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  There is no teacher like experience, as I learnt from my father when I questioned the need for the spare block of unused hay that stood in our barn every year when the feeding season ended and the cows were let out again after winter. In his first year running the farm, at the age of sixteen, after his father had died, he ran out of hay, and he had never forgotten the sound of hungry animals. Like my father, I learnt from experience. I will never forget the minus-ten-degree winter of 2009. So, around the yard and garden, everything that needs frost protection is covered. The garden paths and the yard are swept clean, and, when all the pots are bedded down for the winter, I bring out the hose and wash down the backyard. All is now well on my little farm.

  As a young lad, Uncle Jacky planted a holly tree in his garden. In fact, the very first tree he planted was a holly tree. Then he planted an apple tree. Uncle Jacky’s knowledge of gardening was acquired from a very austere Protestant lady who lived outside Innishannon village in a large rambling old house surrounded by an extensive garden. She needed an energetic young lad to help her to maintain this amazing garden. Uncle Jacky was willing and able, so he was the ideal man for the job. At home money was scarce, and his mother had opened a little village shop to help pay the bills. He was glad to help out with the little extra money that he got from this thrifty old lady.

  Years later, he would smile when he recalled that no expense was too much for the garden but that the woman did not apply the same philosophy in other directions. But what she passed on in gardening expertise was priceless. She was an expert in grafting, slipping and making a little go a long way. A mistress of ‘waste not want not’, her garden also supplied her kitchen. The Chelsea Flower Show was her annual outing.

  Uncle Jacky was not the only man at work in her garden. She also had an old gardener who had been with her for years, and who, as a result of decades of practical experience, was as knowledgeable as the Royal Horticultural Society encyclopedia. Uncle Jacky was an enthusiastic and energetic absorber of their gardening knowledge. From the woman and old Tom he mastered the art of cultivating food for the kitchen table while still having a garden that was a visual delight.

  Now, over one hundred years later, his apple tree and his holly tree are still standing, now part of my garden. While the apple tree holds central position and is the queen of the garden, the staunch holly stands beside her and sometimes shoulders her out of its way. Every year in April and May the apple tree bursts into gorgeous blossoms that float to the ground in a pink swirl. When autumn comes, overripe apples thud to the ground, bursting into sloppy mush and making a feast for birds, bees and anything that can fly or crawl. Then the queen, having changed her clothing for every season, sheds her coat and goes to sleep for the winter.

  The sensible holly, on the other hand, does not waste her energy changing her clothes for any season but keeps standing firm in the same sturdy outfit in all weathers. She is a slow grower, but, come high winds or hard frost, she holds her ground. She is of the ‘I shall not be moved’ brigade.

  Every Christmas, I go into the garden and say, ‘Thank you, Uncle Jacky.’ He taught me the comfort of having your own holly tree, and for years his Golden King was the only holly tree in the garden. Now there are about five holly trees of different textures and sizes. When the deciduous trees retire for the winter, the hollies come into their own. They stand with military erectness, giving structure to the winter garden.

  When planting a holly tree, it is best to make up your mind at the very beginning as to location – no messing about in indecision. Decide on location and then leave her in peace. I never ever considered shifting Uncle Jacky’s Golden King holly tree. The name carries imperious royal overtones, but the curious thing is that even though she is called Golden King, she is actually a female – one of the many confusing contradictions of gardening. She remains where Uncle Jacky planted her, cheek by jowl beside the apple tree, where sometimes they get tangled together due to proximity. When this happens, I get someone who knows more than I do to engage in a bit of skilful pruning. I would not dream of trying to curb Her Royal Highness.

  I learnt my lesson the hard way. Having planted a harmless little holly in what I thought was the right place – which proved, as so often happens in gardening, to be the wrong place when my little holly was no longer so little – I had the temerity to dig her up and move her. She did not like it one little bit. She threw off all her clothes in protest and turned black with temper and bad feeling. I humoured her, coaxed her, watered her, fed her and loved her back to life. Now she is a powerful, glossy lady who occasionally flashes red berries across her dark leaves like a dusky model wearing bright red lipstick.

