This week, we welcome guest blogger, Ani Sarkisian. Ani is an American writer currently based in Dublin.
I had such plans for the holiday season. You know what I mean: the careful shopping, the tasteful decorating, calm evenings making crafts and baking Christmas cookies with the baby and listening to old Christmas records. Or maybe finally watching The Wire or something.
Alas, it was not to be: my kid and my parents were all knocked down with the flu for a week and a half. Once I was able to surface from the laundry and the soup and the tea and the disinfectant nothing was baked, I had mere days to shop (colouring books! For EVERYBODY), and we were lucky we got a tree. But goddamnit, my mom says there are 12 days of Christmas, and it’s STILL the holiday season, and there’s still time for cookies! And in my house, Christmas cookies mean one thing: Saucepans and the Single Girl.
Did you have this book in Ireland? Written by Jinx Kragen and Judy Perry, first published in 1965, it is – to use the vernacular of the period – a scream. Two career gals in the big city having a blast. It’s what I would imagine Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore would be like if they shared an apartment, kept pre-mixed martinis in a jug in the fridge and tried their hands at adding water to soup mix and ladling it over pork chops (Onion-Glazed Pork Chops, page 105).
There some real gems in this cookbook, and a lot of it is actually very practical. Their entertaining shortcuts are flawless:
“Braggarts Homemade Bread: Scrounge around the frozen-food department of your local supermarket until you find a loaf of unbaked frozen bread. Take it home and read the directions. Then follow them. And seal your lips forever to the fact that you didn’t grind the wheat yourself and bake it on your own humble hearth.”
They may have been the first to extol the virtues of hosting a brunch:
“There is also the obvious advantage that no one is really awake and so they won’t be too critical of your culinary efforts.”
And they’re really gutsy about shrimp:
“Add lemon juice, cover, and cook for about 5 minutes, or until you get bored.”
There are moments of “how to catch that man” in there; after all, the dedication is: “For Ken, who yielded to Stroganoff and for Jack, who succumbed to lasagne,” but I think it’s way more about wisecracking young ladies living alone for the first time and making a MESS in the kitchen. Who can’t relate? Until I lived all by myself I never cooked, I was too embarrassed to let anyone else witness or endure my experiments. I once spent a good week eating nothing but scrambled eggs, trying to perfect my technique.
My mom first started cooking when she left home, too. This is the first cookbook she ever bought, when she was just starting out in a tech company in Boston in the 60s and living with her best friend. This book is from a time when a manhole cover used as a coffee table was the most glamorous thing my mom had ever seen (she still talks about it). It’s from a time when women would legit wake up and say “I’m going to wear my wig today,” and would roll into work wearing one. I FOUND my mom’s old wig in the attic, you guys; it’s awesome.
My mom’s been making these cookies since 1965; they’re a Christmas tradition in our house. Now that most of the holiday panic has passed, make them and enjoy them at your leisure. Please study the authors’ note at the end, it’s a hoot.
Noëls
Ingredients:
⅓ cup soft butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 ¼ cups sifted flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup sour cream
36 pitted dates
36 walnut halves
icing
Directions:
Cream butter and vanilla; gradually beat in sugar. Add egg and beat well. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with sour cream. Stuff dates with walnut halves and roll in dough. When well covered, drop from a fork on well-greased cookie sheet. Bake in a hot oven (400 degrees F) about 10 minutes. When cold, spread with icing. Makes about 3 dozen.
Icing: Melt 2 tablespoons butter, blend in 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 tablespoon cream.
If you have a friend who is defending our country on a far-distant shore, for heaven’s sake don’t send him these. He’d wind up with a box full of crumbs. Besides, he’d much rather get the latest issue of Playboy.
Ani is a writer currently based in Dublin. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @AniMSarkisian, or at TheSaltyCookie.org.
