Author: rang2015

Mary Emily and Lorraine’s Fruit Slices

Judging from the number of cards for icebox cookies in her recipe boxes, I think that my mother and her friends must have really loved them.   Actually, they seemed to like just about any kind of cookie, but simple ones like drop cookies were obvious favorites, and ice box cookies were a close second.

Mary Emily Libbey may well have shared my mother’s enthusiasm for a cookie dough that you can stir up, put in the refrigerator and use to bake fresh cookies every morning.  I first tasted these cookies at a Christmas open house hosted by Lorraine and Chris many years ago.  Lorraine got the recipe from her mother-in-law, Mary Emily Libbey, whom Jerri and I met at one of those holiday extravaganzas when Chris’s mother was visiting.

Mary Emily was celebrating Christmas in Wisconsin, 1,300 miles from her home in Westborough, Massachusetts, where Chris grew up.  I wish I had known more about her when we met, as she was an impressive lady.  Besides helping Chris’s father make lollipops to sell on his milk and egg route, she started the first food shelf in Westborough when she was seventy years old.  Her concern for others manifests itself in Chris and Lorraine’s community service today.

Chris and Lorraine met and married when he was a student in Springfield, Massachusetts.  His choice of a bride who was a stranger from a city sixty miles away meant that it took a long time before Mary Emily decided to trust her daughter-in-law with the recipe for Fruit Slices.

Finally, seventeen years after Lorraine had been welcomed into the Libbey family, Mary Emily shared her recipe for Fruit Slices.  This year Lorraine gave me the recipe and permission to share it with anyone who likes a delicious icebox cookie.  My mother would have loved them, and I think you will too.

Here is Mary Emily’s recipe for a cookie that is perfect for giving at Christmas or enjoying and sharing anytime. 

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup salted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/8 tsp. salt

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts

2 cups candied cherries

PROCEDURE:

Put the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl and allow the butter to soften while you cut the cherries in half and coarsely chop the nuts.

Cream the sugar into the butter.  Beat the egg and vanilla into the creamed sugar until you have a smooth batter, then sift the flour by thirds into the batter.  Mix in the fruit and nuts after two-thirds of the flour is added.  Stir well between additions and make sure that all the flour is incorporated into the batter.  The dough will be very stiff.  If necessary, you can add a tiny bit of water if the egg was not large enough to provide all the moisture needed.

Tear three or four fourteen-inch pieces of wax paper from a roll and put them near your work surface.  Put a quarter of the dough on a sheet of wax paper and press it into an oblong shape.  Wrap the dough in the paper and form it into a log by rolling it on the work surface.  When the log is about ten inches long, place the log seam side down in a baking pan.

Make the other logs the same way and put the pan in an unheated room or refrigerator for at least three hours.  When the logs are hard, they are ready to cut into cookies.

Preheat the oven to 325º and use a serrated knife to cut the logs into thin slices about a sixth of an inch in thickness.  Place the slices a half-inch apart on ungreased baking sheets and bake the cookies ten to thirteen minutes until they just barely begin to brown on the edges.

Cool the cookies on wax paper and store them in a sealed container.

NOTES:  Lorraine noted that she sometimes uses a combination of a half teaspoon of vanilla and a half teaspoon of another flavoring.  Almond would probably make a delicious variant.

Mary Emily’s recipe called for pecan or walnut halves, but I agree with Lorraine that coarsely chopping the nuts makes sense.

Lorraine says that she now substitutes fruitcake mix for the cherries because she likes the different colors in the mixed fruit.  I prefer the cherries, both for appearance and flavor.  If you want a nice effect, use half red and half green cherries.

Chris told me that the cookies I made were thicker than the ones he remembered his mother making and Lorraine said that they were thicker than hers.  Both Chris and Lorraine said that the flavor was fine, but that the cookies were not as crisp as Mary Emily’s.  If you want cookies like Chris and Lorraine remember, try making the slices an eighth of an inch thick.

In case you are wondering if I missed an ingredient, Lorraine confirms that there is no baking soda or baking powder in this recipe.  

Finally, Lorraine’s emailed recipe ended with this comment:  “Enjoy – you are the only one I have shared this recipe with.  We were married in ’67 and I did not get this recipe until ’84!!!!!”  

Jerri’s Spaghetti Sauce

This is a simple but flavorful spaghetti sauce that Jerri made dozens of times when I was gainfully employed selling recycling equipment and she was a piano teacher and church organist. Since my office was in a western suburb of Minneapolis, and my customers included companies from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Warroad, Minnesota, I usually called to let her know when I thought I would be home for dinner. However, I was sometimes delayed. Anyone who has commuted through the Twin Cities knows what a shower or snow flurries can do to traffic on highways in the Metro area.

Jerri thus became an expert in flexible meal scheduling. Her students began arriving when the school day ended. She usually said goodby to the last one after 6 PM. To accommodate this schedule she assembled a main dish before her first student arrived, put it in the refrigerator and popped it into the oven or put it on the burner at the appropriate time.

She made a lot of wonderful casseroles and soups and learned how to create a spaghetti sauce that seemed to improve the longer she had to wait for me. Her recipe for the sauce reveals her as not just an expert at putting a meal on the table when the family was ready to eat but also as a “make do” cook who was willing to substitute ingredients that she thought would not be rejected by her husband, son and daughter. Her judgment was nearly always good. At least she never had the kinds of disasters I produced from time to time.

Her basic recipe for spaghetti sauce consisted of the first six ingredients listed below. The final seven represent my guesses about quantities of ingredients contained in her note that said something like, “Add some salt and pepper. Anise or fennel seeds and basil if you like them. Thin with water or red wine and smooth it out with some olive oil. If you like the flavor, mushrooms can be added with the garlic.”

As you can see, you can adjust the recipe to whatever is on your spice rack and “make do” with what you have. I think that fennel or anise, basil, wine and olive oil improve the sauce, but it is edible without them.

You can “make do” with whatever you have, so there’s no excuse for not making Jerri’s spaghetti sauce.

INGREDIENTS:

1 lb. Italian sausage
1 or 2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 16 oz. can whole tomatoes
1/2 tsp. anise or fennel seed
1/2 tsp basil
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup dry red wine
2 tsp. olive oil
Grated Parmesan cheese to pass (if you have some)

PROCEDURE:

Remove the paper from the garlic and mince it. Clean and chop the onion into a quarter inch dice. Chop the tomatoes into bite-sized pieces, reserving the juice. Brown the sausage in a two or three quart saucepan over moderate heat. Drain the grease if necessary and add the garlic and onion and cook them for about two minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, juice, tomato sauce and paste.

Blend the fennel seed, basil, black pepper and salt in a mortar or cup and stir them into the pan. Stir in the wine and olive oil.

Reduce the heat and simmer for an hour or so. Stir occasionally and add wine, water or tomato juice if the sauce becomes too thick.

NOTES: If you include mushrooms, clean and slice them thinly and add them with the garlic.

I sometimes use a mixture of fennel and anise.

You can take this sauce off the heat when it has simmered long enough to suit your taste, then reheat it while the spaghetti is cooking.

This sauce freezes well and keeps for at least three or four months.H