Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. The opportunity to share gratitude over a delicious meal with loved ones doesn’t get much better.
My favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal? My mother-in-law’s “Magic Pumpkin Pie.” It’s the only pumpkin pie I allow myself to eat, with the exception of one pumpkin mini pie from a local pie shop. Still, it’s a distant second from Ruth’s creation.
This year, my brother-in-law tried his hand at making the pumpkin pie. While a valiant effort, it wasn’t the same. Not by a long shot.
“I followed the recipe,” Mark said.
I know. But there’s something Ruth knows that no one else does. Maybe it’s when the mix looks perfect, or the bake has been long enough. Maybe it’s love.
The same thing happens with my grandmother’s cookie recipes. Dorothy and George Holtz baked what seemed like a hundred dozen cookies every holiday season. Cookies were everywhere. In the kitchen, up the stairs to the attic, and then in the attic (this was Wisconsin so the attic was more like a freezer in winter).
I have my grandmother’s recipes for Christmas cut-outs, freezer cookies, and Lebkuchen, a kind of molasses bar. I have baked them all, following the recipes to the letter. They neither look nor taste like my grandmother’s cookies.
She had a knack that no one else in my family has. I think it was love.
On Saturday, I was revisiting the pumpkin pie crisis with my mother-in-law. After promising to make one herself for Christmas, she told me how her mother made Angel Food Cake for Sunday lunch when their pastor came to visit. She would sit in a chair holding the mixing bowl in her lap while she stirred.
No one could duplicate that Angel Food Cake. Not even Ruth, who is an amazing baker and cook. (As an aside, that pastor Ruth’s mother fed was Rev. Haven Lowe, who married Sarah and me on April 20, 1996.)
I’m not sure what I’ll do when I can no longer enjoy Ruth’s “Magic Pumpkin Pie.” Maybe I’ll settle for bakery pie, or make the recipe myself.
I already know that future pie will miss an essential ingredient. It will be missing the love.
No Comments