Shortbread
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:11PM
There is time today for baking. My mother’s shortbread recipe, which is not really hers but Mrs. Brennan’s. Shortbread has always meant Christmas in my childhood home. As we light the second candle of Advent this week, it is a good time for making preparations, for making shortbread.
WJ and I made a batch of shortbread a few months ago, even though it was not Christmas or Advent, because I had left a stick of butter on the counter for over a week and it was beginning to haunt me. My mother always says that shortbread is better if the butter is a little rancid, which makes most of my contemporaries cringe. When that butter on the counter caught my eye, however, I knew its fate was a small batch of Scottish cookies.
WJ climbed onto a stool next to me as I cut cookies that day. “How did you learn to make shortbread?” he asked, stretching the word “learn” magically into two syllables for emphasis. “I learned to from my mother,” I replied.
“And did she learn how to make shortbread from her mother?” he asked.
I explained to him that this was a complicated question. My grandmother did make shortbread but really Mrs. Brennan had taught both my mother and my grandmother. Mrs. Brennan, I told WJ, was a wonderful friend. She and her big Scottish family lived in the basement of the house my grandmother rented when my mother was young. It is a brilliant story of women supporting each other, of strangers becoming family, of a community finding room for those just arrived.
As the beater turns the butter and sugar today into fluffy goodness and as I slice the sheet of delicate dough into the most perfect diamonds I can manage, I am thinking about this season of waiting, of watching my mother make shortbread, of the work of preparing both heart and home.
I am thinking about the stories we tell in this time, the stories I hope WJ will feel a part of and find a place in.
Each night in Advent before he lights the candles at our table, WJ prays the last sentence of our mediation for the season. Teach us to live as children of God. At quiet time he gathers the nativity set together and carries it off into his room to tell the story of Mary and Joseph and a baby quietly to himself again and again.
Those months ago, after pulling lightly browned cookies from the oven and sharing them together, WJ said to me, “Maybe someday I will have a child and when I make shortbread my child will ask me, How did you learn to make shortbread? And I will tell him, I learned it from my mother and she learned it from her mother, and she learned from a woman from Scotland who lived in their basement.
I hope so. I hope so. May all of these stories be yours.
*This post is part of SteadyMom's 30 Minute Blog Challenge (26 minutes!) and is also linked to Chatting at the Sky's Tuesday Unwrapped.
5 year-olds, Baking, Family time
Reader Comments (8)
What a beautiful story!!! History like that is priceless for our kids to know about!
I love this post! My husband makes awesome shortbread, too -- he learned it from his mother. I love how stories are carried on through recipes -- those are the best kind!
Great story and they look yummy...I try to cook/bake alot with Toni in hopes she will always have that will her...I am hoping she will grow into a love of cooking/baking like her father and me have.
I really like this story. Thank you for sharing it.
I love those type of questions! Sometimes it feels like time travel when I offer an explanation for why our family keeps a tradition going. Time travel to the past and future, because I get this vision in my mind of my children telling their children about mom or dad and why they do the things they will do. Whew! I hope that makes sense. Regardless, I enjoyed this post. I found you via Steady Mom and glad I did.
sigh
oh beautiful!!! i'm crying---sniff sniff. those cookies look beautiful and delicious! Thank you for sharing these moments!
what a sweet story - it totally gave me goosebumps! Wonderfully written and very special moments shared!
thanks a lot dear, im very interesting for your article. im very impresing for this :)
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