert, so avoiding heavy-syrup in the pineapple probably won’t make a big difference.

And what can you do with the syrup you’ve drained off? Here’s an idea: put it in a saucepan, add sugar, maybe also a cinnamon stick, and simmer to reduce it to a bona fide syrup. With the syrup/juice from the canned sweet cherries, the syrup will be pretty purple. You can use this syrup for pancakes! Or, you can add brandy to the syrup and put other canned fruits in it: brandied fruits; great on ice cream!

Jar of Goodness 3.6.22: Are the Neighbors Actually Moving?

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for even just the possibility that our neighbors across from us on Broadway might actually, finally be moving out.

They’ve been nighmares since they arrived. They do seem to be moving out, but we’re afraid to get our hopes up. Look, I won’t sully my blog or the internet any more with them, but let’s just say—if it’s so that they’re really moving away—then I’m indeed heartily grateful.

Thanksgiving: James Maute

During this season of thanksgiving, I’ve been writing posts of gratitude. Who are we thanking today?

Thank You, James Maute

Dear James,

I can’t tell you enough now grateful we are to have such a neighbor as you. You and your family have lived here on this same block with us for about twenty years, and you’ve been a great neighbor.

You keep an eye on things. You know who’s who and what’s what. The neighborhood is safer with you around.

You’re cordial, friendly, and fair.

You’re always offering to help with yard work and such. And wow, have you been helpful!

I will never forget how helpful you were to Lorie as her health was declining last fall and winter. You were a blessing to her and to her family. You were a blessing to her dogs and cats, too.

And your yard is a joy! It makes us happy when we drive or walk by. The flowerbeds are gorgeous, but the decorations add a lot of fun to the mix. People can see you have a sense of humor as well as an appreciation for beauty.

It makes us even happier to see you and your family sitting up there enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, the view from your perch overlooking the north end of Broadway.

I’m including some pictures of your yard I took this year. Here are some from early summer, when you first started planting things and getting the flowerbeds in order.

And here are pictures of your fall and Halloween decorations. Wow, how those plants grew!

I thought you’d like this picture of that citronella geranium you raised from a cutting. I know the citronella makes you think of Lorie.

And James, you’re fun to be around. We’ve enjoyed your occasional visits while we relax in the backyard.

James, this place wouldn’t be the same without you.

We’re glad you’re our neighbor.

Blessings to you.

Thank you.

I Can’t Miss It

Hi there—it’s time for another post; just an update, really. It hasn’t been a good month, much. Sue had a sudden, literally debilitating attack of sciatica—something she’s never had before—and she’s been gradually feeling better. But there have been doctor’s visits, tests, and a cortisone shot, and things are looking up at this point. But that shock set the unsettling tone for the month.

I.

But there’s more. All of last week—a week that began with pleasantly cool, fall-like weather—our friendly neighborhood slumlord got busy with some of his projects. Right across the street, he had a plumbing company tear out a section of sidewalk and part of the terrace to fix a water main that had been leaking water into the street for about a year.

You’d think that was a good thing, right, people fixing stuff up? But no, I’m going to complain about it: They didn’t fill in the hole. They made a little bit of an effort, but there’s still a big gouge in the terrace (you can see severed tree roots sticking out of it), and no one’s made any moves toward filling it and seeding it with grass. (We know from experience that this slumlord never bothers with such things—the ground remains uneven, with nothing but erosion to smooth the edges, and weeds eventually fill in on the surface.

We see this every time we look out our front windows: An eye-catching, big, ugly, brown hole. I can’t miss it.

II.

Also this week, this same slumlord had a tree cut down on one of his properties. But this wasn’t just one of the trash trees—hackberries, mimosa, white mulberry, Siberian elms, box elders that predominate on his rental holdings. It was a huge American elm (yes, the kind that you will never see large anymore because of Dutch elm disease). The slumlord never trimmed it, ever, and the limbs hung over its house. Sure enough, a long but smallish limb finally fell on the house (miraculously, it was a glancing blow and did not apparently cause any damage serious enough for the slumlord to bother with)—but this was the impetus for the slumlord to finally cut the entire tree down.

It was solid. It was a solid, huge, healthy American elm tree. Hard wood. It took the company nearly all week, with two big cherry-picker trucks, to cut it away, piece by piece. For days, I heard the growling, undulating whine of their chainsaws; the screams of the big chipper machine, instantaneously destroying all the small branches and green leaves; and then there were the huge thumps of the log sections hitting the ground.

