SPOON LICK’N GOOD!

By

Gerry Niskern

When you were a kid, did you call dibs on the spoon or the bowl when your mother was finishing up a sweet dessert? Nothing tastes as good as the tasty drops clinging to the beaters too.

My kids always loved that privilege, but so did the big kid in the house, their Dad. When they were all grown up and gone, and I was making something sweet, I could always count on him calling out, “anything to lick yet?”

The licking was good when Christmas timed rolled around and my mother started on her annual candy making. We watched as she cooked a boiling clear fondant to the right point, poured it onto a large platter and then beat it to a creamy,  white constancy. Sometimes she stuffed the fondant into large dates. But best was when she worked chopped Black walnuts into the mass and then made a long log and sliced it in pieces. Out of this world good!

But that was not all of her repertoire. She cooked chocolate fudge before the days of short cuts and her heavenly divinity was good licking too.

Of course, I made all of those for years, but one year I tried a new recipe out of the newspaper. It became a family favorite. Pralines. Not the traditional Southern kind that you buy in New Orleans, made with brown sugar and cream. No. My  new experiment was made with pecans,  buttermilk and white sugar. They are tricky because you have to cook the mixture to the “perfect” temperature, let it stand for just the right amount of minutes and then beat it hard and smooth. If you have judged everything right, you then quickly drop spoonfulls out on a flat surface. If you can start picking them up immediately. Success! And the best part for the pan lickers was than the mixture set up so quickly that there was a lot left in the pan.

Old habits are hard to break. I still find myself thinking, when I’ve finished with the beaters, “don’t rinse them. Someone will want to lick them!”

Have you licked any good bowls or spoons lately?

“All Second Generations”

By

Gerry Niskern

Does the topic of illegal immigration come up often in your conversations with friends? Everyone has an opinion. Build a higher wall. Pick them all up and deport them. Take back our jobs. Never mind that the majority of those jobs are work that on one else will do.

I have a young friend who constantly worried about illegal immigration too, because you see, she was brought to this country by her parents when she was five. She is a young mother and we often compare notes about her boys and my grand children. When hers wanted to Spiderman for Halloween, so did ours. When hers wanted a special video for Christmas, so did ours!

When her oldest started school he bragged that he was “the smartest kid in the class.” That was because he spoke Spanish and perfect English. He interpreted for the teacher. Her kids also told her about what they had learned about Thanksgiving and that they wanted her to cook a turkey like their friends were having.

She asked me to write out exactly what to buy and how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner. And at Christmas time she wanted make traditional Christmas cookies for her boys. I gave her my recipe and my cookie cutters too.

Later on, when I asked how her holidays had been, she laughed, telling me about how her whole family of brothers and sisters and their kids go to her mother’s tiny house on Christmas Eve and spend the night. And just as all off spring do, they love to tease their mother about how hard she was on them when they were growing up.

Turns out, her father had passed away and her mother worked two jobs every day. The older kids had to see to it that everyone was up on time. They had to be washed, fed and ready for school. She told us, “ My mother’s strict rule was that the house and yard had to be clean. She went straight from her morning job to her second job on the city bus.When she came home at night she expected chores and homework to be done and dinner started.

Over the years my young friend has continued on a tough work schedule waitressing and cleaning houses. She and her husband were eventually able to buy their own home. Her two sons are both in college and doing well.

Just like every Second Generation they have assimilated and become woven into the fabric of American life, just as all our grand and great-grandparents did decades ago.

If she were stopped for a traffic violation, could she be deported? Would the family be torn apart? Could you send them with no regrets?

I couldn’t.

“Give Them the Love of Reading “

By

Gerry Niskern

When our family moved to Phoenix in the summer of l942, I was overjoyed to learn that we were only about ten blocks from the Phoenix Carnegie Library on West Washington. An easy walk for a kid back then, even loaded down with a staggering stack of books. And of course, among those volumes was “The Little House in the Big Woods”, the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series.

Wilder’s first book was published in l942 and lucky for me, the Phoenix library carried it; and  all the rest of the mesmerizing stories of Wilder’s childhood as they were published.

Millions of young readers were enthralled with the true stories of the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains and the harshest experiences of homesteading families. She wrote about Indian attacks on the settlers, wolves stalking their cabin and swarms of Locasts that devoured their crops many times.

However, throughout all the Little House series, she told of her family’s love and devotion to each other. Her father’s violin music that entertained and entwined their family ties.

A new biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder was published this year called “Prairie Fires.” The author Caroline Fraser brings to life the unknown details of Wilder’s extraordinary life.

I knew My daughter had read the books, but I was surprised to learn that one of her brothers was familiar with the “Little House” sagas also. When I was describing the new Wilder bio, “Prairie Fires”, he said “my teacher read them to us in the second grade. I loved them.” He could have told me back then, but I guess seven year old boys don’t do that!

When my great-granddaughter was expected, my baby shower gift was a little boxed set of “Little House” books. I don’t know if she ever read them. I hope so.

My great-great-granddaughter is going on three and loves her books. I think she will be an early reader and guess what she will  receive for Christmas that year?