Joy of Cooking

All the kids were home for the holidays. (In fact, Jack just left to go back to Berlin on Saturday afternoon.) Let me tell you, there has been some serious cooking going on in the Farm Dover kitchen for the past three weeks.

Granola, life-changing bread and Snug Hollow pancakes for breakfasts, oyster stew, bean soup, and Mary's favorite vegetable soup for lunches, butternut squash lasagna, osso buco, chicken cacciatore and Christmas cheeseburgers for dinners. And let's not forget the pumpkin pie, mincemeat cookies, eggnog, homemade peppermint ice cream, and bread pudding for desserts. Oh, and cheesestraws, lots of cheesestraws.

I don't regret one single bite; for, along with the calories came time in the kitchen cooking with, and for, those I love the most. It was a time of great joy.

Having said all that, I was delighted when Jack suggested that he might cook us a Chinese dinner a few days before he was set to leave. It felt great to turn the planning, chopping, cooking – even the cleanup – over to him. Dinner was delicious. He is an accomplished cook, but I also think that food made with love always tastes better.

The next day, Jack announced that he wanted to bake a poppy seed cake roll. It was something he had ordered with coffee often in his travels around Europe and wanted Ed and me to try it. He had packed two bags of poppy seeds in his carry-on luggage, found a recipe on line, and set to making us this Old-World sweet treat. The recipe sounded complicated to me, but I wasn't the one trying to figure it out. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he ground the tiny poppy seeds in the coffee grinder, proofed the yeast, cut butter into a flour mixture, kneaded the dough, rolled the dough out into a rectangle, spread the poppy seed filling to within an inch of the edges, rolled the whole thing up like a jelly roll, allowed it to rise for an hour, and then baked it to a golden brown. It turned out beautifully, both to look at and to eat.

Jack is now gone back to his life in Germany. But each morning this week, I cut a slice of the poppy seed roll, fill my coffee mug, and, as I nibble away at his lovely creation, I think about how happy I am that he, and his two sisters, all are accomplished cooks -- and seem to get as much joy cooking for others as I do.

P.S. While his poppy seed roll was rising, Jack went down to the pond and joyfully skated round and round the ice. His mama hopes that he finds such joy in all the challenges he undertakes this year. Love you buddy. And miss you too...