  She would put manners on you were you to think that you could take a red berry twig from her without first togging out in military garb. The Golden King is a far more benign lady, but my cranky dame is a wonderful Christmas decorator. She might be sharp and edgy, with spikes that could mortally wound you, but once in position her leaves glisten along the top edges of the dresser and around the kitchen, holding their red berry glow when the poor old King has long given up her bounce.

  The late Brian Cross, that connoisseur of gardening who inspired so many ignoramuses like me, advised pruning your holly at Christmas as you decorated your home. What a sound piece of advice, and every Christmas, I say, ‘Thank you, Brian,’ for his wise direction. His was the first open garden I ever visited, and to say that I was taken aback at its wonder and profusion is to put it mildly. Uncle Jacky was long gone, and I was struggling with my ignorance and inability to cope in his garden. When I returned home, I apologised to Uncle Jacky at his garden gate for my lack of gardening expertise and application, and promised to try harder. And I did. I was beginning to learn that a garden is a thing of beauty and a job forever.

  With the approach of Christmas, I meander around the garden and cast an appraising eye over my holly trees. They return my gaze with glossy green stares of defiance, brazenly telling me to make up my mind as to shape and quantity of requirements before I dare point a pruner in their direction. Back in a time of deep gardening ignorance, when I fancied myself as a tree surgeon, I pruned the leg of the Golden King too bare and too high. I was trying to turn her from a flouncy lady into a long-legged ballerina. Not one of my brightest ideas. She looked like a long-legged, tormented teenager in a scandalously short miniskirt.

  She escapes any serious thinning of her tresses now because they are far above reach. In order to get at her berried branches, a tall stepladder would be required, and a wise friend of mine has advised that any person over sixty should not mount a wobbly stepladder. Or any stepladder. So the Golden King smirks down at me, mouthing ‘Good enough for you’, and peers around at the other holly trees from her lofty location, grinning with derision at their plight. From her high perch she is out of reach of my wandering pruner.

  I wait for a dry day to do my holly gathering. If the cutting of each holly branch drenches you in a cold shower, then pruning and gathering holly is not a pleasant exercise. But on a dry, sunny or even frosty morning it can be very therapeutic. So, come a dry morning, I seize the day. As I do the rounds, armed with a large laundry basket and pruner, I recall the occasion on which each tree was planted. I acknowledge the pleasure that each tree has given me over the years. Each tree in your garden is part of your life.

  Many trips are made back and forth between the garden and the back porch where each holly cargo is tumbled out. One Christmas, as we gathered holly, my sister Ellen, home from Canada, declared, ‘Al, if you were in Toronto, all this would cost you a fortune.’ From experience, I err on the side of abundance because invariably once decorating begins you could run short of supply and have to dash into the garden for more. The decorating day could well be deluging rain or freezing cold and then I would regret my earlier Scrooge miserliness.

  Holly gathered, I walk the garden and survey the after-effects on the holly trees. They looked slimmer and trimmer, like ladies who have been to Weight
Watchers. Then it is time to come inside where the kitchen is first on the hit list. I cast a beady eye over my two dressers that flank the Aga and decide that they both need a serious overhaul. It is no small job. Then I say, ‘God bless the man or woman who invented the dishwasher.’ What a blessing to the kitchen fraternity. Off comes everything displayed on the dresser shelves, straight into the dishwasher.

  The large jugs and dishes along the top are immersed in the long Belfast sink which I had the foresight to install years previously in a kitchen overhaul. When all the empty shelves have had their faces washed, then the big return begins. The dressers are a full day’s job, but once done that is the back broken in the kitchen overhaul. The rest of the kitchen work is tidying away the clutter that accompanies everyday living.