Surely there’s a place in hell for tree cutters who agree to remove perfectly good, solid, American elm trees, when a trim job would have sufficed.

So, now, the front yard of that house, everything but the sloped terrace, is covered with firewood. It’s stacked all along the roadside. I guess the slumlord is thinking people will take it away for him. I suppose that’s cheaper than hauling it. And people in Jefferson City know what to do with things that are visible along the side of the road, that aren’t locked down. . . . So it just lays there, what’s left of that huge, rare tree.

I’d take a picture of it for you, but I don’t want to burn the sight into my memory. It makes me sick to see it, or to smell what fresh-cut American elm wood smells like. You’ll have to just imagine what a solid, 3-4 foot diameter core of a genuine American elm tree looks like. You’ll never see one again.

So every time I drive on our street, I have to pass by this obscenity. No matter how much I want to, no matter how much I try to look away, I can’t miss it.

III.

In an attempt to handle all this grievance, Monday night I finally got around to weeding our front “flower bed.” I put that in quotes because an infestation of field bindweed has made gardening in that quadrant of our yard a depressing, Sisyphean endeavor. Whatever grows out there gets covered with it. So I’m resigned to just keeping that flower bed trimmed, disinfected, the way Nazis and other evil captors shave the heads of their prisoners to kind of reduce the depredations of lice and fleas.

So with my anger, I decided I could do some yard work, and pulling weeds with my bare hands usually helps me let go of rage and frustration. But in this case: My heart stopped. Glancing at the corner of our house, I suddenly realized that our knusperhexe—our garden gnome—great-grandpa’s knusperhexe!—wasn’t there.

I mean—it wasn’t there—it had vanished—my heart stopped again, and so did my breath. Somebody had stolen it.

-----------------------------------

I finished the weed-pulling, numbly, with sweat burning into my eyes and making my vision blur. This was definitely not helping me release frustration and anger.



The knusperhexe—grandma always pronounced it “knisperhexie”—has sat on that corner of the house as long as I can remember. So, for at least about fifty years, it’s gazed benignly out at passersby, adding a grandfatherly, elvish charm to the property. Before that, it was in other locations in the yard. I guess it’s been in the yard for about a hundred years, or at least since the thirties. For a while, in the forties, I guess, my great-grandfather had perched it on a strange piece of granite overlooking Broadway.

Look, I can’t even call it “my” gnome—like the house, like the Christmas tree—it is the family’s, and we are only the present caretakers. In a fit of naive happiness, I blogged about him in one of my earliest posts.

The front of the house looks bare without it. Characterless, incomplete, like nobody cares. In fact . . . it’s starting to look like the other houses on our street, which are all blighted rentals. Hey, we’re starting to fit in!

-----------------------------------

Naturally, the theft has influenced the way I view my neighbors, and anyone who goes by on the street or sidewalk. People who drive by on the street. Ragpickers in their pickup trucks filled with junk. Where did they get that junk?

My first action was to approach neighbors, show them a photo of the missing gnome, and ask if they knew anything or saw anything, begged them to keep an eye open, told them I’d pay to get it back.

This activity was depressing in itself. Our closest and most decent neighbors, sitting and smoking on their front porch, just stared at me blankly and blandly: “Nope. We didn’t see anything. Sorry about that. Huh. If we see anything, we’ll let you know.”

The next people were the ones who have the American elm tree now strewn all over their lawn. (I had to actually walk through the remains of that noble tree in order to knock on their door. Or what’s left of their door; they’ve been really hard on the house.) After some moderate knocks, I eventually beat quite loudly on the door. Two females eventually stood in the doorway—but blocking the door, so I couldn’t see in—and spoke with me. The second woman blurted out, “Oh did someone take your garden gnome?” before she’d really had a chance to see the picture I’d brought with me. They, too, tried to seem sympathetic but shook their heads and couldn’t offer me anything. (Uh-huh, right . . .)

I had walked around their lawn for a few moments before knocking—since we had caught their children numerous times in our backyard (which is fenced), and we’ve caught them stealing from our backyard (an old birdhouse, thank goodness, nothing we truly care about) . . . it seemed like a good idea to just look around.

