It's Five Days Before Christmas

It's five days before Christmas and my true love said to me,
We need to buy a Chr-ist-ma-s tree.

It's four days before Christmas and my true love said to me,
My mom is coming, the kids she want to see.

It's three days before Christmas and my true love said to me,
I need ideas for Christmas presents, please.

It's two days before Christmas and my true love said to me,
Please make some more cookies just for me.

It's one day before Christmas and my true love said to me,
Going shopping, at the mall is where I'll be.

It's finally Christmas morning and my true love says to me,
You're the best present Santa's ever put under my tree!
. . . Smile!

More Christmas Cookie Recipes

Since so many people are asking for these recipes, I thought I would share them on my blog with a little note about each recipe.

Regina's Thumb Print Cookies:

Regina is a dear friend of mine who is a wonderful mom to her two lucky children.  She is a talented cook and an incredible interior home designer.  But much more than that, she has one of the biggest hearts I've ever known and I feel so lucky to have her as a friend.  Her ancestors came over from Ireland to start there new lives in America.  I am not sure of where she got this recipe, but these cookies are absolutely delicious!

Ingredients:

2 Sticks Sweet Butter
1 Cup Sugar
2 Egg Yolks
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
2 1/2 Cups Flour

Cream butter with electric mixer.  Beat in sugar, add yolks and beat.  Add vanilla, then add flour and mix well.

Form 1" balls, place on greased sheet, flatten center with a thumbprint on each one.  Fill thumbprint with your choice of jam (I used homemade blackberry jam given to me as a gift by another dear friend of mine.  Thank you, Diane!)  Place in 350 degree F oven for 15-20 minutes. After you take them out of the oven, sprinkle with powdered confectionery sugar over them.

Aunt Kitty's Butter Horns:

Aunt Kitty's husband, Uncle Del, was my father-in-law, Frank's, brother.  Aunt Kitty's family came to America from Bari, Italy.  In years past, before we lost too many loved-ones, and most of the cousins moved to New Jersey, my husband's family would all gather together in Queens, NY for the holidays. My mother-in-law and father-in-law had grown-up as next-door neighbors, so both sides of my husband's family still lived next door to each other while my children were young.  I always looked forward to Aunt Kitty's amazing butter horn cookie and missed them when our family started to grow apart.  So I called her on the phone a few years ago and asked for the recipe. Since my husband does not like nuts, I made an alternate filling with chocolate, but the nut filling is the original filling to the recipe.

Ingredients:

3 Cups Flour
1/2 lb. Butter
1 Egg Yolk
1/2 Cup Sour Cream

Cream butter in an electric mixer.  Add flour, then egg yolk. Lastly, add sour cream.  Divide into 3 or 4 balls.  Roll out into a thin pie crust shape.

Nut Filling:

1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Walnuts Chopped
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Moist Chocolate Filling:

1/2 Cup of Chocolate Chips Chopped
1 Cup Sugar
1 Stick of Butter
A Pinch of Cinnamon


Dry Chocolate Filling:

1/2 Cup of Chocolate Chips Chopped
1 Cup of Sugar
A Pinch of Cinnamon

Spread filling lightly over rolled out pie crust.  Cut pie crust into wedges like cutting a pizza pie, but the base of the wedges should be about the size of your thumb.  Roll up wedges, start from the wide side and roll toward the point. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet.  Brush top with beaten egg whites.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

Grandma Caroline's Press Butter Cookies:

Next door to Aunt Kitty, lived Grandma Carolina DeCaprio Normandia.  Grandma Carolina was the mother of my mother-in-law, Caroline.  Grandma came to America from Caserta, Italy.  If you are interested in her story, please read my blog post entitled "Carolina's Journey to America" posted on 2/24/14.  I will forever be thankful that I was in her home one day when she was making these cookies.  I watched her make them and took down the recipe for future use.  She passed away when my daughter was only a year old, we miss her greatly.  I feel so fortunate to still have her butter cookie recipe to pass on to the next generation.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Butter
1 Cup of Sugar
5 Egg Yolks and 1 Whole Egg
5 Cups of Flour
1 Teaspoon of Baking Powder
1 Tablespoon of Vanilla
1/2 Teaspoon of salt

