39. CONNIE'S WHITE BREAD (My sister, Ann Marie)

I recall with tenderness the portion of my sister Ann Marie’s life when her best friend Connie was squeezing her massive soul out of this earthly existence.  If you know my sister, and her great capacity to love, then you would understand the immense sorrow she felt. In spite of it, she was determined to walk hand in hand as her friend struggled toward the finish line.

Connie had a houseful of kids, 6 in all, five of them living. The sixth one died of a congenital liver disease at 7 months old. Connie had a gift for order and creating beauty. She set her table beautifully every night. Ann Marie asked her why and she said she wanted to make it beautiful for the ones she loved the most. When Connie made sandwiches for her kids’ lunches she always cut off the crust for those who didn't like it. She said,  "How hard is it to cut off the crust and see them happy?"

Connie was 46 years old when she died.

When Connie was diagnosed with terminal cancer she went to work making blessing outfits for a boy and a girl, her future grandchildren, the ones she would never hold. She wrote her personal history, she cleaned out all her closets and drawers, she gave away all of her personal items to family or friends where apropos, so that her kids would not have to do that after she was gone. She wrote letters to each of her children to be read at future dates, and letters to her future grandchildren. She was kind, and generous, gifted, and happy.

My sister, Ann Marie has the same gifts.  She still has a deeply devoted and loving relationship with Connie’s children, and is as generous with Connie’s grandchildren as Connie would have been.  She is so generous with MY grandchildren that I feel like a slacker! It’s just the nature of my sister, so I’m not jealous or anything, because who would not want such a person to love their treasures? (I would have told my children to suck it up and eat the crust.)

Before she died, Connie taught Ann Marie how to make bread. Ann Marie is a master at all things culinary, especially baked goods. She has two of the most used ovens in California, and multiple pots and pans to facilitate feeding the masses.  Her two sons were in their large high school band. Ann Marie used to cook meals for the whole band when they travelled for competitions and performances.  We are talking hundreds of hungry teenagers, and chaperones.  It was a sad day when those Mullen boys graduated from Granite Bay High, not as much for Ann Marie and Mike as for the band! Because she is Ann Marie, she continued to cook for their fund raisers and other events even though she had no kids attending there.

When Ann Marie’s eldest, Christopher, turned 16, he was ordained a Priest in our church.  In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, worthy young men are blessed with priesthood authority.  Among other responsibilities, Priests are given the opportunity to kneel and bless the broken bread and water as part of our weekly Sacrament. Similar to the Holy Eucharist, this sacred ordinance is one of the most holy things we do all week.  The priests break bread as the congregation sings a Sacramental hymn, then kneel to pronounce this blessing on the bread:

 "O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he has^[3] given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen." 

The bread is then offered to each member of the congregation, in private where they are sitting. The taking of the sacrament is a personal thing between the Lord and the taker. The young deacons and teachers assist in this ordinance, which is followed by a similar blessing on the water.

The foundation of this ordinance is the Last Supper, which occurred with Christ and his disciples on Maundy Thursday, the night before our Lord was crucified. Today, over two millennium later, we remember the sacredness of the occurrences of this day, both the happenings in that upper room where Christ washed feet, broke bread, and gave a new commandment; and later that night, in the Garden of Gethsemane, where the most gracious and holy event in the history of the world took place.

When Ann Marie’s son Christopher was one of the young men who broke and blessed the sacramental bread, she decided to make Connie’s fresh home made bread for the sacrament in her ward.  As it baked in her home on Saturday night, a sweetness permeated that space. Her sons would come home from dates, or have friends over, and there was an olfactory reminder that they were holders of the Lord’s most sacred authority, and that they must struggle if necessary to keep themselves worthy of that priesthood.

Fresh bread baked in my sister’s ovens every weekend for many years. It is still made a couple times a month, even though her boys are men now, living far away with families and homes of their own.  Now Ann Marie makes Connie’s bread twice a month for the temple ordinance workers that they supervise in the Sacramento temple. There they slice it and eat it in the break room, with good butter and fresh home-made raspberry jam. She says it is the sweetest thing ever to mold Connie’s dough, shaping it into loaves for the Lord.

Regardless of the crowd my sister bakes for: be it the high school band, or bishops and high councilors and their spouses when her husband was stake president, or a congregation of fellow worshipers, or workers in the temple, Ann Marie infuses her love into everything she makes. And always, she says, she thinks of Connie.

“I never make just one loaf of bread,” she says. “I make six. Sharing is the best part of baking.”