But it was a bad idea—filth! Greasy old rags, all manner of garbage, wrecked furniture; their backyard is a hellhole. Stench. And I didn’t see our gnome.

I realized something: Those people didn’t deserve to live in the shade of that beautiful American elm tree. It occurred to me that maybe that American elm committed suicide—dropped a limb on the house out of sheer exhaustion and sadness, knowing that it would trigger its execution. “Time for me to go away from here.” If a tree has a spirit, who could blame it?

I won’t go too much further into my notions about our neighbors. You get the idea. If any of them took our gnome, I could never find out, since it could be indoors or in their backyards, and judging from what I’ve seen of these people, I believe I could be shot if I went snooping around.

Next, of course, were the pawnshops and antiques stores and malls. Talking to these people educated me about the tremendous value that “vintage” yard statues can carry. Like those little yard donkeys, “lawn jockeys,” and cutesy Dutch kissing boy and girl. Vintage, vintage, vintage.

We’ve been to a lot of antiques malls in the past few days, and this vintage stuff, and the market for it—the high prices, the anonymous, questionable sources—has become increasingly disgusting to me. Somewhere, there’s a good chance that our family’s heirloom knusperhexe is in just such a place, having gone from our yard to some dirty fleabag scavenger-thief, to some antiques seller in an antiques mall. “I got this at the estate sale of an old lady who kept it in her yard all her life . . .”

That’s how the descriptions read on eBay—but where do they really come from? I think about how heartbroken those old ladies would be if those yard statues had been stolen. How would you know? When you buy a treasure at an antiques mall, how do you know your purchase doesn’t represent the theft of a treasure, a broken heart?

----------------------------------

But I am making an effort to recover our gnome—I don’t think I could stand myself if I didn’t try. In addition to talking to our neighbors, and going to pawnshops and antiques malls in Central Missouri, I have:

—Filed a police report. Ha! From too much prior experience, I know this is probably the longest shot of all, the biggest waste of my time. Police don’t do anything except take notes and nod, and give you a report number. (Shit! At least, they could give you a cookie, or a candy cane, or something, besides that damn useless number!)

—Posted notices about it on Jefferson City Facebook sites. Why not?

—Put up a sign in our front flower bed where the gnome used to be, and another on the utility pole on our street corner: “GARDEN GNOME. Reward: $250. Please help us recover our family heirloom.” . . . I’m actually kind of hopeful about this, because last night I saw a truly suspicious-looking woman walking rather slowly west along Elm Street. She was pasty white, blond, smoking, wearing sunglasses at sunset, holding a cell phone, and looking into everyone’s yard, on both sides of the street, up above the terraces near the houses—as if she was looking for something. “Good Vibes” read her black T-shirt (isn’t that an adult toys company?). Anyway, what a classy-looking lady.

It’s possible that she was looking for her dog, or looking for her own stolen yard statue—because apparently thieves go through areas stealing from lots of properties at a time . . . but maybe, if she’s the thief, she’ll come by again and see our sign, and “just happen to recover” our statue. “Hey, look here, someone left this statue in our yard and I don’t know where it come from. I think it’s yours! Can I have the reward money?” After suppressing an urge to clap her with a brick on the side of her skull, I would indeed cough up the money, because I really want our knisperhexe back, even if I have to pay a ransom.

------------------------------

But then . . . I know it’s an impossibly long shot. The theft, we think, for detailed reasons I won’t go into now, probably occurred at the very end of July, leaving at least three weeks before I noticed it missing (remember: the first few weeks of August were a crisis here, with Sue’s pain and disability, and weeds grew up, obscuring where Mr. Knisperhexie sat—all my fault, but still . . .).

I know I have to accept that I’ll never see our house’s guardian gnome again. I acknowledge it: He was stolen under “my watch.” I should’ve known he was “worth something.” I should’ve moved him into the backyard, or even into the house, a long time ago. But I kept a naive faith in the goodness of people, blah, blah, blah . . . And so we lost him.

But I can’t bear to miss him like this. For a week, now, I’ve been unable to sleep. I read and read, late into the night, trying to distract my mind and tire myself to sleep (I’m reading boring stuff, too—Samuel Johnson, even), until I can’t keep my eyes upon anymore, and as soon as I shut them I see the knusperhexe, sitting there, with that benign smile on his face . . . my stomach lurches, and I’m awake again, to gnaw away at Dr. Johnson, the Great Lexicographer, some more.