Cream butter in an electric mixer.  Add egg yolks and whole egg, beat until consistent.  Add vanilla.  Add salt and sugar, beat well.  Finally, add baking powder and flour.  (You can add food coloring if you'd like.)  Shape into separate balls to place into cookie press.  Press cookies with a cookie press into shapes on pan (do not grease pan).  Do not refrigerate dough, if you do, you need to wait until it is room temperature to work it through a cookie press.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

I love everything chocolate, so I dip these cookies into chocolate and then decorating them with sprinkles.  However, I always leave some without chocolate because they are really good that way too. For the cookies that I don't dip in chocolate, I add sprinkles on top before I bake them.  For the cookies I do dip in chocolate, I bake them first and then dip in chocolate after.  Finally, I decorate the chocolate dipped cookies with sprinkles before placing them in the refrigerator for the chocolate to harden.

Dipping Chocolate:

I use Merckens' Dark Chocolate.  On a stove, bring a small (about an inch or two) amount of water in a pot to a boil.  Then remove pot from the heat source after it boils.  Place a smaller pot inside the pot with the water.  In the smaller pot, place the chocolate.  The chocolate should never touch the water itself.  The chocolate is melted slowly by the hot water in the pot that is under the pot that the chocolate is in.  Mix chocolate often until smooth.  Then use liquid chocolate to decorate cookies. Place decorated cookies in refrigerator until the chocolate hardens and is shiny.

A Recipe for Struffoli from my Great Grandmother to You!

My ancestors were strong, courageous, determined Italian men and women who traveled across an ocean to start a new life in America.  They left their homes and families in the tumultuous time between the 1860s and early 1900s, after Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples and turned these territories over to King Victor Emmanuel II.  It was a time when Italians found themselves divided in Garibaldi's attempt to create a united Italy.  The south was heavily taxed in order to benefit the north, and southern Italy struggled under the weight of the new laws and regulations.  With the promise of freedom and opportunity, Southern Italians poured through the ports of America in droves.  Although they left so much behind, there were things that they took with them.  They brought with them their traditions and culture.  Some of those traditions have been passed down through the generations and we honor our ancestors today when we celebrate holidays and recreate the memories that were so special to them.  For me, one of those traditions is baking Struffoli at Christmas time.

My Great Grandmother Pauline (Paola) DeLuca Autorino, brought this recipe with her from the Campania Region of Italy.  She taught it to my grandmother, who taught it to my mother, who taught it to me and, as you can see from the pictures below, when my daughter was four years old, I taught it to her. It isn't Christmas in our house without homemade Struffoli!  If you'd like to try the recipe, here it is.
It's my Christmas gift to you!

Struffoli

3 cups flour

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 tablespoons Crisco

1/3 cup warm water, add more if needed.

Combine ingredients and roll dough into long “snakes,” then cut into small pieces and roll pieces into balls.

Deep fry 350 degrees F.  Deep fry in Crisco until light brown.  Dump into bowl lined with paper towel.  Put honey and sprinkles on top of cookies.

Believe in your Dreams

As the holidays commence and my time fills with wrapping presents and baking cookies and preparing for the homecoming of my children, I find myself imagining what Christmas would have been like for the characters in my novels.  With the first book finished, I am now writing the second book in the series.  This story-line takes place in the late 19th century.  I "see" my characters before me and the 21st century seems to disappear.

Yesterday, I was flying in a jet on my way home from California to New York.  But in my mind, I was standing on a New York City Street, peeking through a window and looking into the home of the family in my second novel.  I could see them all, gathered together, decorating their tree and lighting candles.  Snow covering their stoop, the front door decorated and adorned with a bountiful wreath.  In the midst of all the twists and turns of their lives, my characters are taking a moment to enjoy their family.  They and I both know that life is not as simple as it seems to be when viewed from the perspective of an outside window.  But there are times when all the peripheral drama can be held at bay, and life and love can simply be enjoyed.  

