The Wizard

The unexpected fortification from my mother's kitchen wizardry....

I just learned that my story about my mother’s vile concoction, Tigers Milk, and an unexpected surprise dessert, has just been published in Eat, Darling, Eat.

Writers- Eat, Darling, Eat is always open to hearing your stories about Mothers and Daughters and cooking. Readers- I think you will love to read the heartwarming stories on this site.

http://www.eatdarlingeat.net/

The first sip of Tiger’s Milk is the worst. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try not to taste the vile concoction as it slips over my tongue, and my mind only faintly registers my mother’s faith that this will fortify my bones and my skinny nine-year-old frame. Inspired by her bible, Adele Davis’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, Mother whips up this breakfast staple in her new Waring blender. I wonder briefly if she gags as she swallows her own glass of orange gooey sludge.

1. Empty 1 can of frozen orange juice into the blender.

2. Add 4 cups of water and 1 1/2 cups non-fat powdered milk.

3. Add 1 cup of brewer’s yeast and a little lecithin powder.

I didn’t find out until I had a sleepover at my friend Linda’s house that this liquid torture wasn’t normal breakfast food in 1956, and I much preferred the Rice Krispies with heaping spoonfuls of sugar and hot chocolate with marshmallows that were the morning fare at her house.

Years later, I realized I had inherited something else from my mother that extended beyond the protein, vitamins, and minerals in that breakfast drink: a steadfast faith that if I tough it out, hold my nose, and do what is difficult, it will yield something valuable.

I attribute Tiger’s Milk to leaving a well-paying, soul-sucking job to start my own business. Perhaps it played a role in signing up for the triathlon team on my 65^th birthday or reinventing myself after divorcing my husband, whom I could no longer trust. On and on, I see the choices that were hard but ultimately strengthened my spirit.

In her kitchen wizardry, my mother left me with what I think now was the greatest gift of all.

One day, an ordinary day, no one’s birthday or holiday, she invited me into the kitchen to help her make a new dessert recipe that she wanted to try. Either because of or in spite of her college major in home ec, she already had a reputation in our family for ruining anything that might have been tasty. Whole-wheat flour in cakes, pie crusts, and doughnuts, cutting the sugar amount in half or thirds, and adding flaxseed, wheat germ, and dry milk powder to everything were her more common recipe adaptations. But I was her helper in the kitchen, gradually taking over making the family dinner when Mother started working, and my siblings trusted me to whip up uncontaminated brownies and cookies.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The baking process started with making a sheet pan of dark chocolate brownies. Real brownies: Baker’s chocolate melting over a double boiler, lots of butter, full sugar, white flour brownies. This alone was shocking.

My sisters and brothers now streamed into the kitchen, full of hope over experience, as the deliciousness of chocolate wafted through the air.

As the brownies cooled, we took turns whipping egg whites to a shiny froth with cream of tartar and sugar.

Next, my mother slid a half-gallon block of Breyer’s Neapolitan ice cream onto the brownie foundation. I helped her seal it all in the gooey egg white foam, complete with peaks and flourishes.

As she opened the oven door to slide in the whole strange and magnificent concoction, the 500-degree heat hit our faces. Now we were worried. Mother was ruining something that had so much promise. We all waited nervously as the timer clicked 120 seconds.

When it emerged from this treatment, it was the most astonishing dessert I had ever experienced. The warm, toasted meringue, the slightly softened ice cream, and the dark chocolate still linger on my tongue, 70 years later, and immediately transport me to our hundred-year-old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the family is gathered around the table in pure joy.

(1956, I’m in the middle.)

Joy strengthens; joy nourishes. She left me with the knowledge of how essential it is to break out of rigid ideas and habits and do something outrageous and joyous, like make Baked Alaska on an ordinary afternoon.

The top picture is my mom and me enjoying a cappuccino in Florence in 2005.

To get the recipe for Mom’s Baked Alaska and to hear me reading the story, go to http://www.eatdarlingeat.net/