(Unable to sleep, that sick, lurching feeling, the downward spiral, unable to stand myself and my thoughts: it’s been a long time, but this is my major depression coming back to bite me.)

So what can I do now? How can I stop missing him? How can I glance at the corner of the house and miss the sight of his gaping absence? I can’t miss it.

I’ve decided I have to move on; I need to find a way to conceptualize this so that I’m not flat-out hating everyone I see, not wanting to drop a brick onto people passing by on the street, not wanting to blow up our ratlike neighbors and their houses. Not wishing the darkest evil on our friendly neighborhood slumlord, and not wanting to puke on the invertebrate city leaders who could never do anything that might impose on a landlord’s convenience or profitability.

It’s a good thing I’m not a magical creature, a gnome, because a lot of folks would be suffering right now, and not just me.

These thoughts led me to a new, more expansive consideration:

Maybe there is something magical, mysterious, about these elderly garden gnomes. Maybe, like I fancy with that American elm, our gnome somehow decided it was time to move on, get away from this blight. Maybe his magical work here was done. Maybe some other person or family needs his presence more than we do. Maybe someone will buy him for $200 at a flea market and treasure him like crazy. Maybe, in his second century of existence, he will be more beloved than ever before. And for us, maybe it’s time to have a new yard sprite around here—kind of a “changing of the guards.” . . . I think I’m open to that.

But if we do get another gnome, he’s going to preside over the back yard. Which we will soon be fencing in the rest of the way. No one will get to see our backyard anymore.



And that’s what’s been going on around here. I know I started this blog to get away from depressing subjects, to celebrate things that make me happy. And usually, I try to be upbeat about our Munichburg neighborhood, and its gradual progress up from slumland, but these last few weeks, we’ve been fantasizing about moving far away from here. This time, I just couldn’t miss the bad stuff.

Holiday Distractions

We’re way behind schedule for this year’s holiday preparations. I’m kind of giving up hope that we’ll be able to accomplish the usual baking, decorating, and gift-procuring activities, and once again I think Christmas cards will go by the wayside. I used to send out handmade cards every year, with a “newsletter” included.

Yes, we have excuses. No, I’m not going to go into them. We had a difficult fall and are now in “recovery” mode. We’re basically going through the motions of Christmastime in hopes that the familiar holiday distractions will help us get back to “normal” quicker. And by the time we’re on the other side of the holidays—in January—maybe life will seem more “routine.”

But there are plenty of other distractions. Last weekend, for instance, we put up the tree (the Weinachtspyramide)—two weeks later than we ordinarily do—and my folks came over Sunday evening for a visit, and for soup.

I made a nice, healthy vegan black bean soup. And as I was in the kitchen off and on, Sunday, I noticed activity at our neighbors’ house. Even though we have our nice privacy fence, I have a direct view to the sole entryway to the upstairs apartment in the house just north of us. It’s second-floor to second-floor, and I see them going in and out when I look out my kitchen window, the one right above the sink.

By the way, their door is pathetic. I think the previous owners of the house had installed an indoor-rated door for this outside entry. I think that’s why the outer layers of wood have peeled off during the tenures of two or three renters of that place. The landlord should be ashamed of this door. Surely it’s not up to code. That door says, “Slum, slum, slum.” (And—grimace—I look at it every day.)

Well, Sunday this couple apparently moved out. It didn’t take them long. I don’t think they had a lot of stuff. They are poor.

They’re also messed up—like many people in the low-income housing in Munichburg. “Poor” and “messed up” naturally go hand-in-hand. Sometimes we’re furious at such people, when they disturb our sleep, and our peace, with their inconsiderate, loud “whatever.” Poor doesn’t have to mean “uncouth.”

Anyway, this couple has serious challenges. We weren’t spying on them, but we couldn’t help noticing things. They have two little kids—a baby girl and a boy who’s about three or four. “She” works—I think at a hotel uptown, as a maid or something—and they don’t have a car, so she walks to work every day. “He” has never seemed to have a job.

Actually, for a long time, he seemed to be a pretty good stay-at-home daddy. We decided we like the couple. They’re reasonably quiet, for the most part, and seem to take care of their children.