To all of my readers, I am wishing you the most wonderful of all holidays!  Wherever you are, whatever your faith, take a moment and hold the drama at bay and enjoy those close to you.

I am looking forward to the New Year and the hopes of having my first novel published.  I will put my efforts into finding a Literary Agent who believes in my writing.  If all else fails, there is always self-publishing.  But I believe my story is worthy of the support that traditional publishing would provide.  And isn't this holiday season about Believing!  So that is my New Years' Resolution.  To do all I can to get my first novel, "The Tin Box Secret," to you in 2015.  Wishing you all a Happy and Healthy New Year!  And may you gather the courage to make your own dreams come true.

My Saddest Christmas

Most stories about Christmas are happy ones, but the truth is that life is not always happy. Sometimes bad things happen, and sometimes they happen during the holiday season.  There are people who are hoping that this holiday season passes quickly because they have just lost someone they love.  What I hope they will hear in this story, is that they are not alone.  Many people experience pain and loss around the holidays.  It is all the more reason to enjoy the good times and value our loved ones while we still have them in our lives.

My father first found out that he had cancer when I was six years old.  The years went by and cancer became something that we lived with.  Since I was so young when it started, I don't really remember life before his cancer.  The fear that you experience is like a cancer itself.  It grows and contaminates every aspect of your life, and yet, in time, it becomes a new "normal" that you learn to live with.  It was a part of my life for the next fifteen years.  There were years when the cancer was "active" and there were years when it was in remission, but it was always there.  But one year, 1979, was different.

I was working in New York City and my father was in a hospital nearby.  That autumn, I spent a lot of time just sitting and talking with him during my lunch break or after work.  I was twenty-one years old and he was sixty-one.  We talked a lot about death because he needed to talk about it.  Those days were invaluable, and helped us both heal from mistakes of the past.

He came home from the hospital about a week before Christmas.  We were so happy to have him home!  The tree was up, the house was decorated, and the presents were wrapped.  But on the night of December 19th, my father made a turn for the worse.  Just before dawn on December 20th, we called the fire department and an ambulance came for him.  There was ice and snow on the concrete steps leading up to our house.  It made it difficult for the men to carry my father on the stretcher, but thankfully, they were able to do so without anyone slipping.  In the emergency room, my father held my hand and said what I thought would be his last words, "I want to go home."  When I informed the nurse of his wishes, she was surprised that he was talking.  It seemed that he was springing back from the brink, so they prepared a room for him.  Shortly after they moved him to his room, the priest arrived. He had been called earlier to give my father his last rights.  I asked the priest if I could go up to the room with him and he agreed.  While I stood at the door to my father's hospital room, and the priest performed the last rights, my father passed away.

I remember leaving the hospital that morning and thinking that I just didn't understand why.  Why was this time different?  Why didn't he recover like he always had before?  The next few days we spent at his wake and then he was buried on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning, my family sat around the tree and opened presents.  I just remember crying and crying and crying.  My father's presents were there, untouched and unopened.

A week later, my brother found a poem that my father had written over the past couple of months. He found it in my father's workshop in a machinist manual.  It was addressed to my mother and it said,

Dear Faye,

When comes the day that I shall die,
Please pray for me instead of cry.
The life I spent with you my dear,
Was one of love, respect, and cheer.

I'll miss my girls, I'll miss my boys,
Throughout the years, they brought great joys.
I pray that they'll watch over you,
and make you gay instead of blue.

Love,
Tony

It was one last gift from him to our family.  And it was more precious than any gift I had ever received before.  My father always loved words, he loved to read and he enjoyed writing an occasional poem.  He spoke to us through this poem one last time, and it told me that he did get to come home after all.  I believe it was his way of letting us know that he was still there, and that he would always be there, watching over us.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

This year, as the decorations go up and colorful lights brighten the darkness, let your mind wander to the past and awaken the ghosts that are sleeping there.  Deep in the recesses of your memories, remember your own childhood and the anticipation you felt on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney (and, in my case, somehow come through our fake fireplace).

