CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Running Regrets
6 p.m.
W HEN I’M DONE BAKING and we’re closed, I run. In the spring, through summer, and into fall, I take a right outside of our shop and hightail it down Route 12. I follow the river past the nature center, toward the town of Worcester. In the winter, I’m on the treadmill at home. This is my time to think, to remember what it is I’ve surely forgotten during a long, flour-coated day and to talk to my mom. Along with baking, running is one of the great legacies she left me.
In 1995, I was standing in the hallway outside of the bathroom, my forehead resting against the doorjamb, when my mom called to tell me she had colon cancer; I started softly knocking my head against the wood to stop from crying. She had been hedging her health bets all her life: restricting her diet, exercising, abstaining from alcohol, driving cautiously. At first they thought it was just a minor abnormality, a polyp. Maybe even hemorrhoids. I laughed because anything vaguely defective in my mother’s health was impossible. She was a superhero! She ate whole grains with glee and slurped wheatgrass like fine wine. And she was a marathon runner.
Mom had taken up running after I made one of those gracious remarks that are the staple of preteen mother-daughter conversation.
“Why do your arms jiggle like that?”
She was making a left-hand turn into a gas station. The hand-over-hand motion highlighted a barely discernible looseness in her triceps. As she was gassing the car, just the midsection of her body visible from the passenger seat, I saw her pinch herself up and down her arm, assessing the damage of time, smarting from my cruel comment.
She started by running a few quarter-mile laps around the block. Despite my valuation of her physique, she looked great. She was thin and leggy. Back then she had a belt that really said it all: “Foxy Lady!” My sister’s high school suitors timed their visits to coincide with Mom’s launch from the backyard. “You sure you and Sandy aren’t sisters, Mrs. Bullock?” The neighborhood gents were especially pleased by her new exercise regimen and found time to manicure their lawns and prune hedges, all the while yelling their encouragement.
“Looking good, Helga! Keep it up!”
I was less supportive and found her public sweating mortifying. She wore tiny, shiny running shorts. Not to mention she’d wear lipstick, and her coif moved with a luxuriant Prell bounce.
She ran the same streets alone, over and over.
“Why don’t you run somewhere else for a change? It’s embarrassing.”
When my mother was diagnosed, my first thought was that she’d have to stop running. That would be a loss to both her and our neighborhood. But she turned her back on running and her past pursuits at securing a long life. She grasped on to the tragedy in the pronouncement and carried it with her. Her fight, it seems, had been in the prevention, the supplements and the exercise regimens. The leafy greens and organic reds. It was all for naught and she’d lost. There’s always a chance that someone will pull through, go triumphantly into remission, but you can’t depend on it. And the stories you hear—the ones where the feisty lady clenches her fists and cries, “I’m not going to let it get me! I’m going to fight this and win!”—that wasn’t my mom.
She did, however, have a score to settle and wanted company doing it. She was ready to open her mind and her digestive tract, because she didn’t know how long she’d have use of either. So after she was diagnosed she ate everything: dairy, meat, a couple of fillet-o-fishes. Boy, was she pissed for denying herself for so many years. It was an epic food bender.
Coffee and cake found itself on the daily docket. There were restaurants that needed to be visited. She kept reviews and made a detailed list for my father. Get a reservation; we don’t have a lot of time. My mother was known for her palate; nothing of her own making ever passed her lips that had an artificial ingredient, so she recognized the chemical components to the atom when she ate out. Her greatest praise of a restaurant meal was that it tasted “clean.” When we set out to sample wedding cakes for my upcoming nuptials because we’d be too busy to make our own, she dissected the alleged buttercream we were proffered and announced in no uncertain terms, “This isn’t buttercream!” and then rattled off what she surmised it was. And she was dead on.
The Inn at Little Washington was highest on her list of culinary destinations. Veal, goose fat, oxtail consommé, she was up for the challenge. She was even willing to eat their desserts, although they’d pale in comparison to her own handiwork.
My mother and father spent a long weekend at the inn and took every meal there. She recalled minor culinary details with awe, from breakfast to dinner. She ate each morsel and ventured with a threatening fork into Dad’s plate more than once. She thought the whole experience, to quote my grandmother’s greatest compliment, “vunderfohl.” She went so far as to buy the cookbook sold by the inn. That was high praise indeed, from my mother.
