Now since we're talking about fruitcakes and other traditional Christmas eating favorites, I thought we should give the fruitcake's old cousin, mincemeat, some love here too.
One of Mrs. C's annual gifts to me every Christmas is to make a sheet of our family's now 100+ year old recipe mincemeat cookies. I've been nibbling on these little gems since about the age of 4, every December, without fail. As a little tot, the grandparents would sprinkle some confectioner's sugar on them for me. But starting a few years later, I graduated to eating them "straight". And have ever since.
I think I am the last one in the family to so enjoy our mincemeat cookies.
More of a tiny mincemeat tart, but the making of the crust material I am told (every year) is extremely labor intensive. Each cookie must be hand filled and folded. At this point, she only makes a couple dozen of them, and we ration out the few I don't eat.
I don't ask Mrs. C to make the mincemeat itself. Never have, and never will. All I ask, kindly, is that it have some booze in it, and that the recipe be followed. Mrs. C loves me, so she does just that. I treasure those little cookies every year for a week or so.
But what we have found here as the years have gone by is that the supply of mincemeat is disappearing, as our world moves on from it.
In years past, I would pick up a case of the Crosse & Blackwell with brandy and rum, which would last us a few years, enough extra for a pie or two along the way. This was the best store-bought American blend out there for decades. In the last few years I would order it from the manufacturer, as the stores slowly stopped carrying it. And this year, it has gone completely away. Unavailable.
That left Mrs. C in the difficult position of scouring for the cheaper brand, "NS". After great effort, she was only able to find 2 jars left, at a grocer that only ordered 6 for this entire season. And she had to explain to the young clerks at the courtesy counter where they were holding it, that no, "there is no meat in mincemeat".
The kids there were positively amazed at this mysterious food from another alien world, another time. And they studied the ingredients, and declared it sounded tasty indeed, even if it did have no meat in it.
So this year we finally had a shortage, and had to go across the pond (via an import grocer) to source out what may be the last readily available source of ready-made mincemeat in America in December 2023 ...
I am hopeful that it is as good as the American variety, and I suspect it is. Maybe even better. The English do know their mincemeat. But at a cost of nearly double of what we had been paying, I also suspect that we are slowly winding down our tradition at a good time.
But all that having been said, who here also relishes a good homemade mincemeat pie or cookie, that most traditional of Thanksgiving and Christmas fillings?
One of Mrs. C's annual gifts to me every Christmas is to make a sheet of our family's now 100+ year old recipe mincemeat cookies. I've been nibbling on these little gems since about the age of 4, every December, without fail. As a little tot, the grandparents would sprinkle some confectioner's sugar on them for me. But starting a few years later, I graduated to eating them "straight". And have ever since.
I think I am the last one in the family to so enjoy our mincemeat cookies.
More of a tiny mincemeat tart, but the making of the crust material I am told (every year) is extremely labor intensive. Each cookie must be hand filled and folded. At this point, she only makes a couple dozen of them, and we ration out the few I don't eat.
I don't ask Mrs. C to make the mincemeat itself. Never have, and never will. All I ask, kindly, is that it have some booze in it, and that the recipe be followed. Mrs. C loves me, so she does just that. I treasure those little cookies every year for a week or so.
But what we have found here as the years have gone by is that the supply of mincemeat is disappearing, as our world moves on from it.
In years past, I would pick up a case of the Crosse & Blackwell with brandy and rum, which would last us a few years, enough extra for a pie or two along the way. This was the best store-bought American blend out there for decades. In the last few years I would order it from the manufacturer, as the stores slowly stopped carrying it. And this year, it has gone completely away. Unavailable.
That left Mrs. C in the difficult position of scouring for the cheaper brand, "NS". After great effort, she was only able to find 2 jars left, at a grocer that only ordered 6 for this entire season. And she had to explain to the young clerks at the courtesy counter where they were holding it, that no, "there is no meat in mincemeat".
The kids there were positively amazed at this mysterious food from another alien world, another time. And they studied the ingredients, and declared it sounded tasty indeed, even if it did have no meat in it.
So this year we finally had a shortage, and had to go across the pond (via an import grocer) to source out what may be the last readily available source of ready-made mincemeat in America in December 2023 ...
I am hopeful that it is as good as the American variety, and I suspect it is. Maybe even better. The English do know their mincemeat. But at a cost of nearly double of what we had been paying, I also suspect that we are slowly winding down our tradition at a good time.
But all that having been said, who here also relishes a good homemade mincemeat pie or cookie, that most traditional of Thanksgiving and Christmas fillings?
