Home.

Patsy Cake.

My mother's sister, Patsy, read about Zona Cake and offered up her fruit cake recipe and the information that their mother, Gertrude, at one point began to candy her own fruit. Excellent.

Anyone up for a throwdown?

Here's Aunt Patsy's take on ice box fruit cake; and yes, she strongly dislikes citrus in hers:

NO BAKE FRUIT CAKE

In a double boiler melt the following ingredients:

1 stick margarine or butter

1 can Eagle or Dime Brand sweetened condensed milk (these brands use to be the only ones available)

8 oz to 1 lb bag marshmallows

cherry juice from about an 8 oz jar of maraschino cherries (I use more or less according to the amount of crumbs to be used)

When the ingredients are melted, pour over the dry mixture of the following:

Chopped pecans and/or other nuts

1 pkg dates-chopped

Candied fruit---pineapple & cherries (at least one pkg of each color-RED & GREEN)

Raisins

Coconut

Graham cracker or vanilla wafer crumbs (use more crumbs as needed, if your mixture is too moist)

(Amounts of the fruits and nuts may vary according to personal taste and/or availability)

Combine mixture with hands. When completely mixed, it may be rolled onto waxed paper or pressed into a greased container---loaf pan or casserole dish. Refrigerate and serve.

I DO NOT USE FRUIT CAKE MIX OR MIXES WITH CITRUS PEEL

ToddlerHawk.

I am on the look for a gently used ToddlerHawk carrier, should any of you know where I might secure one....

In addition to my couple slings (one New Native, one Maya Wrap), a frame backpack for hikes, we've used an Ergo now for a year and a half or so, but I've never really LOVED it the way so many of my friends have. My voluptuous short-waisted post-post partum self hasn't ever really felt it fit well, and now that my boy-- who still, at two, loves to be carried often and for long periods of time-- is so tall.... I'm wanting a ToddlerHawk.

How did that happen?

One evening recently, My Beloved Mister and I were talking about cool things we'd done in our lives. Things we'd enjoyed, felt proud of, were awed by, and so on. I asked My Mister what he thought I'd say was my all time coolest thing I'd done professionally, to which he replied, "Well, you pretty much have a dream job with an exceptional national organization...." Yes, that's true, I admitted (and each day, I am more thankful for this wonderful part of my --nee, OUR-- lives.)

BUT, as I shared with My Mister, the flat out COOLEST?: Being in the Swedish Public Television Pippi documentary at eight plus months pregnant. Total cool out of my wildest dreams delight. A windfall wonder: just fun, and so, "how in the world??" It was, as my son said a few mornings ago as I folded laundry on the bed, "There's a bib on the bed, Mama! How did THAT happen?"




As I wrote in Mean Magazine nearly a decade ago, "What I especially loved, as a little girl and teenager who so often felt hideously ugly, inadequate and physically wrong wherever I showed up, is that Pippi, incarnated by Inger Nilsson, is everything that a girl going through that awkward stage is: big-thoothed, knock-kneed, cow-licked, and a little dirty."

Not a good idea.

One late afternoon / early evening this week:

We're in the kitchen, the boy in his Learning Tower. Daddy's working late as per many nights these days. It's been a long day with biting and hitting and kicking. We've just spent an hour outside in the cold running around with Bert the dog, burning off some excess energy. Indoors, I'm preparing an early supper-- simple grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup-- and give the boy a cup of cocoa while the other things are being prepared.

Ziggy: "I want more cocoa, Mommy. I want my grilled cheese! I want more cocoa and grilled cheese now, Mommy!"

Ms. Booty: "Babe, I'm getting it all together as quickly as I can. You've had plenty of cocoa to start and it will just be a few minutes on the soup and sandwich."

Ziggy: "Mommy, the way you are talking to me is not a good idea."

One Hot Mama Gift.

Zona Cake.

Three years ago, my father's mother, and my one remaining grandparent, passed. She was born Arizona Mae and went by Zona, her lifelong preferred shortening of her given name. Known broadly across her native Panola County in deep East Texas-- particularly after her husband's passing in the early seventies-- as Miz Zona, or Aunt (pronounced Aint) Zona by her legions of community admirers, hospital co-workers and younger family members, Zona was a remarkably detailed hand quilter, a sharp shooter of squirrels and other wood animal for supper. She was a gardener and a canning sensation, a fisherwoman, a snuff dipper, a buck dancer, a singer and storyteller, and a legendary cusser.

She was the daughter of a red headed Irishman and a tiny dark Choctaw / Cherokee mother whose people avoided the reservation and anything that would have taken them from the life they carved out themselves (kinsman Roby, they say, was a magnificent fiddler who passed up the opportunity to tour with Bob Wills as a Texas Playboy in favor of home, hearth, and familiarity.) Married at fourteen, birthing babies at fifteen, Zona was an amazing cook.
A pinch cook. A country cook. An intuitive down home wonder.

She made, each holiday season, a to die for icebox fruit cake. I may well have written of it here: two years ago, shortly after Ziggy was born, I attempted to approximate her recipe using those of others for inspiration and guided by taste and memory. What follows is what I came up with in homage to her and as a birthday gift for my father, her youngest and only remaining living child.