But “he” has been trouble, off and on; we finally decided he’s fairly worthless as a father and partner. He has some friends or relatives—men—with whom he tends to get reinvolved every once in a while, and they apparently are into drugs, or whatever. They tended to come over and “hang around” with him while she was away at work.

She has kicked his sorry ass out of the house at least once or twice. A few years ago they had a spectacular fight on a Palm Sunday morning—swearing and throwing each other’s stuff out the door. (Remember, this is a second-floor apartment, with just a single rickety-seeming wooden staircase leading up to the small landing outside their door.)

That morning, we were sitting on our back porch, enjoying coffee and breakfast, the pretty spring daylight, the birds chirping, the fresh green that had sprung up everywhere . . .

The fight started with shouting and stamping and slamming doors. Then we watched a boombox sail out the door and heard its brittle crash on the ground below. Then came handfuls of CDs. Then came a blanket and wads of clothing. She was throwing his stuff, and he was throwing hers. Then they went inside and apparently commenced hitting each other.

We didn’t need to call the police for this neighborhood incident, as apparently the people downstairs from this couple had called before us. The cops showed up presently and put an end to the altercation. (As for the junk they threw, it littered the yard for months afterward; no one ever picked it up. The landlord’s brutish yard guy just kicked the stuff aside or simply mowed over it, CDs and all.)

From what we could gather, she had discovered that he’d been involved with those no-good loser friends of his, and (I’ll bet) he had run them out of money, or in some other way betrayed or failed her.

So he was gone for a long time after that—but he came back, apparently somehow mending his ways. And I should also point out that, to this couple’s credit, as far as it’s worth, right before they commenced that big fight, the fellow had quickly carried their little boy (who was then about two) down the steps and put him into their then-car—so that the little guy didn’t have to see his parents fight.

Of course, they shouldn’t have been fighting at all, but considering that they did, it was good of them to try to protect their children from it. You have to give them credit for that.

Anyway, in recent months, they seem to have gotten into a relatively stable pattern. They’ve walked together to pick up their children from daycare. We hear them vacuuming, see them taking out their trash. Doing normal stuff. They have friends and family drop by, we hear talking and laughing, and it’s seemed pretty decent over there.

But we’ve noticed that he seems to have become preoccupied with talking on his cell phone, recently, and not watching the children. Maybe he got into trouble again.

Anyway—on Sunday they moved out. They had plastic storage bins and laundry baskets full of stuff on their landing, and friends to help carry it to awaiting cars. And the landlord showed up. When we saw him standing around up there, walking inside the apartment with them, we knew that was it. Although I’d like to hope that they had accumulated enough income to move into a better place, my guess is they couldn’t make the rent, and he made them move out.

And that was Sunday.

As usual with our neighborhood’s rentals, we wonder what kind of people will move in to replace them. Will they be outright drug dealers? Will they litter their yard with trash? Will they play thumping music incessantly in their house, in their cars? Will they scream curses all the time? Or what? Can we get relatively lucky two times in a row?

We scarcely knew this couple, but we grew used to seeing them. I rather liked them, or at least her—I got the idea that even though they were messed up, they were at least trying. She would probably be much better off if she told him to take a hike. She doesn’t need him. And he would be better off if he grew a backbone and learned to say “no” to his no-good “friends,” got a job, found a direction in life, became a man.

Wonder where they’ve gone, and where they’ll go?

Anyway—I was just trying to make my bean soup and focus on the “joy” of the season—and there they were, carrying their little boxes of stuff down the stairs. It makes me sad that they lost their apartment the week before Christmas. I do wish them well.

Family Spingerle Recipes

I’m still groovin’ on the springerles! My new springerle roller still has me all excited!

I’ve already confessed to you that the springerle recipe I use comes out of the 1949 Good Housekeeping Cook Book and not from my forbears, but I have to qualify that by saying that it, too, qualifies as a family recipe, since I got that cookbook from cousin Marguerite’s kitchen when she moved into a nursing home, and it is one of the cherished objects with which I remember her.

However, I do have other recipes available, which I’m going to try sometime. Naturally, it’s hard to try a different recipe, when the one I use works so well, but then again, these are written in Grandma Schroeder’s hand.

For what it’s worth—I have not tested these at all—I’ve photographed them for you.

Great-Grandma Thomas’s Recipe

The first is from Grandma Schroeder’s mother, Wilhelmine Thomas.




