Love of baking at the holidays

I like to bake. No, I love to bake. Well, really, I have to bake. With the holiday season upon us, everyone's thoughts turn to food.

In my family, our thoughts are always turned to food. My mother was the best cook I ever knew. She wasn't into compliments or showy forms of affection but if she loved you, she would cook your favorite meal or bake your favorite dessert.

On our birthday, we were allowed to chose the menu and our favorite cake. My selection was always spare ribs with potatoes, baked beans and chocolate cake. My oldest sister, Elaine, would always choose a special cake that required my mother to use her heavy duty mixer. I made it several years ago and it tasted like November. (My sister's birthday is Nov. 5.)

Feeling neglected one day, I sighed and said to no one in particular, "It's been years since we had rice pudding." Not to be pressured, my mother waited two days before rice pudding appeared on the table.

I am sure it was my mother who originated the saying, "If you love me, eat it!" I loved my mother and I ate everything.

While I attended college at Cleveland State University, I lived with my grandmother who had taught my mother well. The only dish in which my mother did not excel was chicken soup. I teased my grandmother and asked her why she did not teach her daughter to make good chicken soup.

My grandmother took me very seriously and said, "Does she use a whole chicken?" I replied, "Yes." "Does she add celery, carrots, onion, salt and pepper?" "Yes," I replied again. My grandmother shook her head and stirred her three-quart pan of chicken soup. Then I started to laugh! My mother used the same ingredients but when feeding seven people, my mother used a six-quart pot and just added more water!

My mother loved to bake. Our house looked and smelled like a bakery. Just ask the Laub's delivery guy. For those of you not fortunate enough to be from Cleveland, Laubs's Bakery had small trucks that ran through the city streets and across the hilly suburbs delivering fresh baked pastries door-to-door.

My mother would feel sorry for the delivery person who would make it all the way out to our farm in the middle of Walton Hills. She would always buy something. The delivery guy would sigh and say, "Mrs. Timko, could we just trade?" My mother never knew how to take that remark. Talk about ungrateful children, we used to be excited that we had "store-bought pastry" to eat.

My mother made a wondrous assortment of apple pies, molasses cookies, conga bars, rice pudding, and of course, the famous kolaches and shisky. When my mother tried a new recipe, I was her official taste-tester. When I would ask what was in it, she would reply, "You tell me."

I learned how to identify the most subtle ingredients and she was always proud that I could tell the difference between nutmeg, cinnamon or cloves. I was my mother's Chief Assistant.

My mother would tell stories when we baked. She would talk about growing up in Cleveland in the ethnic neighborhoods. Sometimes she would retell stories about our adventures living on a farm far from the city she knew and loved so well. I thank her for her gift of storytelling.

Thanks to my mother, I am a good cook and even better baker. During the holidays, I celebrate my mother and her wonderful gift of feeding people. It was the best gift she ever gave me and one that keeps on giving with the many breads, kolaches and cookies that my friends and family share each year.

Georgene Johnson is director of Library Services at Washington State Community College. This holiday season she begins passing the family gifts of food and storytelling on to her first grandchild, Mitch.