There is a scene I like to imagine in my mind.  It’s an upper room in an inn, far away and long ago.  There are righteous men gathered to learn and be taught, and partake of the feast of the Passover. And so, down in the kitchen, below that sacred space, there is a woman who looks an awful lot like my sister Ann Marie. The tiny hairs on her forehead are wet with labor, and her apron is covered with flour.  She opens her window, and into the evening air, over there in the holy land, the aroma of Connie’s bread is wafting up to the hillsides.  I imagine her footsteps on the stairs as she carries her offering upward.  I imagine the hands of the Master, breaking bread, telling his disciples… take…eat…this do in remembrance of me.

CONNIE'S WHITE BREAD

4 cups flour

1 ½ Tbsp. instant yeast (rounded)  SAF brand is the best

½ c. sugar

1 Tbsp. salt

1/3 c. powdered Milk

3 Tbsp. shortening

2 2/3 cup warm water

Mix above ingredients together, dry ingredients first followed by shortening and water in a mixer with a bread dough hook.  Mix for 3-4 minutes to form a gluten.

Add 2-4 more cups flour, till mixture pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Continue to mix on medium speed for 3-5 more minutes with cover on to “warm up” dough.

Grease pans with oil spray and use the same to cover your hands to make handling of the dough easier.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Form dough into 2 loaves.  Cover and let rise til nearly double. (see Ann Marie’s tips below)  Bake for 25-30 minutes depending on how hot your oven runs.

Remove from oven and remove from pans.  Cool and enjoy.

Ann Marie’s tips for this recipe:

- Replace shortening with melted butter

- Use only SAF brand yeast (store in freezer, it will keep longer) and King Arthur flour

- “I mix this in my Bosch mixer and run it for several minutes. It only takes 10-15 minutes to rise.  That’s one of the secrets, getting the dough warm in the mixer. I can do six loaves of bread in an hour and a half, start to finish.” Seriously!?

38. SPRINGTIME (& SUMMERTIME) SALADS (Lime, Pomegranate, Frog Eye)

We are experiencing that peculiar sweet spot in the year, when the blossoms on the trees are giving way to tiny chartreuse leaves, and the phlox awakening in my flower beds is vibrant and flowing, like soft puddles of color amid the winter worn soil.  Today in my sewing class Linda brought Margaret a vase full of flowers from her garden, an amazing array of colors: tulips and daffodils and pink and purple hyacinths.  All morning I nearly hyperventilated because I wanted to inhale that scent of springtime hyacinths. Libby is busy in her yard, cleaning out garden beds and sweeping off the porches.  She hires my Treasures to use her groovy pooper scooper and clean up the trailings of the three resident dogs up there in the East Wing.  They would do it for free, though.  Silly kids! They will soon outgrow that!

 In a few days, on Easter Sunday, we plan to gather at the East Wing (Lib’s house is the East Wing, ours is the West Wing in what we call the COMPOUND here in our cul-de-sac.  They live just to the east of us.  On Sundays I will text the masses and tell them what time we are eating and whether dinner will be served in the East or West Wing.)

We anticipate having a nice Easter gathering there on the north lawn of the East Wing.  The weather is supposed to be lovely, so we can collect ourselves in her back yard, eat dinner, and converse in human clusters while the kids hunt Easter eggs. 

These kind of gatherings call for at least one of Cindy Gardner’s salads.  How we wish…don’t we wish… we had our Cindy and our Cyndy with us (Gardner and Hansen, both of whom joined the angels in the past year). 

We are comforted, quite sincerely, by the belief that this HOLY WEEK guarantees us a reunion with both of them.  Still, it stings that they are missing from our arms.

So in their honor, Lyndie, Cyndy Hansen’s daughter-in-love, will make rolls, and I will concoct one of the following recipes from Cindy Gardner.  In honor of my mother in law, Helen Connors, Sarah will make Lime Jello salad (an Easter tradition) and the grandchildren will frost sugar cookies in lovely Easter shapes and colors in honor of Gram.  (Yeah, our bellies are gonna be full! But so are our hearts!)

Broccoli Salad

3 heads fresh broccoli

10 slices cooked bacon, crumbled

1/2 cup finely chopped red onion

8 ounces grated sharp Cheddar cheese (1 cup)

1 cup mayonnaise

3 tablespoons vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cashews (add just before serving)

Directions:  

Trim off the large leaves from the broccoli stem. Remove the tough stalk at the end and wash broccoli head thoroughly. Cut the head into very small flowerets. Place in a large bowl. Add the crumbled bacon, onion, raisins if using, and cheese. In a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients, stirring well. Add to broccoli mixture and toss gently.