Springerle as Mom Made Them

6 eggs—beaten light
3 cup sugar—sifted & added gradually to eggs—place bowl over low flame and beat until very light.
Add 1 teasp. anise—enough flour to make a stiff dough—sift 2 teasp. pwd. hartshorn & 1/2 teasp B.P., roll out & let sit over nite.


Isn’t it interesting that it calls for heating the sugar and eggs? Maybe you need to do that if you use granulated instead of powdered sugar, but anyway, it’s unusual to see that step in a springerle recipe.

You’ll also note it’s a truly old-fashioned recipe, because it uses hartshorn as the leavening agent. Hartshorn, or baker’s ammonia, is ammonium carbonate and was originally derived from the horns of a type of reindeer. Before baking powder became available, it was commonly used in German and Scandinavian baking.

I think it’s interesting that this recipe uses a bit of baking powder in addition to the hartshorn. Best of both worlds—?

A lot of springerle-baking purists insist on using only hartshorn, which you can still find in specialty stores (or something; I’ve never used it). They say it makes the texture of the cookies perfect.

I’ve read that when you cook with hartshorn, you should not eat any raw dough, since the ammonia doesn’t leave until you bake it out. (So—no “springerle cookie dough ice cream,” unless you omit the hartshorn!)

By the way, click here for a post that has pictures of Great-Grandma Thomas's springerle roller.

Josephine Weber’s Recipe

The other recipe is for “anise cookies,” but around here that’s another way of saying “springerle.” This one came from Miss Josephine Weber, who for many years lived across the street from Grandma, in a house that still stands across the street from us.

For those of you who know our neighborhood, Josephine Weber’s home is the one that most recently has been a beauty salon. I’ve blogged about this dear neighbor before.




It might be hard to read, since it’s in pencil, but remember, you can click on any picture on my blog and it will make it bigger.

Here’s what it says:

Josephine Weber’s Anise Cookies

1# pwd sugar
4 eggs
2 teasp. bake pwd.
1# flour
anise seed
lump butter

Here, the interesting thing is that it calls for butter. I’ve seen a few other recipes that use butter, but not a majority. All I can say about it is: Josephine Weber made ends meet by baking cakes, especially angel food cakes, and other goodies, for wealthy uptown people, and she knew her way around a kitchen!

Next year, I’ll have to experiment some, have a “springerle-tasting,” and let you know how these recipes pan out.

Meanwhile, if you try them, I hope you’ll let me know what you think!

First Day of Spring

Happy Vernal Equinox, y'all!

It feels special, doesn't it! Here in Jeff City, we're getting the warmest weather we've had this year, and this also marks the first time we've had our windows open constantly for more than twenty-four hours.

The "young people" across from us on Broadway had an impromptu bongo-drums jam session on their front porch this evening, and though it was rather loud, I make exceptions for my "noise complaints" when the music is acoustic, homemade. (And is completely finished by 10 p.m.!) Live, real music doesn't annoy me the way recorded sound systems--boom cars and boom houses--do.

Birds all over the place today--grackles, mourning and Eurasian collared doves, cardinals, jays, titmice, chickadees, house sparrows, juncos, downy woodpeckers, starlings--have I left any out? Oh, yeah: Robins! Gosh, they were busy.

And we saw Beth again today--our local woodchuck, recently emerged from hibernation. Squirrels are about, too, of course. And the garter snakes are awake again, sliding through our patchy grass. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Per our custom, we planted pansies by our front doors today, in a small commemoration of my Grandma S's birthday (she would have been 106 tomorrow)--but mainly because the first day of spring is the perfect time for planting them.

I've noticed that whoever's currently living in the house she was born in, across the street from us, has been putting some work into the yard. Real work. Hallelujah! That poor house has had a series of low-life tenants ever since the death of its longtime owner a few years ago. Fortunately, not all tenants are low-lifes. I think maybe we've got a good'un this time around.

Well, what else can I tell you about? I haven't been doing much that's really "bloggable," since I can't drive. Soon, however, I'll be able to collect more stories than what's going on in the yard and neighborhood. By this time next week, hopefully, I'll be out of this cast and back in the driver's seat!

And now that you've read this far, I'll reward you with this fun YouTube by Manjula Jain, a gracious Indian lady living in the United States who has a wonderful series of videos demonstrating how to cook vegetarian Indian food. She's an excellent cooking teacher!