  When the kitchen is looking good, I feel that I have a clean base from which to operate. Feng Shui experts tell us that if you tidy your house you tidy your mind. Once the kitchen is tidy it inspires me to keep going. Inside me, I feel sure, is a tidy woman who has been fighting all her life to break out, but life has worked against her. Being a hoarder and a collector does not lead to minimalist living, so in the days of getting ready for Christmas my dishwasher and washing machine both have a busy time. But eventually all is to my satisfaction, and I feel that garden, yard and house are ready for Christmas.

  With Christmas on its way, the furniture in the seomra ciúin (the quiet room) is arranged to face the fire. This is an old-fashioned fire, not electric, not gas, nor is the fire hidden behind a glass door. The large log and turf baskets are retrieved from the garden shed and filled. A fire, I have discovered, has magnetic qualities that draw people to it from all corners of the house. When this room was first envisaged many years ago, and television was barred, there was a wail of dissent and a proclamation that nobody would go in there. Time, however, proved different. The fire draws people to it like bees to a honey jar.

  With fires come dust, ashes and smoke, which do not lend themselves to immaculate conditions, and this means that this room is now the high-maintenance corner of the house. But it’s all worth it. Fire is the comforter when it is cold outside. If you are having a bad day or have fallen out with yourself, the warmth of the fire will heal your soul.

  During the weeks leading up to Christmas my mother waited patiently for the Muscatel raisins to come into our local shop. Their arrival would herald that Christmas was on the horizon. But foreign climates, about which we were totally ignorant, influenced their cropping, and world events, about which we were equally in the dark, affected their shipping. So, some years, due to all these varying influences working against them, they never made it to our little corner of the world, which was a huge disappointment to my mother. On the years they did arrive, they came in deep wooden boxes, like the gifts of the Wise Men. They were big, soft and juicy, carrying within them stones that had to be extracted before use. They were the joy of my mother’s Christmas baking, used for what we called ‘the sweet cake’.

  Into her bread pan went three or four saucers of flour, scooped out of the bag of white flour, and a teaspoon of bread soda, which she rubbed between her palms to dissolve lumps. Then a generous dollop of butter was rubbed in, and then her special Christmas fruit was added, including her prized fat juicy raisins and sultanas. My mother was not partial to currants, so they received a lesser showing. Then in went cherries, ginger and crystallised orange peel that she had chopped into little bits. We had no weighing scales so she judged by saucer, hand, eye and taste. Five or six eggs, depending on the egg production of the day, were already beaten in a bowl and a few pinches of salt had been added.

  Then came the thick sour cream she had put on standby especially for this cake. She credited the success of her cake to the quality of the cream. Top-class cream resulted in a top-class cake. All was lovingly mixed together to form a firm dough and kneaded gently around the pan. To my mother, this was a coming together of the best of ingredients, and she treated it with great respect. Supplies were expensive and scarce. Then, with the palm of her hand, she flattened out her cake into the size of her bastible, the base of which she had dusted with flour. Into this she eased her creation, making sure that the fire was hot and glowing to guarantee a satisfactory result. This cake contained many of the same ingredients as a rich fruit cake, but, because it was baked in such a large bastible, it spread out and ended up as large as her usual brown and white cakes. But it was much richer, hence the name ‘Mom’s Sweet Cake’.

  It was our Christmas cake for many years until my sister attended a cookery class in town and came home the week before Christmas bearing a fully iced heavy fruit cake. On top of it a red Santa sleighed across the whiteness. We were mesmerised – this was like something that had come from America. Up to then, Tim Barry, the baker who did all the baking in our town, had been the only one to come up with anything remotely like this. But Tim was much more into large soft seed loaves, butter loaves and big round barmbracks with soft glossy icing streaming down their sides. There was nothing soft about my sister’s iced cake. It strongly resisted the first touch of our well-worn bread knife, and we soon discovered that this new arrival had to be firmly attacked to gain entry. Once broken open it held riches hitherto unsavoured in such density, and it took us a little while to realise that these riches were best taken in small portions.