I shall try, again this year, to make this for my daddy next week.

ALMOST ZONA's ICE BOX FRUIT CAKE

2 boxes graham crackers
1 lb. mini marshmallows
1 stick butter
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1 bag sweetened coconut
1 lb. pecan halves & pieces, toasted
2 lbs. mixed candied fruit (green & red cherries, pineapple)

Bust up graham crackers into crumbs-- I squished them in wrapper packs, then used a potato masher; it is not necessary to pulvarize them into itty bitty crumbs. Put this in a giant bowl. Add all dry ingredients.

Over medium-low heat, melt marshmallows w/ stick of butter and can of condensed milk.

Pour wet ingredients over dry. Mix. When it's cool, use your hands. Press mixture into big buttered tupperware (or two) and refrigerate at least over night.

Each time you wish to eat some, pull cake out of fridge and cut into hunks or pieces. It's craaazy good, craaaazy dense.



*It was a little bit dry; next time I'll add another can of sweetened condensed milk. I suspect that most recipes call for only a single one pound box of graham crackers, thereby making the wet ingredients lesser, but Zona never did anything half hearted or small: in my own memories, hers was always in the largest round Tupperware a body could get hold of, and I'll do it her way, thank you very much. The proper "set up" of the cake also depends largely on humidity, so the binding liquid may require slightly more or less.

What do you think happened here?

Anticipation.

Ziggy has been telling me hilarious things. I wish I could keep up....

Yesterday he told me "It's not Thursday, it's Seven." He told me a couple days ago, "Yes, Mommy, I DO think about the potty trains." When I told him he could watch a show yesterday, he said, "Are you a good Mommy?" And that's just the tip of the ice berg. Goodness, he's a handful of high spirits and smarts. He's also so intensely sweet.

Ziggy has been talking about Santa Claus and told Papa and Diggy on the phone that he wants Santa to bring him "a present." He has a new red tractor, about two three times the size of a Hotwheel car that his father bought him last Saturday morning on their mama-free outing. Ziggy tells us it came from the "Coa-moc" or the "Farmer Store." (Came from the Farmer's Co-Op where they bought birdseed and dogfood and where Zig met Santa last year). Ziggy is really into bird watching. He HOLLERs when there is a cardinal. And each night he says, "Eric, why did you come home?"He has recently begun not only calling his father by his first name, but also Dad, as opposed to Daddy. As in, "Dad's home!!"

Last Friday night we had pizza and cuddled up on the couch and watched Polar Express-- the first ever family movie night. Ziggy loved it. We turned the scary parts off and did distraction moves.... the movie is a bit more intense than the book, we found. But quite lovely.

We went out to Cherry Valley on Sunday morning in celebration of the first Sunday of Advent, and got our Solstice and Christmas tree. Hurrah! It's an outing we look forward to each year, and is getting to be ever more fun.

Ziggy talks about Santa and Christmas trees and jingle bells a lot now. He has a pretend jingle ball in his pocket often, like the little boy in Polar Express (he also continues to love pretend veggie gardening, selling and eating, and planted me a garden in our bed the other night of peppers and tomatoes and potatoes. He also recently asked me for some "pretend coffee.")

We've been conversing a lot about Christmas and Winter and have been listening to carols and other seasonal music. My favorite is the Sufjan Stevens Sing Along Christmas Box Set that MBM got just befroe our Michigan journey for Thanksgiving. We've gotten some books from the library on Advent and Solstice and Christmas, etc. ("Look, Daddy, we got this book about the Seasons!") And receiving and looking at Christmas cards has prompted a number of discussions, not the least of which is about angels. I told Ziggy that I thought of angels as being closer to God and the way people show that in pictures is to give angels wings. He will tell you that angels are closer to God, or are "near God."

I have told him that Santa will know where he is at Christmas, that Santa will smell his sweetness. I can hardly wait to make a "Santa box" (a long standing La Grone family tradition for Christmas Eve) with him this year and see the look on his face when he sees the beautiful sturdy wooden Plan Toys Parking Garage that Santa has brought him to play cars....

Several nights ago, a cricket jumped into the middle of the living room floor. Ziggy went to it and talked to it. He then told us that the cricket was "looking for another cricket." He asked the cricket, "Are you the very quiet cricket?" then he turned to us and said, "He says, I AM."

The first Christmas My Beloved Mister and I were together, I gave him a copy of that Eric Carle book, declaring *him* my very quiet cricket, with the most beautiful song I ever heard. He actually wept the first time he read it, thinking of who the story might be read to one day....

And now, there is Ziggy.

Chug, chug, toot toot!!

Ziggy to me earlier today: "Yes, Mommy, I DO think about the potty trains."

This after he wore jeans and underwear "like Daddy" yesterday and sat on the potty several times. I'd asked earlier today what he thought about getting some potty training books at the library. Everyone Poops, a Christmas gift from Aunt Ingrid last year, is a big hit around here and will be installed in the bathroom shortly!