An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry

[sovay]

I believe the number of fruitcakes spatch and I just finished making was formally defined by Alex Hirsch in 2012 as "bleventeen." It was supposed to be about five. We may have accidentally performed Hanukkah on them.

I slept last night between three and five in the morning and spent my entire afternoon on the phone dealing with a crisis of bureaucracy which resolved for the day on the damn near Christmas miracle of a town clerk in the Pioneer Valley returning to her office after hours to take care of some extra business before the federal holiday, picking up the voice message I had left for her on the advice of my father-in-law, and providing the first crack in the otherwise Kafkaesque wall of proving to the state of Massachusetts that the husband I live with is a real live person with papers to prove it. We have to send her a check and a self-addressed stamped envelope, but I am thinking we should also send her a card.

I am sure that all sorts of utterly unmemorable television was lost in the days of tape-wiping or just not bothering to record at all, but at the moment I really resent discovering the existence of David Rudkin's The Stone Dance (1963) for ITV, apparently featuring a cast including John Hurt and Michael Bryant and themes including queerness and standing stones, only to discover that it is not considered to have survived.

Happy Erev Christmas. Excuse me while we decorate a tree.

Comments

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[sovay]

Okay I MUST make fruitcake next year so we can trade.

I didn't know you made fruitcakes! I am in favor.

Re: *

[minoanmiss]

Fruitcake discussion yay!

Yeah, I'm from the Jamaican diaspora so I started making fruitcake in my 20s as a way to connect with my heritage and also consume alcohol. I haven't in the last few years because I couldn't take enough time off when I worked in a hospital or this fall, but I really want to get back into it, and you have given me a great impetus!

How did you get into fruitcakery?

Re: *

[sovay]

Yeah, I'm from the Jamaican diaspora so I started making fruitcake in my 20s as a way to connect with my heritage and also consume alcohol.

Legit!

How did you get into fruitcakery?

I grew up helping my mother to make it. I need to check if she started the tradition or if it was handed down from my grandparents along with the homemade eggnog and plum pudding, both of which were in place by my childhood. The salient feature here is that no one in my family is Christian. My grandparents (unless I specify, I always mean my mother's parents) were Brooklyn-born first-generation American Ashkenazi Jews. My father is an atheist from a mixed Christian family from which he was for most of his life (for good reason) more or less estranged. They made the decision to raise me and my brother with a version of American Christmas; I've written about it a little. So the family fruitcake began as what I imagine was a more or less mainstream white American recipe and with experimentation over the years we have turned it into something we actually like, which is a lot of chopped fruits—this year, as with the pudding, mostly apricots, tart cherries, and citron peel, with some admixture of pineapple, raisins, and dates; normally there is more in the way of currants and prunes and sometimes figs so as to justify the verse about bringing on the figgy pudding—soaked until soft in brandy and then glued together with as minimal an amount of batter as possible, minus nuts because I can't digest them and in past years with trace amounts of chocolate, which last year was left out entirely and this year experimentally replaced with trace amounts of white chocolate. In an ideal year the pudding also marinates in brandy for a decently intoxicating quantity of time before being boiled twice. You can see these are closely related substances in our household, although the binding starches differ and I grew up with suet in the pudding, which is now a stick of butter instead. Of the two, I prefer the pudding because it is usually darker and boozier and softer, but the fruitcakes aren't exactly lightweight. We have to be careful not to overbake them because if the fruit crisps up, you've lost. Every now and then I miss the artificial green cherries of my earliest childhood, but to be honest, I loved them mostly because of their color.

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[minoanmiss]

*reads and delights*

How do you feel about candied Angelica? I had some for several years and each year I'd cut up one stalk to add sweet little naturally green bits.

I don't put nuts in my fruitcakes either -- it's not what I grew up with and then so many people have trouble with them.

Re: *

[sovay]

How do you feel about candied Angelica? I had some for several years and each year I'd cut up one stalk to add sweet little naturally green bits.

I feel like I've never had it in a fruitcake, or perhaps even candied, but since I know the flavor, I would certainly give it a try!

I don't put nuts in my fruitcakes either -- it's not what I grew up with and then so many people have trouble with them.

I'm not allergic, but I can't digest them myself unless milled to flour. (I like nut-flour cakes a lot.)