I highly recommend her YouTube site as well as her own website, ManjulasKitchen.com. If you had an Indian mom to teach you how to cook, she would be a lot like Manjula, I'll bet.

Here's her video for making rotis, or chapatis, which are a whole-wheat flatbread very similar to Mexican flour tortillas. I've heard they're pretty tricky to make and take a lot of practice, but Manjula makes it look simple. I love the way she makes them puff up! It is like watching a magician at work. Enjoy!




By the way: the word she uses to greet her viewers at the beginning of each video is Namaste, which means "I bow to you"--a common greeting in India and Nepal. This form of saying "hi" expresses respect tinged with a reverence for the divine aspects within all of us.

Flora Herndon’s New Home

Today’s news is that we had a small ceremony this afternoon here in the Munichburg neighborhood of Jefferson City: We got a new neighbor!




Today, River City Habitat for Humanity had its dedication ceremony for the group’s latest “local build,” at 801 Broadway. I mentioned this project before.

This is not the “usual” kind of Habitat for Humanity house, and we’re so glad for it. Instead of the blah, modest, drab, new little homes they’re, well, kinda notorious for, this time Habitat renovated an existing, and quite historic, structure. Even though it’s still pretty modest.

I really hope they see this as a success, because I really do believe that a great many older homes—like this one of stone and brick—have more going for them than newer frame constructions. They’re just more solid. Not to mention their charm and historic character.




So hooray! This project was completed with the hard volunteer labor and generous financial contributions from a number of local groups: the Carpenters’ Union Local 945, the Central United Church of Christ (which is just up the hill), the Old Munichburg Association, and, of course, River City Habitat for Humanity.

The building they rehabbed was in sad shape, like so many of them are here in Munichburg, where sturdy homes are rented out repeatedly but are never appropriately maintained. I wish I had a “before” picture to share with you. (Hint: if one of my readers has a “before” picture, I would love to post it—giving appropriate credit to the photographer, of course!)

At the short dedication ceremony, Walter Schroeder, the president of the Old Munichburg Association (yes, and he’s my dad, too), gave a brief history of the house and its various occupants over the years.

Probably the most colorful part of its history was as a local outlet for fresh produce. In the thirties and forties, the Knabel family sold great quantities of cabbage, green beans, peaches, and tomatoes to the neighborhood women, who were accustomed to buying in bulk and “putting up” these vegetables. (Spiced peaches! Home-canned tomatoes!)

As Schroeder talked, I pictured the front porch of this house covered with bushels and crates of green beans, peaches, and tomatoes, and big heads of green cabbage. Maybe red, too.

Schroeder told the gathering that he grew up only a few blocks away, and that his family didn’t have a car during those years, so he and his brothers would be sent to fetch vegetables at the Knabel grocery with their red wagon. (There’s another picture, huh?)

There is more—for instance, the entire south part of the house, an add-on to the original little building, was constructed in the early 1900s using stone salvaged from the old Missouri State Capitol building, which burned in 1911. People were encouraged to pick up the stone for free, because it saved the state from having to pay to have it removed from the site. (Thus, there are a whole lot of old homes here in the center of town that incorporate that limestone from the old capitol.)




So the rehab was intensive. Again, I wish I had some “before” pictures for you. Suffice it to say, they had some real challenges in finishing the upstairs rooms, with the slope of the roof, dormers, and the width of the stone walls in creating the window openings. They had to get really creative to make functional space out of some of it.




Indeed, they entirely got rid of the old staircase—which was too steep to be up to code—and added a staircase on the back of the house, enclosing it as a new addition.




Inside, you can see the old stone exterior wall as you ascend the staircase. A window from a second-floor bedroom “opens” out to this stairwell. But instead of being “weird,” this is actually pretty cool.









So today there was a brief open house, then a short ceremony. Frank Newell, the president of River City Habitat for Humanity, spoke first. Flora Herndon, the recipient of this house, looked on, all the while holding on to a single white balloon.




Then Schroeder gave his brief history (you know he could have talked more, but he valiantly kept it reasonably short!), and then Rev. Steve Buchholz of Central United Church of Christ led the group in a short prayer of blessing.