We went out to dinner on New Year’s Eve, to the venerable Hay-Adams Hotel in the heart of D.C. New Year’s had been a holiday kept well within my mother’s controlling hands—the meal, the entertainment, and the alcohol all of her choosing. She’d cook and bake for days, arrange an elaborate buffet in the dining room. She would orchestrate the downstairs for the feuerzangenbowle, the traditional German flaming punch, making sure that the table and the immediate environs weren’t flammable. And the entertainment was easily arranged. The guests were all opera singers or musicians. Everyone would sidle up to the piano, sheet music in hand, drunkenly dueling each other with high Cs and maddening breath control. Sandy and I would cringe in the corner waiting for an intermission from the noise or for dessert to be served, whichever came first. But my mother always saved the best for last. The lights would dim, someone would push “play” on the audio, and she’d appear at the top of the steps wearing sheer gauze harem pants, a scarf festooned with tinkling coins tied at the waist, and a tiny bustier embroidered with more of the same racket-making coins. She’d descend slowly, castanets clacking away in her hands, and when she hit the bottom of the stairs, Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils would begin. To my utter horror.
My mother hadn’t put on that particular belly dancing show in some time, not since her muscled abdomen had been left with foot-long scars from surgery and certainly not since she consented, under much protestation, to getting a colostomy bag. So this year we sat at the beautiful table in the restored dining room of the Hay-Adams, conservatively dressed, drinking Champagne, and enjoying, not a great meal, but a lovely meal nonetheless. She might, at one point in her cancer-free life, have proclaimed the meal unclean in parts, but she wasn’t wasting time seeking out the unpleasant anymore and stuck to the tastes that made her happy.
We spent hours together rifling through recipes, some scribbled on loose paper in old German script and others ripped from the food section of the Washington Post. She considered their relative merits and put aside those that she felt I had to have. Butterzeug, the butter cookies she made every year at Christmas, always heart shaped. Sandy and I would sneak onto the side porch where she kept them stored in tins in the cool air and eat as many as we could before we got frostbitten. Zwetschgendatschi, the beloved plum tart of childhood. New York cheesecake, the closest to Lindy’s she could reverse engineer. Her famous Pecan Chocolate Torte, also known as the Orgasm Cake. She handed them to me resolutely. I have them, still sitting in a box, unopened. There are some recipes that I memorized, never needing to consult her handwritten notes. But for those that I haven’t, whenever I go to the box to find them, I get sucked into her handwriting and the memory of her. The loops and slashes of the letters still bearing the shape of her German grade school lessons are living pieces of her. Like the outgoing message we can’t erase but dare not play. Or the cassettes of her singing.
There are some recipes I can’t make because I’d rather have her make them.
Our last task was to visit Germany before she was too sick to make the trip. We visited Nürnberg, her hometown, and the most famous German Christmas market, the Christkindlsmarkt. We ate small lard-packed and darkly browned bratwurst sausages nestled side by side on a hard white roll. We smothered them with spicy mustard and walked among the stalls, taking in the handcrafts and merriment, stopping for glühwein, a warm, sweet mulled wine, to warm up between bites, and then finishing up with a lebkuchen, the Nürnberger spice cake.
We visited our family in Bergen nestled in the Bavarian Alps and walked slowly up the neighborhood peak, Hochfelln. At the top, we settled into worn wooden benches and had coffee and cake, Kaiserschmarrn and topfenstrudel, Alpine sugar bombs both. In Germany, cafés sit atop every treacherous mountain, making the most grueling ascent worth every blister and curse because you sit with the most breathtaking view at three thousand feet in a cozy cottage with warm food and a cold beer. So often, I’ll make a painful physical journey to a beautiful place in America and lament the absence of these things that I find sacred.
Decades after her first marathon and five years after her diagnosis, when my mother lay dying of cancer, I took care of her. We’d spend time in the early morning, visiting while she made her way through a tower of pills. When she fell into a narcotic doze, I’d watch her with profound regret.
So I started running her route while she slept. I didn’t have her stunning road presence, just a ponytail and sloppy shorts, but I wanted to honor her by running in circles and to honor her life, and as I bounced along the pavement of my childhood I kept reminding myself to live without regret and with love.
Now that she’s gone, I still run and think of her. And every year at Thanksgiving and Christmastime, when my mother broke out her culinary genius and let go of all things healthy, Sandy and I will start trading calls if we aren’t spending the holidays together. The conversation is always the same.” Okay, so I have the fingerling potatoes, the mayo, and the shallots. I know I also need oil. What am I forgetting?” There are recipes that were never written down: for the potato salad we had on Christmas Eve along with marinated white asparagus and the Nürnberger bratwurst we smuggled in from Germany in little lard-packed cans in the summer; or the Thanksgiving gravy my mother and my aunt would conjure from the drippings of the bird; or the exact range of spices she used to dress the bird to make it so flavorful and crisp. We’ll never remember them without each other’s help. So we talk to each other at least five times in the day to consult about ingredients and to report back the results. While we always do a good job, we also know that it will never taste as good as Mom’s. And we agree that we’d never want it to be any other way. She gave us so much in the way of love and memories. And when she broke out the good stuff, eschewing the lean and the green fiber-packed roughage to bring out the fatty food of celebration, her love shone as bright as the star of Bethlehem.
