Colón - Cherries in winter: my familys recipe for hope in hard times

Suzan Coln has written for O, The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Harpers Bazaar, Jane, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Nathan.

www.suzancolon.net

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2010

Copyright 2009, 2010 by Suzan Coln

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2009.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

The Estate of Jan Struther: Advice to My Future Grand-daughter from Betsinda Dances and Other Poems by Jan Struther (London: Oxford University Press, 1931). Reprinted by permission of Ysenda Maxtone-Graham and Robert Maxtone-Graham, on behalf of the Estate of Jan Struther.

New York Daily News: $5 Daily for Favorite RecipeChicken Roman from New York Daily News, copyright by New York Daily News, L.P. Reprinted by permission of New York Daily News.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Coln, Suzan.
Cherries in winter : my familys recipe for hope in hard times / Suzan Coln.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Coln, Suzan. 2. Coln, SuzanFamilyAnecdotes. 3. Food habitsUnited StatesAnecdotes. 4. Food habitsEconomic aspectsUnited StatesAnecdotes. I. Title.
CT275.C7323A3 2009
394.120973dc22
2009022378

eISBN: 978-0-385-53258-7

www.anchorbooks.com

v3.1

For Mom, Dad, and Nathan

Found among Matildas recipe file and personal papers:

Advice to My Future Grand-daughter

While I am young and have not yet forsworn
Valor for comfort, truth for compromise
I write these words to you, the unknown, unborn
Child of the child that in this cradle lies:
Live, then, as now I live; love as I love
With body and heart and mind, the tangled three,
Sell peace for beautys sake, and set above
All other thingsecstasy, ecstasy.

JAN STRUTHER

Confession

Without my illusions

I should die

Coward, I,

Who cannot face things

As they really are

But always seek

The shooting star,

The Christmas Tree

And only see

What I want to see.

MATILDA KALLAHER

Peter and Matilde Guibe

THEIR CHILDREN: Carrie, Katie, Willie, Freddie, Nettie, Sophie, Artie, Richie, and Madeline

Carrie Guibe Riordan and William Riordan

THEIR CHILDREN: Matilda, Catherine, Jack, Claire, and Billy

Matilda Riordan and Charles Kallaher

THEIR CHILD: Carolyn

Carolyn Kallaher and E. Coln

(divorced; Carolyn later married David Granger)

CAROLYNS CHILD: Suzan

Suzan and Nathan

Note: The tree is pared down to the immediate family members mentioned in the story.

JANUARY 2009

HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY

You know what you have to do now, my mother tells me. You have to put up soup.

Put up soup; thats what my family says when times get tough. Some people batten down the hatches, others go to the mattresseswhatever your familys code phrase is, it means bracing yourself and doing whatever will sustain you through rough going until things get better. In my family, we put up soup.

That isnt just a saying, though. It means actually getting out a big, heavy pot, like the old black cast-iron one my grandparents made stew in, and cooking up something thick and hearty that will stick to your ribs, put meat on your bones, or any of the other expressions that as a child I thought were grossFood sticking to my ribs? Eeew!but that as an adult I understand and find comforting.

So you get out your pot, and you get beans, a ham hock, a can of tomatoes. Salt, pepper, a bay leaf. Meat if you can afford it. Clams if youre near water and can dig them out at low tide like my grandpa did, raking them out of the muck and putting them in a plastic laundry basket with an inner tube around it to keep it afloat, the whole contraption tied to his waist. If theres no meat or fish, vegetables and potatoes will do.

When the soup is done, you serve it with some bread, if you have it. And you wait for things to get better. They have before, and they will again.

My family knows all about putting up soup; weve had lots of practice. But I havent had to do it in a while, so I need a recipe.

It has to be here somewhere.

Im tossing our basement like a thief, though only a thief with very practical or eccentric tastes (or both) would be interested in whats down here. I push aside the bales of toilet tissue and paper towels that my sensible husband, Nathan, buys from one of those huge box stores that feed into our stock the bunker mentality; once you cross the state line from New York to New Jersey, you buy in bulk. Under the paper goods are storage trunks holding clothes for better and worse weather. Another box is full of paperbacksthe novels for teenagers that Id written a few years ago. I got extras in case literary agents, editors, or anyone else might want to see them. Like the toilet paper, theyre in large supply.