Then, Marlene Medin of Habitat for Humanity presented Mrs. Herndon with the keys to the house, as well as the “owner’s manual”—a copy of the Bible.




And then it was Flora Herndon’s opportunity to speak. She thanked everyone for their generous contributions to the project, and expressed the joy she has upon being able to live in this home. She invited her daughter to come and stand by her. Her daughter, she said, also lives in a Habitat home.

She concluded her remarks by announcing that she would like to dedicate this home to her oldest daughter—she didn’t say anything more about her, other than her name, so I don’t know the story—and at that, she opened her hand and let go of the white balloon. It was an emotional moment as it sailed up into the sky.

And that was the end of the ceremony—all that was left was to take pictures of the Herndon family in front of their new home!




Welcome to Old Munichburg, Mrs. Herndon!

The Door

Like I said yesterday, April is the month of purple and of green. But I didn’t tell you that purple is my favorite color. And now you’ll understand why I’m especially proud of this particular creation.

I meant to write about it last summer when I did this little project, but I got sidetracked, and the newness wore off. Meanwhile, with the nicer weather, I’ve just put “The Door” back outside.




We call it “The Door” because we don’t know what else to call it. Actually, it functions as a small screen that mildly shields our backyard from busy Broadway Street.




Here’s how it got started. Remember the annual citywide “big trash” pickup? Yeah, we were laughing about how folks go trolling through the stale piles of junk looking for treasures, but we, too, ended up pulling a dubious treasure out of our neighbor’s trash—an old wooden door.

It’s really small for a door, and it was in lousy shape. I bet it was stored for a million years in the shed, or in the basement. Of course, because it was in the house next door, which was built by my great-grandpa, I kind of wonder if this door wasn’t original to the house, and therefore something he created. Maybe my grandma opened and closed this door all the time when she was growing up.

Or maybe not; lots of people have lived in the house since then, so it might be some worn-out “treasure” one of our neighbors had acquired elsewhere. Who knows.

So, we pulled “The Door” out of the trash and stuck it in our backyard, not quite sure what to do with it. We’d just been to Eureka Springs, Arkansas and were all inspired by the creative, brightly painted antiquey stuff they do down there.

What we ended up with was a beading project. After a whole lot of sanding, and the priming and the glorious painting (can life get any better when you’re painting something purple?), I strung the window opening with beads. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to put a piece of glass in it.

The beading was done concurrently with a creative project by young Ivy, who lived next door last summer.




Oh, my, I have to digress again. Remember me talking about the folks who lived next door then? The cool neighbors we appreciated so much? This was them. Ivy was the little girl going “WOW!” at the snowfall that morning.

But as it turned out, those people moved out before the end of summer, and a new couple with two little boys moved in. And actually, they too are already gone—they must’ve had a falling out with the landlord; they moved out just a few weeks ago. (Whatever. I think it’s pretty pathetic when the landlord can’t get people to stay in there even one whole year. Maybe he should try checking references, or make them sign a lease, or see if they have a job or income before renting to them. But anyway . . .)




It was last summer when I did this “Door” project, and it took several weeks. I’d do a strand or two of beads every once in a while, the door propped up on sawhorses in the basement. Waiting for the laundry to get done so I could move it into the dryer? I’d do a strand of beads. Going crazy with some endless bibliography? Break it up with some beading.

It was fun. I used to do beading in graduate school to pick up a little extra cash. The New Age types liked my creations; it was Arizona, and hey.




I invited Ivy over to do the beading with me, because I knew she was bored, and I knew she’d love the pretty beads. Who wouldn’t love them?

She started off making a necklace. Or, as she pronounced it, a neckalace. Since she’s only five or six, I helped get her started. When she told me she wanted to make a neckalace, I figured she was making one for herself. But it soon became clear that she was making it for her grandma. Isn’t that nice?

As with my work on “The Door,” it took more than a few afternoons for Ivy to finish her project, in part because we spent a lot of time visiting and getting sidetracked. Ivy had a lot of energy and a short attention span. But she kept plugging away, and I got to see her present it to her grandma. That was the same day her grandma told me they’d be moving away.

Oh, well. That’s how most renters go in this neighborhood.




I do enjoy my door and the fun I had decorating it, now that it’s back outside and standing amid spring’s new-grown grass, wild, shaggy, and unmowed, reflecting the clear purple petals of the violets and the creeping Charlie.