  A few years later, when my mother felt that I required a year in Drishane Convent, Millstreet, Co. Cork, to hone my culinary skills, I was introduced by Madame St Benignus to the challenging elements of correct Christmas cake creation. Hers was a French order of nuns, who brought with them rather complicated saintly names. We called her Benny.

  Benny proclaimed that the first step in Christmas cake making was the lining of the cake tin. Not complicated, one might think. Well, think again. Benny turned it into an exercise of military precision during which she constantly told us that perfection was in the detail but that perfection was no detail. Her master plan on tin-lining was an introduction to her concept of perfection I never forgot.

  The first requirement was a large sheet of brown paper and also a spread of butter or greaseproof paper, which came to the convent in huge, heavy rolls. You laid the brown paper on the table, rested your baking tin on it and then circled around the tin with a sharply pointed pencil. Next, you cut out the circle, which, if you had done the job properly, fitted snugly into the bottom of the tin. If you cut it too small, bits of your exposed cake bottom could burn, but if it was too big, your baked cake could have strips of greasy brown paper embedded in its outer layer.

  Once this base was cut and fitted, it was temporarily set aside because another step had to be taken before the base was allowed to stay put. This next step, which was far more complicated than the first, was to layer the sides of the tin. You laid the side of your tin on the paper to better gauge the height and length of your wrap-around. The height of your encircling border was the height of the tin plus a bit extra, and this bit extra was then pleated back against the main paper and snipped along with a scissors, or fluted as Benny called it, so that when it went into the tin it fanned out on the bottom. Then the base lining went in on top of it and held it in place. The height of the side lining could vary, but if, like me, you were one of the ‘to be sure to be sure’ brigade and you made it too deep, your tin could finish up with an all-round stand-up collar, giving it the look of an enclosed moat. Benny soon demolished my moat.

  If your paper had sufficient length to go the full way around the tin, it simplified matters, but if not you had to convince two or even three pieces of strong-minded brown paper to link up. You then had a paper-sliding problem. The whole exercise necessitated great patience on our part and brought forth exasperated sighs from Benny.

  Next step was the butter paper, which was the inside jacket of the tin and would be against the sides of the cake yet to be made. The same process was followed, but butter paper is much more difficult to handle than ordinary brown paper, and trying to make it do as it�
�s told is akin to trying to keep a two-year-old sitting still for a haircut. It shifts, slips and slides, and, unless you keep a cool head, the result could be a tangle of confusion.

  Benny, a woman with whom one did not trifle, insisted that the lining of the tin had to be complete before cake-making commenced. As we embarked on the marathon undertaking of making our first Christmas cake, the lined tins stood in waiting like empty coffins until the prepared body was ready to move in. Sometimes during the undertaking I anticipated that there could be two dead bodies by the time my job was complete.

  Benny ran her enormous kitchen with the skilful expertise of an army sergeant, taking no prisoners and operating a shoot-to-kill policy. Tall, well-built and athletic, she swept around her domain in a full-length, starch-crackling white apron, keeping a sharp eye on all operations. All in the Cooking was her kitchen bible. In retrospect, trying to teach thirty teenagers the skill of Christmas cake making must have been quite a challenge. But it did not daunt Benny.

  Her Christmas cake recipe was set in stone and adhered to with no diversification. Into our bowls went half a pound of butter and half a pound of caster sugar, which we battered with a wooden spoon into a creamy consistency. To this we added six already beaten eggs and then folded in twelve ounces of sieved flour and a quarter teaspoon of baking powder. In another bowl we mixed half a pound each of raisins, currants and sultanas, two ounces of almonds and cherries, a quarter pound of peel, half a teaspoon of spice and the grated rind of one lemon. We had already cleaned the dried fruit with dry flour as Benny had question marks over the standard of hygiene in the country of origin. The mixed peel came in small, solid, wooden boxes lined with wax paper, and we sliced it into the desired size. Benny tolerated no guesswork. Precision was the name of her game. The fruit was then added to the first bowl with a quarter glass of whiskey.