Holiday Goodies

For as long as I can remember, Thumbprint Cookies have been my favorite holiday cookie treat. My paternal grandmother started the Thumbprint tradition. The cookies soon became a favorite of her little son Ronny (my dad.) So, of course, my mom had to learn how to make them and carry on the Thumbprint tradition. My mom’s been gone for many years, so the Thumbprint tradition was left to me. I’m certain the tradition will be carried on for generations. My daughter-in-law makes them now, too.

Our Thumbprint cookies are made of a rich, buttery dough that is rolled into a ball, coated with coconut and poked in the middle to make a bowl to hold creamy frosting — red and green, of course. Long ago, my grandma may have used her thumb to push a shallow indentation into each little ball of cookie dough, thus the name Thumbprints. Somewhere along the line, though, my mom began using the end of a wooden spoon for the job. It may have been because the thumb-pressing process doesn’t take place until the cookies have baked for 5 minutes. It makes for a very hot, steamy thumb. Ouch!  The end of a wooden spoon creates a space for frosting much too small for my taste. Over the years, I’ve started using the end of the handle on a small Swedish butter knife made of wood. It’s the only thing I ever do with that wooden tool. The rest of the year it stays tucked in a kitchen drawer. The end of that knife makes a large basin to hold lots of frosting. Perfect!

One of my favorite treats to have during the holidays is one that I can enjoy with a hot cup of tea. These traditional Scottish shortbread finger biscuits are one of those favorites of mine. I come back to the same recipe year after year, but this time I decided to try something new. Going on a tip from a Scottish woman to use a portion of rice flour for a more tender cookie, I instead decided to use garbanzo bean flour.

I've been meaning to use garbanzo bean flour ever since I purchased a package some time ago. I had intended to use it for making Besan Ladoo, an Indian sweet made from gram flour, which is their name for garbanzo bean or chick pea flour. I haven't had the chance to make that sweet yet, but I took the opportunity to use the flour for the first time. It turned out to be a very good idea. I achieved a much more tender cookie than what I've made in the past. And to gild the lily a bit, I dipped a third of each finger in melted semisweet chocolate and then sprinkled it with chopped pistachios. I must say they turned out great.

The “old timers” in Maine always eat salmon and peas for their fourth of July family feast. This tradition was started a long time ago when salmon still came “up river to spawn” and people still rushed in the Spring to plant their peas so they would have the first peas of the year, hopefully by the 4th, if the weather was good.  (I still have customers that plant their peas in the fall so they sprout when they are ready come Spring.)

The old tradition is to bake a center cut chunk of salmon at 350 degrees till it is less than moist, (so all the relatives like it) than nap it with a white sauce, better known as a béchamel sauce to which you add in chopped hard cooked eggs.  And peas, lot of peas cooked with butter, salt, pepper and a little water. The rule of thumb was to cook them till when you blew on a spoonful they wrinkled.

I never understand how something becomes a day (or a month, for that matter -- November is National Pomegranate month.  April is Grilled Cheese Month.)  Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday suddenly became President’s Day?  And who picked the date of Memorial Day?     

But I think we should all declare June 12th to be Habeas Corpus Day. And I hope that we celebrate it forever.   

Habeas Corpus:  Writ requiring a person to be brought before judge or into court, esp. to investigate lawfulness of his restraint.