Old Family Recipes Flavor Christmas Memories
My grandma’s butterscotch bars
For the past couple of weeks, I have been working to track down some family recipes. My dad has memories of his grandmother making a plum pudding with caramel sauce for Christmas. He grew up in a time when even extended family stuck close by, and everyone gathered together for the holidays each year. Thrown in were some good friends, too, who celebrated with them.
He also tells stories of two of his uncles conspiring together to concoct Tom and Jerrys and miscellaneous people taking long drinks from whiskey and brandy bottles. This isn’t the Christmas I remember, though. There was never any alcohol associated with our family holiday celebrations. Thank goodness for my dad’s cousins, who have looked through old cookbooks and recipe boxes and found some of those recipes not made for decades.
On Christmas Eves when I was growing up, I remember Aunt Nora and my own grandma arguing in the kitchen over how much butter should go into the oyster stew and if the oysters were cooked yet. My grandma always had a relish tray with fresh broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and radishes. Some form of Jello was always present on the table as well, along with her buttery, crumbly sugar cookies and rich butterscotch bars.
At some point before she died, I must have asked Grams for the recipe for her butterscotch bars. I recently found it on a recipe card in her handwriting. It is more a description of how to make the bars than a real recipe, in true Grams style. I took it as a sign I had to make them this year. I guess I never asked for her sugar cookie recipe, nor did I consider that someday they would stop coming in those care packages she would send when I was in college.
One of the last conversations I had with my grandma before she died took place in the car ride back to her apartment after a big Thanksgiving meal. When you know time is running out, you have courage to finally ask the questions you have always wanted the answers to, so I asked Grams why my dad was an only child. She didn’t tell me exactly how many miscarriages there had been, but she did say she was just grateful to have one child at all.
Thankfully, on that side of the family, when people pass away, good memories are shared instead of family secrets spilling out. My dad once told me being an only child meant that while he certainly was spoiled and extravagantly loved, much also was expected of him. It all came down to just him, especially as his parents and his childless aunt and uncle aged. All the family recipes, all the juicy stories, all the Christmas memories now make their home in his head alone.
There are so many more questions I wish I had asked my grandma. So many other recipes I wish I had asked her to write down. I could use the taste of her sugar cookies this year. And now that my parents are the oldest generation, it reminds me to make sure I ask my mom to write down her favorite recipes. That I ask my dad to tell me again about the time Grandpa Hank and Grandpa Paul were arrested for poaching deer. That I make the interesting looking recipe for plum pudding, so my dad can tell me it’s pretty close to what his grandma used to make for him.
This process of tracking down these recipes has resulted in many memories shared across the miles. As we age, we all become a little nostalgic, and the past probably seems more idyllic than it should. The times my mom and dad grew up in were hard, and my two grandpas were poaching the deer to feed their families and other community members, not for sport. Not every meal ended with Christmas pudding.
But this is the time of year when the weary world rejoices, and those dusty cookbooks are pulled off the shelf. When flavors seem more intense and trigger visions of people we loved but lost. If we can still hear their voices arguing over the stove or laughing after a bit too much eggnog, it’s okay if our memories seem happier than the actual events were in reality. As long as the food tastes the same.