I’m always mindful of my mother, remembering to enjoy the good stuff and share it with others. To run like a kid, not because it’s good for me but because it brings me joy. When I get back, sweaty and happy, we lock up and take stock of our day. Ray will open a bottle of wine and I’ll take the lid off the cookie jar. Ray pours everyone a small glass and we toast. I’ve trained everyone in the awkward ways of German drinking: you’ve got to make eye contact with each person as you clink glasses. To do otherwise, you not only disrespect your drinking partner, you’ll be cursed with seven years of bad sex. And while everyone giggles and still protests at having to lock eyes with each toast, they’ve acknowledged that they’ve brought the tradition into their lives outside of work.
As we scrub, organize, and gossip, we make dibs on any pastries that are left over and fight over the last drop in the wine bottle. When we’re done, I kick everyone out the side door, locking it tight, making sure they remember their pastries. I turn off the lights, turn on the alarm, and make a mad dash for the front door.
I wave to Gayle; she’s leaning over the railing that leads up to Terry’s and smoking a cigarette, enjoying a moment of peace when there’s no one in their store. I head toward home and the winding hills of Worcester, to our tiny house with a gravel driveway lined with maple, a barn tucked off to one side and miles of rolling hills we can call our very own.
When I turn into the drive, the dogs race out to greet me, playing chicken with my mud-encrusted Subaru as I make my way into the barn. Ray’s beaten me home and started the grill. We stand outside with our pups running circles around us, and we marvel at our luck. Dumpling Hill to our back, Worcester Range to our front, and pines all around. And in the background, a distant owl calls to us and welcomes us home.
Helga’s Cake
WHEN WE FIRST OPENED, even though I wasn’t a big fan of the Orgasm Cake as a kid, I emailed my aunt Erika for my mom’s recipe. She sent it along with a little note: “Dear Gesine, I understand if you won’t be able to call the pecan chocolate torte ‘the Orgasm Cake’ if you are selling it at the store—you might end up with another line out the front door like at the opening!”
I looked it over a few times. I did some calculations to increase the recipe from a single cake to wholesale quantities without screwing up the texture, then set about whipping eggs and grinding nuts, enjoying the dark aromas coming off the pecans as they got ground in the processor. I’d made a lot of German tortes in my pastry shop, mostly nut-based affairs from recipes I’d collected as an adult. I’d never bothered to look at my mother’s recipe until that moment. It was deeply rooted in German baking but used an all-American nut. When it came out of the oven, it was light and springy, like a boring sponge cake, but it gave off a beautiful and complex scent of roasted nuts and caramel. Before I made the icing, I tried a piece of the cake naked and warm. Damn. It was a complicated piece of goodness. It was almost savory; the pecans gave it a depth and texture that defied the underlying sweetness. And when you add the chocolate buttercream, that’s a sensual piece of cake. Because I sell it at the store, I had to agree with Tante Erika, it couldn’t keep its original name. So now it’s called Helga’s Cake. I like that a lot better.
MAKES ONE 8-INCH THREE LAYERED CAKE
For the cake
Nonstick cooking spray
12 ounces pecans
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
8 large eggs, separated, plus 2 whole eggs
1tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup hot coffee or boiling water
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Lightly grease three 8-inch round cake pans with 1½-inch sides. Line the bottoms of the pans with wax paper and lightly grease the paper.
In a food processor, grind the pecans with ½ cup of the sugar and the salt until they turn into a fine meal. Add the egg yolks, 2 whole eggs, vanilla, and baking powder and blend until you get a smooth paste.
Whip the 8 egg whites on high in the bowl of an electric mixer using the whisk attachment. Just as the egg whites start to gain volume and look white and fluffy (but not chunky), add the remaining ½ cup sugar in a slow, steady stream. Whisk on high until the whites are very shiny and hold a stiff peak.
Transfer the pecan paste to a large metal mixing bowl and stir in a heaping spoonful of the egg whites to lighten the batter. Gently fold the remaining egg whites into the pecan mixture until well incorporated, being careful to keep the integrity of the aerated eggs. Divide the batter among the three cake pans and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until the cake springs back when you touch it. Allow to cool completely on wire racks before you release from the pan.
Place the chocolate, egg yolks, and vanilla in a blender or food processor. With the motor running, add the coffee in a slow, steady stream. Add the butter in small bits and process until the frosting is smooth. If it’s too soft to spread, refrigerate.
This is a strange method of making buttercream. I’ve tried it in a more traditional manner, using a water bath and a mixer, but it really doesn’t come out the same.
You know how to do it by now. First layer, then buttercream. Add the second layer, more buttercream. You’ve got it.