When I was a child, we would place a plate of cookies by the tree and then scurry up to bed.  But sleep always seemed to evade us, instead we lied awake, straining our young ears to hear the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof.  Oh, the magic!  The excitement!  The wonder!  Even now, I can see myself, tucked into bed next to my sister, waiting for the sound that would prove that Santa existed.  With our bedroom door closed, sooner or later we would hear the muffled sounds from above us, as presents were brought down from the attic and laid beneath the tree downstairs.  But, as a child, I preferred to imagine . . . I preferred to . . . Believe.

Memories . . .  Ghosts of Christmas Past . . . Eggnog, Chestnuts, (my father, whose name was Tony, placing his finger on his toe, then on his knee, then to his chest, and finally to his head . . . saying along the way: Toe-knee-chest-nut!), Struffoli, Pressed Butter Cookies, Sugar Cookies, Yum!

Secret plans were made on Christmas Eve between my older sister, younger brother and myself. Whomever woke up first, would wake the others. No one would go down to the Christmas Tree until we were all ready.  On Christmas morning, we would wake at the first hint of dawn and gather in the hallway.  We scampered down the stairs . . . I remember my feet stuffed into feety-pajamas and the sound that the souls of our feet would make as they rubbed against the carpet.


The tree would be lit with it's string of colored lights, thread-bare with black electric tape covering the exposed wires.  The television was turned on to Channel 11 for the Yule Log.  We waited, impatiently, for our parents to find their seats and then we searched the presents for the gift tags with our names on them.  Although we didn't have a lot of presents, for us it was a treasure trove.  And after the last present was unwrapped . . . there were the Christmas stockings.  Oh, the fear that we would find coal in our stockings!!!!  Spinning tops, Jax, Slinkys, Silly Putty, Bottles of Bubbles, and candy were poured onto the floor and marveled over.  I remember it all so well.

Those days, some fifty years ago or so, will never fade from my memory.

Leadership and Change

My son went to a Leadership retreat with a select group of college freshman from his university this past August.  I was just looking over a presentation that the university prepared from a collection of photographs and a selection of comments from the participants.  Many of them said that they learned that being a leader doesn't always mean being the person in charge.  It sometimes simply means listening to others, supporting others, and valuing others.

I was also impressed by the passage that my son wrote:

"The biggest challenge for me was change.  I learned to accept and view others for who they are, not what your first impression suggests.  I also learned that I did not have to pretend to be somebody else to fit in or be accepted, it is important to be yourself.  I was able to come out of my comfort zone by letting my 'walls' down, and letting others in."

What a difficult and valuable to lesson to learn!

Many people live their whole lives without realizing that the best person they can be is themselves. We are so determined to fit in, or so in fear of not fitting in, that we develop "personas" that we think will be better accepted by others, rather than simply being our true selves.  Sometimes, the thought of interacting with others become so overwhelming that we prefer to stay by ourselves and close off the rest of the world.  We become afraid to voice our own opinions for fear of rejection.

I can't help but think about the news of late and how we look at the leaders in our world today.  When they stand up for what they believe in, they become a target of "hate" for all those who disagree with them.  Our society has this "us vs. them" mentality that destroys and tears apart attempts at constructive leadership.  We judge without having all of the information.  Instead, we go along with whatever crowd seems to have the loudest voice or else we cower in our own anonymity.

Being a leader in our world has changed from being an icon whom others follow, to becoming a target upon whom others can focus their own frustrations and anger.  Having a loud voice draws some people to us, while alienating others.  And yet, we need to speak out to evoke change.

However, as these college freshman learned at this retreat, there is a second component to leadership which is often forgotten . . . to listen, to support, and to value others who may look or think differently.  A true leader helps people "hear" each other, leads through constructive thoughts and actions, not vengeance.   Each of us can be a leader in our own lives.  All we need to do is listen and really "hear" what others have to say.  We need to learn to accept our differences, acknowledge our own faults and limitations, and work together to find a better way.

