Lisa is the author of the award-winning memoir, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, which was an National Book Critics Circle Top-10 Independent Press Pick for 2011. With Caroline, she's the co-founder of Learning to Eat and co-editor of The Cassoulet Saved our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat. She holds an MA in creative writing, a PhD in English and has taught literature and creative writing widely, most recently in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco.
It isn’t the Cinque Terre, nor is it Venice, and it’s definitely not Paris, where Caroline & her gang are lucky enough to be on vacation, but Bay Head, NJ still has quiet, clean beaches, flanked by stately homes, canals, and Mueller’s Bakery— which has got to be one of the best small bakeries in the country.
Our rental was just around the corner from Mueller’s, which we knew about thanks to my brother, who lives the next town over. Every morning, the youngest girls would descend from their sleeping garret in the attic, find me and Finn in the second floor sunroom watching Cyberchase and drinking coffee, and we’d throw on our swimsuits and walk around the block to the bakery.
Inside was everything a butter-sugar-flour addict could dream of: the best jelly donuts I’ve had in 30 years–powdered and sugared both; chocolate donuts; powdered and glazed cake donuts; melt-in-your mouth apricot and berry danishes; bear claws; cheese claws; apple bars; turnovers; sweet pretzels; cinnamon rolls and twists; fresh bagels; fat muffins stuffed with blueberries; fancy cakes; everyday cakes; loaf breads and long breads–including sweet and savory varieties like Irish Soda; tray after tray of cookies, including decorated, themed ones as well as more traditional ones; cupcakes; and the major reason for my family’s swooning: the crumb cake–the recipe for which is unchanged since the Bakery’s inception over a century ago.
Suffice to say the crumb cake has a dense, rich layer of incredibly moist cake, and an even richer, not-to-sweet thick layer of buttery crumb, topped with enough powdered sugar to lightly dust your shirt while you eat. They’re impossibly good, the Platonic ideal of a crumb cake, and if you’re craving one right now, Mueller’s ships them. Anywhere.
We’d grab our cakes or donuts and cross the street and sit on a bench in front of the canal, where we’d unwrap the cakes and donuts from their waxed paper bags and eat, happily, while the morning woke up around us.
It was just like eating croissant on the Seine, Jersey Style.
Only in NJ because we literally can’t buy Yoo-Hoo where we live, but also because, well, it’s so full of crap and so unhealthy and downright gross that I would never buy it if we weren’t on vacation. But buy it I did, and a six pack at that, for my son, and his sister and their 2 cousins, partly because I remembered it as a rare treat from my NJ childhood and because the packaging is still so iconic, and it’s sort of good and sweet and cold.
Suffice to say Finn had a quintessential NJ food moment, sitting in one of the country premiere delicatessens, eating a bagel that had literally come straight out of the oven, and sucking down a Yoo-Hoo in maybe 60 seconds flat.
But he can also do a mean dance to Rosalita. Both feats prove he’s my son.
As it happens, we canceled our trip to Kauai this year, and we’re taking a local, recession-friendly vacation instead. But we are all dreaming of Hawaii, including Ella, who decided to have a Luau for her 7th birthday party.
Of course, this got her dad thinking about cake. We said to each other, late one night, wouldn’t it be great to have a volcano cake? Sure, it would be great to have a volcano cake! You should make a volcano cake! And since Kory has now not met a cake challenge he can refuse he began to plan. I planned the party, which included a simple menu:
Much to my surprise, we had very little food left over, which is unusual at parties, though the sausages were a bigger hit with most kids than the chicken.
My deal with Kory was that I would bake a prep the cake, and he would decorate. I made one large red velvet sheet cake, to simulate the red dirt. Instead of cream cheese frosting, though, which I feared the kids might be picky about, I filled the cake with chocolate ganache which was supposed to accompany the double chocolate cake which made the foundation for the volcano. The chocolate volcano was filled with raspberry filling–lava, of course. The cakes were easily two of the best I’ve ever made, and were topped only by my husband’s incredible art. Kory used white fondant, which he colored and painted himself, cookie cutters for the stylized palms, and a kind of sprinkle that looked like sand. The flames are construction paper.
The kids ordered their pieces by “sea” or “volcano” paying little attention to the color or flavor (more or less intensely chocolately…). It was gorgeous, & the only problem is that now he might actually be expected to make one for every birthday.
When I moved to the suburbs, I quickly fell in with an excellent group of moms. These women were funny, friendly, well-educated, down-to-earth. They had adorable, energetic, smart kids. They made me feel welcome and they fed my soul. We and our yearlings became fast friends…and the years sped by. More than five years later, this group has been through a lot. Pretty much everything, really: births, deaths, divorce, remarriage, being hired and fired, moving house (internationally, even), serious illness…truly the gamut of what can happen in the middle years of breeding, parenting, and relating to one’s spouse. We’ve celebrated and consoled together, taken day trips and had plenty (okay, maybe not enough) of nights out.
