| KEEP ON COOKIN', DON'T
STOP COOKIN' |
| With
strong roots and her passion to guide her, Jackie kept on cooking.
She taught herself from cookbooks and food magazines. She moved
up the familial totem pole. It was quite an achievement to get
passed the Christmas cooking torch. It meant she cooked the
bulk of the meal and her mother, grandmother and her aunt made
their specialties. She broke what she deemed a silly family
tradition —- the dinner rush! |
"On Christmas
day, my family would walk in the door and expect dinner
within five minutes. After I'd been cooking for days, I
didn't want my dinner inhaled
in three seconds. So I introduced appetizers — a few
savory morsels with enough variety to slow 'em down. They
loved it — a raw bar, a shrimp boil, crab cakes, or
a variety of Asian dumplings. YUM! "
|
| And
the dessert menu changed as well. |
"Traditionally,
dessert had to come right on the tail of the dinner. So
I'd bake up a storm to further slow them down. In addition
to Grandma's 'ear-smoking' fruit cake — baked in January
and laced with 151 rum for 11 months, I'd make loads of
desserts, overwhelming them at every turn, forcing them
to take their time. A minimum of six different kinds with
doubles of the big sellers. Christmas cookies too. Everybody
had to get a bit of everything and of course everyone had
food to take home. Grandma's tradition has never changed."
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