We are all equally responsible for our future, if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.

Christmas Ornaments

When you decorate your Christmas tree this year, consider how the ornaments that you place on its branches are like a time capsule of your life.  When I was a newlywed, I couldn't wait to decorate my first Christmas tree.  But like most newlyweds we lived on a budget, so one way to fill the branches was to make the ornaments myself.  I scoured the shelves of craft stores looking for ones I could paint or piece together by following the directions.  I preferred a "country" theme of homemade decorations made of patchwork material and wood with popcorn strings as garland.

As our children were brought into our lives, it was important that the ornaments were "safe."  Plastic ornaments that said, "Baby's First Christmas," and ones that could be displayed with pictures of our bundles of joy, became our favorites.  Then there were the years when our daughter was a Girl Scout and I was one of her leaders.  We made ornaments together that were easy for the children to assemble, such as taking a lollipop stick and pushing it into a small Styrofoam ball.  Then covering the little ball with colorful material and tying the material around the base of the ball where it sat on the lollipop stick with ribbon.  Or taking a larger Styrofoam ball and a variety of colorful material cut into small pieces. We pushed the pieces of material into the ball until it was covered like a quilt. Then we stuck a pipe cleaner in at the top, so that it could be hung from the tree.  And, of course, the children brought home their own artwork from school to be placed on the tree with tremendous pride.

Soon we started taking family vacations, and every place we went, I bought an ornament to help me remember our trip.  Ornaments from Disney World, Santa's Village, Yellowstone National Park, and The Bronx Zoo, among so many others, were added to our annual Christmas display.  We added ornaments that represented things that our children enjoyed like musical instruments, ballerinas, robots and superheros.  My daughter informed me one Christmas, that the tree should be topped with a "star," not an "angel."  And so we went on a search until we found the perfect star to crown our tree and my angel was retired to the Christmas bin where she could rest after her long years of hard work.

Once the children were grown, I started to add more glass ornaments which reminded me of the Christmas tree of my childhood.  I can still remember climbing up into my parents' attic to find the wooden crate, originally from a fruit and vegetable market, that held the old ornaments.  The old crate had a colorful painting of fruit on it that always intrigued me.  Just seeing that crate, brought a sense of happiness and joy to me.  Inevitably, every year, some of the glass ornaments would have been broken while packed away.  But peeling back the layers of old tissue paper, which protected each ornament, was like opening a treasured Christmas present.  It was exciting to see what ornament would be revealed.  My favorite, were the oldest ones that dated back to my parents first years as a married couple in the early 1940s.  Perhaps some were even older, passed down from my grandparents for my parents' first Christmas together in 1942.  These ornaments hung on their tree while WWII was raging in Europe and Asia.  "Holiday Inn" with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire was playing in the theater.  "Miracle on 34th Street," "Bells of St. Mary," "It's a Wonderful Night," and "White Christmas" weren't even made yet!

Each fragile ornament, spun of glass so many years ago.  Each had been hung on Christmas trees long before I was born.  And each one held a sense of magic for me . . . the magic of the season for one little girl.

This year my children will come home from college and help me decorate our Christmas tree.  On it we will hang a collection of ornaments.  They will include ornaments from our first "Country" Christmas, their "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments, decorations that they made as children, souvenirs from our travels, ornaments displaying pictures of them as they grew and changed through the years, along with others that are mementos of their childhood, all under my daughter's Chistmas Star.

But the ornaments that I treasure the most, are the few leftover from my own childhood.  I still have some from my parents' first Christmas trees.  I am usually not brave enough to place them on the boughs . . . but maybe this year, I will include just one or two.  I will make sure they are sturdy branches, because the ornaments are as precious as the memories that they evoke.

Wishing all of my readers a most joyous Christmas season!

A Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving

I bought this print at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Vermont before I had my children.  It has hung on the walls of my successive homes ever since.  When I was a little girl, my extended family was very large and very close.  We spent holidays together and cousins grew up as best friends.  But all that ended with the death of my grandparents while I was still very young.  So when I met my husband's large extended Italian family, they reminded me of something that I once had, but had lost.  I loved spending holidays at his grandparents' houses.  Since his mother and father had grown-up as next-door neighbors, his mother's parents still lived next-door to his father's mother.  Beyond that, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in the same houses or just around the corner.  Their holidays were full of family and traditional Italian foods and desserts that all made me feel at home.

When I bought this print, we were newlyweds.  I imagined that, someday, I would be the old woman in this image.   That I would have, gathered around me in my old age, my husband and our children and grandchildren, my husband's and my brothers and sisters, our nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews.  All together, enjoying the old traditions and making room for new ones too.  One big happy family.  I've kept it on my wall all of these years because it reminds me of what I once had and what, for me, would be the most wonderful future I could imagine.

But "life is what happens while you're busy making plans."  I am sure that for our grandparents, many of whom moved across an ocean away from their own families, that building new families and continuing the old traditions, was how they coped with their losses, sacrifices, and struggles.  For that next generation, families stayed close.  But today, families are on the move once again.  That leaves many of us separated at holiday times.  The likelihood that I will ever enjoy the realization of all that this print represents, in my lifetime, is very small.  Even now, my daughter will not be with us this Thanksgiving.  Someday, both of our children will probably be away from us during various holidays.  Brothers and sisters who started lives in different states are now watching as their own families grow.  Their individual homes have become the hub of their own extended families.  Life moves us away from each other.  Generations fold into new generations and time goes on.  What is "family" to us at one time in our lives changes to a new meaning of "family" during another time in our lives.  Our children's sense of "family" is different from ours, and their children's sense of "family" will be different from theirs.  It changes almost imperceptibly.  We no sooner think, "this is what family is and this is how we spend our holidays," and then changes happen, and without knowing it, it is our last time we spend our holiday that way.

Whatever your holiday and sense of family is at this point in your life, I wish you  happiness. Embrace what is now, because it will not be forever.  Take a moment this Thanksgiving to remember what once was.  Tell your children the old stories.  Look around the table and whether if you say it or not, be thankful that these people are present and in your life at this moment.  Shrug off the stresses and imperfections, they are not what you will want to remember.  I love you all! Hope you have a  Happy Thanksgiving, even if you are eating dinner with your family over Skype!

Symphony in the Mountains

The leaves have all fallen to the ground and winter's snow will soon take hold.  We were spending one last weekend at our Catskill hide-away before closing it for the winter.  As we prepared to leave, I decided to take some final photos and I stood quietly, listening to the mountains.  At first, all I heard was silence . . . but a moment later . . . a symphony of sounds started to build to a surprising crescendo.

I heard a solitary bird singing its song. A moment later, more birds joined in with lyrics of their own.  I listened even more carefully, and soon, I could hear the stream as it rumbled through the woods below.  Furry, unseen creatures scurried through the dry leaves with a rustling echo.  Just beyond the edge of the trees, the gait of a larger animal blended in with a new cadence.  Acorns dropped to the ground adding a background rhythm to the melody. Finally, Canadian geese squawked as they took flight.  

In the distance, a crow cawed in fast succession. He was laughing at me, "Caw, caw, caw, caw . . . . caw, caw, caw, caw . . . . caw, caw, caw, caw." He said, "Silly girl, you thought the woods were silent.  Your ears have been filled with noise for so long, you have become deaf to the sound of nature's music.  Can you no longer recognize a symphony when you hear it?  You must learn to listen beyond the silence, so that you can hear the music in the mountains."

Perhaps it was a parting gift, this chance to hear beyond the silence.  The more that I listened, the more I heard. I realized how fortunate I was.  I have found a place in this busy world where the music of the mountains can still be heard.  It is an orchestra that has been playing for hundreds of thousands of years.  Sadly, one day there may no longer be a place to hear it.   So if you get the chance, before it's too late, listen closely to the silence.  Take a moment to appreciate nature's harmony, and you will enjoy a symphony that many others can no longer hear.