Friday, January 21, 2011

CINNAMON AND SUGAR

Let's take a break and, for a moment, get off the tack of Peter's courting of Jennie. Or perhaps provide an insight into Peter's courting of Jennie.

Jennie was cinnamon and sugar. Yes, she was. And reading today's entry at http://themomchef.blogspot.com reminded me of the cinnamon and sugar that my mom introduced into my life. Mummy used to love to tell me this story, laughing and crying a bit as she told it. She had made apple pie for company (cinnamony and sugary) and placed it in the dining room on the window sill which overlooked the white birches to the left of our house at 476 Lowell Avenue in Newtonville. Even as a one year old, I loved looking out of that window. I had just learned to walk so that I could toddle over, and on my tiptoes, look out, but there was the pie and whoops . . . there it went crust first onto the floor. My mom, laughing and crying, cleaned up the mess as I looked on, nonplussed. Guests were about to arrive, the aroma of cinnamon and sugar filled the air, but there would be no freshly baked apple pie (my mom's signature piece) to serve the company.

Way before I appreciated my mom's apple pies, I loved the cookies she would make after the pies were complete. Simple cookies; simple, that is, if you could make as wonderful a crust as she! Now I am two years old, watching my mom roll out her homemade dough for apple pie. She places the dough over the fluted edged clear glass Pyrex pie plate, gently presses down the dough, then fills the plate with freshly peeled and sliced apples from our apple tree in the back yard. She sprinkles the apples profusely with white sugar and cinnamon, and then, after rolling out another circle, covers the apples in the pie plate and . . . here comes the best part for me . . . trims the raggedy edges of the dough around the outside of the pie plate, leaving a mound of dough trimmings to make . . . yay! cinnamon and sugar cookies, Mummy style! She gathers the renegade pieces of pie dough into a ball, and rolls out the dough again. She sprinkles this with cinnamon and sugar, and dots the dough with tiny pieces of butter. She cuts the soon to be cookies into randomly diamond shapes, places the cinnamoned and sugared pieces onto a cookie tray (which we used to call a tepsi), and places the tepsi in the oven of her Westinghouse Electric stove. 5 minutes later, yum -- treats better than apple pie! And that was my mother. . . cinnamon and sugar . . . a treat better than apple pie.

5 comments:

  1. I remember Grandma making those cinnamon sugar cookies with the extra trimmed pie crust. Maybe I was two years old too and sat there watching her and subsequently eating cookies...

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  2. A sweet memory, indeed! My mom, like me, was not a baker, especially not of pie crusts! (She made very good candy, heh heh.) But I do love the cinnamon-sugar-apple pie smell and taste, and can almost sense it in your description.

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  3. That was a beautiful memory! My mom used to do something similar with her leftover pie crust. I haven't thought of it in years though. I think Dudette is in for a treat next time I make a pie!

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  4. The aroma was as delicious a memory as eating Mummy's delictible masterpieces. Our Mom had exquisite culinary talents . . . and she never used mixes . . . Mom made from everything from scratch, even the wonderful light flaky pie crust on her apple and blueberry pies (apples freshly picked from our apple trees in the backyard). Mom's pies never left you with that full feeling . . . but instead, the pies just seemed to opened up the appetite for yet another huge piece! Thank goodness we walked to and from school (even on those cold snowy days) . . . if we hadn't done that 1 mile walk routinely, we probably would have put on a few too many pounds.
    There was always a lot of activity at our home (474 Lowell Avenue in Newtonville, Massachusetts), and even though we just recently sold the house after our Dad's passing, these happy memories remain.
    Marash Girl's sister Martha
    (aka Marashmellow Fluff)

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  5. the apple seed was planted in the ground and produced a sapling. we acquired the sapling and planted it in the soil of our 1/2 acre. the sun invaded the tree and brought forth the apples shaped and colored to ensure the eating of them. Bushels were gathered and stored in our underground walk-in cooler, a better use than a bomb shelter to protect us from the Soviet mors ab alto (death from above). mother and father preferred life from above, rather than the death that was sure to come from the missiles paraded every May day beneath the grey light of Moscow and before the stand of the grey men of the Soviet.
    Light in the hands of our mother, now there was a picture. the garden gathered up the light of heaven and made it fit for consumption to rival the light of Eden. Mother than added the light of her soul, and planted sugar and spice and everything nice. the house was filled with the scent of redemption, the joy of gardening inside the house, beneath the ground of our house, and outside the house. We beat those Commie Russkies every year because we were fed the light from above and the light from within and not fear, from without.

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