Bess had crossed over. She was overjoyed but also circumspect. No one had ever asked for her nut roll recipe before, but since she started using Bess’s recipe, suddenly people were, and she didn’t know if she should give it out. In the end, she figured it should remain a secret recipe—but I found out much, much later, when she died herself, that Eleanor shared her secret recipe with almost everyone in the parish!
And now I’m passing on all these “secret” recipes to you. I think you’ll agree with me that everything in this book is beyond delicious.
Bess’s Nut Roll
FILLING:
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
1 cup walnuts
Bit of vanilla or grated lemon peel
Dough:
1 cake yeast
¾ cup warm potato water
½ cup sugar
3 eggs
½ cup lard or butter
Dash of salt
4 cups flour
For the filling, boil water and sugar together, then let cool. Add walnuts and pound into a paste. Add a bit of vanilla or lemon peel, and stir until smooth.
For the dough, dissolve yeast into potato water and add a little bit of sugar. Then combine remaining sugar, eggs, lard, salt, and flour. Let dough rise about 1 hour. Roll out into a rectangle. (Hint from Bess: Roll out dough on a floured cloth, then roll up by picking up the cloth. It makes a nice tight roll that way.) Spread with walnut filling.
Let dough rise again until doubled in size. Place roll, seam down, on greased pan. Brush with egg wash. Bake at 350 degrees for 30–35 minutes.
CAULIFLOWER SOUP
THE LONG NEW ENGLAND WINTERS had given Ann much more than a passing interest in “hand piece” work—linens, scarfs, doilies, anything crocheted. If it involved handiwork, she loved it, not only to make herself but also to buy and collect. (To be honest, it was more so the latter.) She spent her winters poring over her collection and marveling at the ingenuity and craftsmanship that had gone into every piece, running her fingertips over the fine stitchery with reverence. The only thing she wished for was to know more about the seamstresses and embroiderers who had made them.
Some of the linens she’d been given by friends and relatives, and she knew their stories, of course, but more often than not she spent her time rummaging through thrift stores and boxes at church sales, amassing new finds she could go over in more detail once she was snowed in. It was these she always wondered about, and it was a unique find that would finally afford her some insight into the artisan.
A lot of the pieces she found were close to ruin with stains and rips. These she’d carefully nurse back to their former glory with gentle hand washings and by applying her own talents for repairs. Even so, sometimes she found pieces that couldn’t be saved. Sometimes they practically disintegrated the moment they touched the soapy water, and sometimes the fabric was so worn that there was nothing left to use to hold the rips together.
That was the case with the box of flour-sack dishtowels she’d found at a farmhouse estate sale. It was a set of eight and she took them all, but she wasn’t sure any of them would survive. The fabric hadn’t been designed for longevity, and then the towels had been stuffed in a box for who knew how long. But they were beautifully embroidered with vegetables—green peppers, carrots, onions—and a relevant message or thought regarding each one, such as “Don’t cry” for the onions. Only four of them were in good enough shape to be salvaged. Fortunately, one of the four she saved was also the most distinctive. The picture was of cauliflower, but instead of a short message, this one contained a recipe for cauliflower soup.
The cauliflower-soup towel was also the reason the woman who had made them had not crossed over after she died. Apparently she had stitched the recipe incorrectly, and she was more concerned about the soup coming our right than she was about crossing over!
“It’s two to three egg yolks, not two to three whole eggs,” she explained to me after sharing some of her handiwork secrets and inspirations with Ann.
“Eggs in soup?” I checked. I had imagined the mistake had been the eggs in the first place.
“Oh yes, “she replied proudly. “You’d not believe the difference they make.”
Cauliflower Soup
1 medium cauliflower
6 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon butter
2–3 egg yolks
½ cup cream
Salt and pepper to taste
6 fresh mushrooms (optional), cut into strips and sautéed in butter
Cook cauliflower in salted boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes. Reserve 6–8 flowerets. Mash the rest, combine with hot stock, and thicken with flour and butter stirred to a paste and diluted until smooth. Let simmer another few minutes. In the meantime, beat the egg yolks with cream. Add a little of the egg mixture to the cauliflower at a time, stirring constantly to avoid curdling. Season to taste. Add the whole flowerets and mushrooms (if desired), and serve with croutons.
GRANDMA’S PICKLED-BEET SOUP
EVE DIDN’T LOOK AT IT AS ANYTHING but a labor of love, but ever since her mother had died she’d been left to care for her father. He was suffering from dementia, and his thoughts skipped wildly from topic to topic, never resting on any single one for very long. He certainly couldn’t manage alone, and Eve was only too willing to help.
It was his anger that made her wonder if she was really up to the task. One of the topics his thoughts seemed to flit to more often than the others was—of all things—pickled-beet soup, and when he started rambling about that, Eve knew it wouldn’t be long before the anger came. He never did anything violent, which is why she’d not seriously looked into a home for him, but he did yell during these outbursts. The strangest thing was, when he was yelling he also seemed to be at his most lucid. His thoughts seemed connected and logical and, in fact, very much as if she was only hearing one side of an argument.
An ongoing argument about pickled-beet soup.
He would even look into the room as if there was someone there. He’d follow this invisible someone with his eyes, shouting and interjecting—and being cut off mid-sentence—just as if there was really someone there to yell at. That scared Eve, too, but for other reasons beyond her father’s mental health. It made her think about ghost stories and the uneasy theories that said some crazy people might not be crazy, they only seem that way because we can only hear half the conversation.
It was at that point that she called me. She’d had enough and she had to know who was crazy: her or her father. Or both.
As it turned out, her father certainly had dementia and Eve wasn’t crazy to wonder about ghosts. Eve’s grandmother was also living with her, watching over her son. Eve had been convinced it was her mother—her father’s wife—but it wasn’t. It was her grandmother, who’d had three girls and one boy and doted on her boy above all the others.
Grandma wasn’t helping her boy’s mental health—or physical health—by being there, though, and at first she was affronted when I told her this, but then she calmed down.
“I’m just upset because he’s not getting his pickled-beet soup,” Grandma explained.
“Pickled-beet soup?” I wondered, glancing at Eve. Eve nodded slowly.
“That makes sense—he’s often yelling about beet soup.”
When I looked over at him, his eyes weren’t looking at us; they were following his mother. He could see and hear her