DIXIE SALAD (POMEGRANATE)

·      1 cup pomegranate seeds (about 2 pomegranates)

·     
2 cups chopped apples (about 2 medium)

·      1 cup chopped pecans

·      1 cup whipping cream

·      2-4 tablespoons sugar

·      1 teaspoon vanilla

Whip cream with sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form.

Combine pomegranates, apples, pecans (and any additional desired fruit). Gently fold in whipped cream. Garnish with a few pomegranate seeds. Serves approximately 8. (Google "How to eat pomegranates" to learn how easy it can be to get these yummy seeds out of their pods)

FROG EYE SALAD (Acini De Pepe Salad)

·      8 ounces Acini De Pepe pasta

·      1 cup pineapple juice (reserved from pineapple tidbits)

·      ½ cup sugar

·      1 tablespoon flour

·      ¼ teaspoon salt

·      1 egg beaten

·      ½ tablespoon lemon juice

·      22 ounces mandarin oranges, drained

·      20 ounces pineapple tidbits, drained and reserve juice

·      8 ounces crushed pineapple, drained

·      1½ cups miniature marshmallows

·      ¾ cup coconut, shredded

·      8 ounces cool whip

Cook the Acini De Pepe pasta according to package directions. When done, rinse under cold water in strainer. Let cool.

In a saucepan over medium high heat stir together pineapple juice, sugar, flour, salt and egg. Cook and stir constantly until mixture thickens and is smooth. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Let cool.

In a large mixing bowl combine the pasta and thickened mixture. Then gently fold in the mandarin oranges, crushed pineapple, pineapple tidbits, marshmallows and coconut. Fold in cool whip. Refrigerate until serving. Serves approx. 12. This recipe can easily be doubled.

37. SOUR CREAM CONFERENCE CAKE

It is Saturday morning, the first weekend in April, and I am thirty-six years old.  The van before the old van is new, and the house that is the new house is just about finished being built. We live in the old house, up the street and around the bend, with its English Tudor trimming and the pineapple etched in the glass on the front door.  I have resisted my internal weekly urge to get in the car and drive away, newspaper in the passenger seat, a collection of classified ads for garage sales circled and numbered.  Instead I have risen before our children are awake and shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen.  I pull the mixer toward me on the counter top, unwrap the butter I set out the night before, softened to room temp, and plunk it into the bowl. My fingers pull my apron from the drawer and slip it over my head as I inhale the morning.  I hold a little silent conversation with myself, asking why it’s always so much easier to wake up when I am going to garage sales. It should not be hard to wake up to nurture your family, Self One says to Self Two.  She shakes her invisible little finger.  Self Two curls her shoulders in toward her heart and agrees, knowing the guilt is never enough motivation to change, it just makes her feel bad.  Reaching up above the microwave I pull the old red cookbook out of the cupboard, jarring myself out of the hopeless internal interaction.  When you argue with yourself, no one ever wins.

It is Saturday morning in 1994.  The daffodils have sprung in the front yard and popcorn is popping on the apricot tree outside our front door, but the tree out back, shaded by the garage, has not blossomed yet.  My children, all four of them, are upstairs asleep, savoring the absence of school bells.  They are past the point of rising early for Saturday morning cartoons.  Dreams are more interesting.  John is sleeping off the defense he gave last night, representing himself before the jury of two who waited up past curfew for him to get home.  His fifteen-year-old brain is full of Thoreau and Kerouac and songs by Springsteen and Dylan.  I do not know what his dreams are filled with, I only know it is hard to pull him from them. 

Down the hall Sarah is snuggled in her down comforter, a paperback book lost in the covers, her feet sticking out at the bottom of the bed.  She sleeps soundly and silently, released from the tensions brought on by eighth grade angst and the winter blues. Across the hall eleven year old Kate is snuggled in her bed, scooched down between the arched Victorian headboard and the curved wood of the foot board. Her Ali cat is curled up on the comforter beside her.  Her silky dark hair lays across her pillow, a streak of platinum falling like a waterfall through it. She savors the silence of a Saturday morning, the solitude comforts her and she feels safe alone in her room.

Next door, across the sea of stuffed animals and other play things, Annie’s arm hangs over the side of her bed, her purple blankie is wadded under her head, and a pair of pants hangs like the legs of a rag doll from the drawer of her dresser.  She hovers on the cusp of adolescence, hanging tightly to her childhood while wanting to belong with her older siblings.  She is nearly ten years old.

