December 16, 2006
'Tis the Christmas season, and, therefore, I have sworn off all Christmas sweets, except for one small indulgence—my mother’s famous Candy Strawberries.
I do not have to tell you that Christmas is no time for sissies when it comes to avoiding homemade candy and the extra weight that comes hand-in-hand with it.
If you cook it, the pounds will come!
Sometimes, the very thought of the holidays makes me dread those dastardly extra pounds that find their way to my hips in December.
I suppose this unwanted holiday heaviness might have something to do with the peanut brittle, fudge, divinity, and pecan balls displayed so nicely on a decorative Christmas plate in our kitchen. Cookies, brownies, pie—they are all here, too.
So far, I have not touched a bite except for the peanut brittle and mom’s Candy Strawberries, which beg to be tasted.
Everywhere I notice excellent reasons to eat Christmas candy as well as reasons to abandon my avoidance-of-sweets diet plan.
What is Christmas anyway, I remind myself, without the special foods of the season?
Any self-respecting grandmother has to have some Christmas candy and cookies around the house.
Furthermore, my niece wants to try her grandmother’s famous strawberry Christmas candy recipe, and I would be remiss not to help her with that almighty endeavor.
The rationalizations come to mind easily enough.
So, you will no doubt understand that I absolutely had to help my niece with her Candy Strawberries crusade.
After a lengthy search through Mom’s boxes in the basement, I found the recipe and emailed it immediately to my niece Allison.
I decided to try making Candy Strawberries myself despite the threat of extra holiday pounds it might bring and will gladly share the recipe here with you if you care to give it a try.
One simply takes two small packages strawberry Jello, one-half to three-fourths cup condensed sweetened milk, pecans, and coconut. Shape the mixture into strawberries and roll in red sugar crystals. Then, dip the tops in green sugar crystals. Refrigerate.
Easy, effortless, uncomplicated.
Candy Strawberries appeared to me a simple enough recipe, yet soon I realized that apparently, I did not know my mother’s cooking secrets. No one does.
Recipes yes, secrets no.
My niece also made a valiant attempt at remaking the storied Christmas confection, but the candy would not hold together as it was supposed to do. It tasted all right, she reported, but it did not look like grandma’s.
She was disappointed to realize that often these treasured dishes from our past cannot be recreated. We want so badly to bring back the tastes and smells of special Christmas foods from our childhood, but we do not know how in the world grandmother did it.
No one knows the secret to grandma’s fudge either, and no one can beat the egg whites into the divinity exactly like mom did.
Keven remembers watching his grandmother bake pies in the midst of a cloud of flour in the kitchen with her hands flying so fast that no one could hope to replicate her skill.
Heather recalls standing beside her grandmother and writing down the ingredients and the step-by-step procedure while her grandmother baked Heather’s favorite dish. No matter how carefully she watched, recorded, and tried, the recipe could not be duplicated.
Most of our grandmothers and mothers did not use recipes either. They baked and cooked by touch, taste, and feel. If the batter did not look dull enough, the fudge was not ready to be poured. The pie crusts had to feel a certain way. One tasted throughout the entire cooking process.
Which leads me directly to the afore-mentioned unwanted holiday poundage issue.
Still searching for more candy recipes on the internet, I discovered a parody on a blog by an unknown author that made me feel a whole lot better about the extra weight that Christmas candy can add to one’s waistline.
Here are a few excerpts from “All I Needed to Know About Life I Learned from Santa”.
Some days it is okay to feel a little chubby.
Bright red can make anyone look good.
Wear a wide belt and no one will notice how many pounds you’ve gained.
To that I might add, when you are at a complete loss for words when someone notices your extra pounds, say “Ho, Ho, Ho” and enjoy the season.
Avoid chimneys, however.
