My Inspiration

February is a tough month for me.  I wish I could skip over it, but I cannot.  I am 42 years old, but let me tell you that you never get over losing a parent.  I watched my father suffer for ten years with Alzheimer's and he died when I was 30.  My beloved Mother was taken from me four years ago today.  It was two and a half months after a dual diagnosis of breast and lung cancer.  I knew she was going to die, but I did not know it would happen so fast and in such a cruel and unjust manner.  I  never had time to digest the diagnosis and could not fathom the long road I would have ahead of me trying to cope and adjust to losing my best friend.

My mother was an incredible baker and very good cook.   I wish now that I had spent more time in the kitchen with her.  I don't know why I didn't.  It was just her thing.  I feel very fortunate to also have a passion for baking and a deep love for cooking.  These two likes and this blog have helped me over the past year to channel so much grief into something positive.  They are things that bring me joy while allowing me to stay connected to my Mom.  I have all of her recipe boxes and cookbooks and love going through them.  I have picked up the habit, in my own cookbooks, of after making something  writing on the side how it was or what I tweaked.

The story below was written by my Mom's neighbor who was a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton.  Her neighbor interviewed her during the throws of her Christmas baking.

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A December State of Mind

With one week left until Christmas, Katy Duffus' kitchen is a mini-bakery. The retired nurse is in the thick of her holiday baking extravaganza - no less than 10 kinds of cookies for family, friends and neighbors.  (She used to make around 90 dozen each Christmas!)

Fortified with a third cup of hazelnut coffee, Duffus on Dec. 16 started the morning making Swedish ginger cookies, using a star for cutouts. 

Counter space had been scoured, 10 cookies sheets sat in a pile and dough made earlier in the month and frozen was molded into wafer-thin stars with a light sprinkling of sugar. 

She began baking cookies as gifts years ago to cut back on spending, when her extended family decided not to exchange individual gifts.  "I didn't like the idea of that. I like to do something," she said. 

Each year she bakes different recipes. One mainstay is a sugar cookie handed down by her mother, the late Charlotte Karrer Powers. 

Besides the sugar and ginger cookies, this season's production is fudge puddles, shortbread, maple logs, almond bars, pecan sandies, cappuccino flats, pressed spritz cookies, a brownie cup and lemon poppy seed and Neapolitan cookies. 

"I always make way too many, but my son is always happy to take them to work and my daughter too," she said. 

She makes the cookies small so that a wide variety can fit attractively on a tray. For cookies in the shape of a wreath, Duffus uses a straw to poke a hole that will later have a red bow tied on.

Duffus melts chocolate, dipping one end of some cookies. Others are frosted with icing or colored sugar. 

"My feeling is they can look lovely, but if they don't taste good they aren't worth it," she said.

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I miss you Mom!  Thank you for the inspiration and direction to find something that I love to do, that brings me so much joy, and brings joy to others.