It is Saturday morning, the first Saturday in April, and because it is this particular weekend we have particular plans. To us, this little cluster of a family on Kensington Street, the waters of baptism still have meaning in our daily lives.  We fight for this, and we let go for this.  Our lives seem to be a pendulous rhythm of control and release, spiritually speaking, and we as parents sail carefully the mysterious waters of faith and worship with our little crew. We are believers.  And because we believe, we want our children to believe. And yet, by divine decree, we cannot make them believe.  It really is a sort of carnival game, this parenting thing. This weekend is unusual because it is General Conference, the semi-annual meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and all are invited to listen to four two hour sessions of instruction and inspiration on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning and afternoon. We watch the conference speakers, Apostles and Prophets of our church, on television.  Or we listen on the radio, which holds considerable more risk of falling asleep because it uses fewer senses.  Because there is no need to dress in church clothes, or even shower, the troops upstairs have given themselves permission to sleep until the very last minute.  So I concoct a plan. In an attempt to make rising more desirable, I mix butter and sugar and flour and such with sweet cinnamon and brown sugar, place it in a hot oven an hour before Conference starts. 

The aroma is irresistible, so they rise, almost magically, as the scent rises up the back stairway and down the hall. We pull a auditory double whammy, putting the television on at the same time as the radio broadcast, creating a multi stereo effect throughout the house.  One by one they trickle down the stairs, their hair all matted and pajamas wrinkled.  They drag their blankets and pillows and situate themselves in front of the TV, like kittens before a fire. I slice the Sour Cream Coffee Cake in wedges and pour six glasses of cold milk.  They come to the counter, where we pray while the Tabernacle Choir sings.  I want them to associate sweetness with General Conference. It’s bribery, I know.  Heavenly bribery.  Whatever it takes.

Something about this recipe makes me yearn to have my children around me, makes me want to hear the voices of our Lord’s disciples instructing and encouraging us. 

When I was a teenager, living in Pittsburgh, the only piece of General Conference we got was a two hour block that WQED graciously aired for local Mormons on Sunday afternoon of Conference Weekend.  Here in Zion, in 1994, we feast for two days, which feels like an overdose to a teenager.  And so, to sweeten Saturday morning, I have made this traditional coffee cake (which I renamed Sour Cream Conference Cake) for the last couple decades. 

This weekend, in April 2015, I will make two conference cakes, sending portions to John’s family of six down on Quail Run Road., and a chunk up to Gram’s house on the corner.  Annie and Sarah must bake their own for their own little families because they live too far away.  For Sarah, having lived in Kansas City and Herriman, she has already established it as her family tradition.  I weep that Annie and her little nest of birds have flown to Spokane.  But it is in one way a blessed year for us: our Kate is back in Utah with us, after six years in Houston and two in China! I will bake this and happily serve a nice warm piece to her with a cold glass of milk. 

I know her.  She will smile, maybe even giggle, and sit up. Her sweet angel voice will whisper “Thanks, Ma”, followed by “You’re so nice.”

My heart swells to overflowing with love for this crew of mine, growing and shifting and shrinking and stretching the way it does.  I love their goodness, and their tenderness, their questioning minds and their obedient hearts. 

This weekend General Conference for the LDS Church will be broadcast worldwide on Saturday and on Sunday.  Wherever you are you can join us via LDS.org. We will be tuned in, ready to learn and be strengthened by God’s servants.  And no doubt there will be the aroma of cinnamon surrounding us as we partake: feasting on the Word, and on Sour Cream Conference Cake.

Sour Cream Conference Cake

Batter:

¾ c. soft butter or margarine

1 ½ c. sugar

3 eggs

1 ½ t. vanilla

3 c. flour

1 ½  t. baking powder 

1 ½ t. soda

½ t. salt

1 ½ c. sour cream

Filling: 

Mix ½ c. brown sugar

½ c. finely chopped nuts

1 ½ t. cinnamon

Heat oven to 350.  Grease bundt pan or two loaf pans.  Combine butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla and beat on medium speed for 2 mins.  Mix in flour, soda, baking powder and salt alternately with sour cream.

Spread 1/3 batter in pan, sprinkle with ½ Filling.  Add another 1/3 batter, followed with Filling.  Top with last of batter.

Bake 60 minutes.  Cool slightly before inverting onto plate.

(Sometimes I make a double batch of filling and put some on the bottom of the bundt pan, so that there will be a nutty crunchy gooey topping when you take it out of the pan.)