But as often happens, when the oldest of our children entered kindergarten, the group began to fracture. Our kids attend different schools, and a few have moved out of town, though still within reasonable driving distance. So when weekly meetings became impossible, we convened a monthly Pizza Night. The goal was simple: to sustain our friendship and those of our kids. The overarching plan was to to Keep It Simple. No fancy cooking, no competitive potlucks, no late afternoon kitchen work allowed. We knew we’d never keep it up if this were the rule. To keep the emphasis on the friendship, we would order in pizza and bring a few simple sides to supplement.
We gathered the first Friday of every month, chipped in for pizza, and potlucked the rest: we brought appetizers, salads, sides, dessert, drinks for the kids, & plenty of wine. I’m pretty sure we all just chipped in whatever we could make that week, depending on the state of our pantry and the level of our weekly insanity. It was really, really fun. The kids ran a little wild and free, and we got a chance to catch up–sometimes around the living room, often outside on the patio. Since the kids have been together for so long, they were as eager to hang out as the moms were and, once fed, required minimal attention.
And something happened when we went from the morning playgroup to the Friday Night Pizza Party. Sure, we always had great food in the mornings, but there’s something different about convening for an easy dinner at the end of the week. We were all relaxed, and the event felt more social and less like a scheduled kids’ activity. It was something to look forward to for moms + kids alike, and something both groups were equally happy about attending. Of course, it’s great–and necessary–to get out without the kids, but there’s a certain excitement generated when the party is for them, too. There’s something about gathering for a meal, even–maybe especially–a simple one, that feeds hungers that are not always apparent. And that is what this group of women (like so many groups of women across the country, I’m sure) has always done so well.
For a while, we were good about keeping this up pretty regularly, but inevitably, it got harder. Now we get together only every few months, but the thing is–it’s still the same. Each time we meet, it’s still as if I’ve seen these women yesterday.
At our most recent night in, one friend made her flan, which is a little bit of a dessert staple for the group. It’s mostly for the moms but the kids sometimes finagle their way a slice, too. A quick search on Epicurious turns up nearly 60 recipes for flan, including coffee, orange, almond, corn, dulce de leche….but this is my friend’s version, and it’s always pleased us.
Mom’s Night In Flan
4 large eggs
1 can sweet and condensed milk
1 can evaporated milk
1-2 tsp.vanilla
1.boil water for “water bath”
2.mean while, in saucepan bring about 1 cup sugar to boiling over medium low heat till browns into carmel, watch and stir constantly, (I don’t use a thermometer or anything, I just eyeball it.
3. in any baking pan pour hot carmel into botton of pan (I’ve used glass, metal bread pan, corning ware, any size. My preference is a round dish about 7-9″)
4. Combine eggs, both cans of milks and 2 tsp. of vanilla in blender,mix on high spead 30-60 secs., depending on which kids are screaming
5. pour mixture over carmel and use a larger pan to pour the boiling water into for the “bath”
6. cook for 1 hour-1:15 mins. in 300 degree oven
7. cool to room temp.and then put in fridge for as long as you like
All of a sudden, it seems, the stone fruit is in the market. We have peaches, plums, apricots–and big, sloping piles of bright red cherries. The cherry season is short, and very sweet. And while we have a cherry pitter, and sometimes use it (ice cream, tarts, once in a red wine reduction for lamb), the cherries rarely last long enough to make it into something as complicated as a recipe.
I’m all about simple, these days, and letting my children experience food in its whole, pure state, so when the cherries come home on Sunday I pour them into a big glass bowl and set them in the middle of our home’s Command Central (aka the Kitchen Table) with a small bowl of water for rinsing and a smaller bowl for pits. We have an open floor plan, so all day long the kids & their friends & Kory and I pick, dip, & eat. On Memorial Day they were ravaged before, during, and after dinner as the kids carried the three bowls back and forth from appetizer to dinner to dessert table.
They’re a snack, of course, but because we eat only what’s in season at our local market things like cherries feel like a rare treat. This is one of the great things about eating locally and seasonally. On the one hand, things taste the way they should–& impeccably fresh–but it’s also exciting every time something new shows up. And yes, they are expensive. At $5-7/lb they cost us. But I think it’s worth it to have such an excellent snack to binge on for a few days, and in the long run, that $7 is teaching the kids about many, many things besides how great cherries taste. And it’s keeping them healthy. With seasonal eating, we appreciate each crop all the more, we look forward to each new harvest, and we really do celebrate every mouthful. Even Ella and Finn know that they’re getting something special.
The cherries, on the other hand, are lucky if they see Tuesday morning.
