Cookie Dough

I suppose it's the season, with so many people baking cookies and all, but it seems like there's been an alarming rise in the number of alarmist articles about the dangers of eating uncooked cookie dough (at least if it's made with eggs). Now, of course, this is sound medical and/or nutritional advice that I've been steadfastly ignoring for the better part of forty years.

When I was a kid growing up, my parents would engineer some really epic baking sessions. They draped one of our counters in an old sheet that they used for purpose, to put the warm cookies to cool. Mom would fire up her Kitchen Aid mixer and triple every recipe, because what's the point of having a Kitchen Aid mixer if you're not going to strain the capacity of its bowl and the power of its engine? And what's the point of baking cookies if you're not going to bake enough for several months of cookie eating (which, given that we had a "strict" three-cookie limit per meal, wasn't actually as long as you might think).

Mom and Dad worked together to manage this affair, loading cookie sheets with dough and unloading the finished cookies to the greasy sheet designated to the task, and eventually to Tupperware. Usually they would make several kinds of cookies, the most common being peanut butter, Corn Flake cookies (which also included coconut, to give you some idea of what they were actually like), and of course chocolate chip (strictly from the Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe). I think we occasionally had snickerdoodles and somewhat more often sugar cookies.

I apprenticed at my father's knee, mostly learning the fine art of pre-cleaning the beaters with tongue and fingers. Sometimes the spoons needed a similar cleaning. Sometimes you just needed to make sure the dough was still good, I guess. And then you'd have to try the cookies as soon as they were cool enough not to burn the tongue and at regular intervals thereafter.

And it only got worse when I baked cookies as an adult, because whatever checks there may have been to prevent overconsumption of cookie dough were wholly absent in my bachelor pad. Like my mother before me, I would load up my Kitchen Aid with triple batches of dough (as one does). But, at a guess, maybe half of that batch actually earned the honor of being cooked, because ovens are a rather slow cookie delivery system.

So I guess what it comes down to is that it's a miracle I'm still alive, given the dire warnings I've seen and the sheer quantity of raw eggs in the form of cookie dough that I've eaten in my lifetime. I suppose I've squandered a lifetime supply of luck on this survival, otherwise I'd be fabulously wealthy by now.

So it goes. Cookie dough is delicious, and I regret nothing.

You can print that on my tombstone if salmonella gets me.

Wintertide in a small world

Wednesday night, one of the choirs I sing in had its dress rehearsal for our upcoming concert. Lots of professionals joined us--brass, percussion, harp, and two soloists. The soprano soloist looked really familiar when I saw her.

And then I realized it. Once upon a time, this woman was my mother.

* * *

Hold on, I'll get back to the soloist in a minute. I'm really excited for our concert. It's been great this fall and winter to be singing regularly in a choir. Almost all the pieces we're doing were either instant hits with me, or else they've grown on me over time.

Oh, and I should add right up front, for anyone local (east side of Cleveland): the concert is this Sunday at 7:00. See flier for details!

Pro tip: the church is huge, and the best sound is going to be 10 rows back from the front (and further), because it takes about that far out for everything to blend. If you just want to hear the trombone, by all means sit front row on the right.

* * *

I first started singing in choir because of drama. That is, doing theater in high school, not people being all crazy, though that's also a good enough reason to sing. I was basically pulled into drama by one of my best friends (isn't that always the case?), auditioning for the fall show and getting a small role, auditioning for the winter and getting another small role, and then auditioning for the spring musical, ending up as pretty much an all-purpose chorus member in Fiddler on the Roof. I was a Jewish boy, a Russian dancer, and a bottle dancer (despite no dance experience). Singing in the chorus, one of the older girls said that I should be in choir, and when you're a freshman boy and an older girl tells you something, you tend to hear that just a little bit better. So I joined our church choir (not, incidentally, a great place to meet girls) and then I ended up pulled into the choir for my sophomore year as an accompanist (we changed directors, though, and I bailed out of playing the piano--because I wasn't very good--and started singing instead.

Even though the choral program was something of a dumpster fire that year, I found myself singing in the show choir as well as the concert choir, and so when we got a great new director my junior year, I was ready to go and found myself a section leader in the regular choir, men's ensemble, and show choir. Our new director not only raised the musical level of our choirs tremendously, but he also brought in several elements that spoke especially well to the adolescent male soul. First, the men's ensemble was something new and special. We sometimes rehearsed during the school day, but often we met in the evening. Now, I'll argue that there's just something special about the harmonics of a male vocal ensemble that makes it inherently amazing, but beyond that I think that there's also something magical about making the extra commitment, spending the extra time together, working toward a common goal.

And that was also something that our director brought: a focus on goals and competition. I assume it's more or less ubiquitous, but our choirs and bands played in district competition each year, where groups were rated from 1-5, with 1's advancing to the state competition. The previous year, with our one-year director, our best choir got a 3, and our other choir got a 4. Ouch. We were acutely aware of what losing looked like, but I think it was pretty clear early on that our director, with clear goals, a plan, professionalism, and attention to details was not taking us to another district competition massacre. From day one we learned to sight-read,which also spoke to my soul as a pianist (however mediocre) and trombone player (again, however mediocre). I already knew how to read music, but it was another thing entirely to do so with vocal music, and I loved the challenge.

Anyway, long story a little less long, we got 1's at District that year and 1's at State. Well, except our men's group, which got a 2. Hugely disappointing, considering all the work we put in, but also hugely motivating for those of us who were juniors. Spoiler alert, we got 1's at State the next year.

* * *

I've already gone on at length, and there's one more story that I've committed to telling at this point, so I'll just say that my college experience with choral music was even better, and better in very different ways from the ones that made my high school experience good. My experience was such that I was happy to go off and pursue a master's degree in choral conducting afterward. And not just because I had no idea what else I could do with my liberal arts degree.

To bring down the curtain on this post, I have to go back to elementary school. I think it was back in 6th grade, I was one of a handful of my classmates who got the chance to audition to be in a high school play. I got the part, and I and a 4th grader from my school became children in this play (speaking lines and all!), Life With Father. Obviously, "Father" played a big role. Mother, though, was the teen-aged version of the woman I saw again Wednesday night for the first time in maybe three decades. Her path took her from our little high school's theater and music departments to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and on to a professional career that found her in Cleveland, where she took this gig as a soloist with our choir. And obviously own circuitous route through music degrees brought me here as well.

I'm not sure if she remembered me with any specificity, and I can't blame her. I was in a show in high school that used elementary kids, and if one told me that we were in a play together, I can confidently say that I have no memories of working together. Though, to be fair, I was a pretty memorable kid, and there were two of us (as opposed to the gaggle of brats that infested The Best Christmas Pageant Ever). Still, it was nice to connect briefly with her, to talk about the family that still ties us to Bellevue, Ohio, and the paths that brought each of us to Cleveland, and the apparently-small-world of its choral music scene.

Coffee

Although it's part of my almost-daily routine, the scent of coffee still has power, sometimes, to take me back in time. Today though, it was a word: thermos.

My father was a truck driver, which I suppose almost by default meant that he was a big coffee drinker. When I think of my dad, it's the scent of coffee. And it's two big stainless steel thermoses with lids that screwed in, capped off by another lid that doubled as a plastic coffee mug. They were big, they were sturdy, they were Dad. 

I remember Dad and Grandma drinking coffee after most meals, at least when out and about. I don't remember it at home so much, but if we went to a restaurant or a church potluck, they were both sure to have a cup of coffee after the meal, with dessert. 

Despite that, coffee didn't hold a big appeal for me. When I wanted caffeine, I turned to Pepsi or Coke, but mostly that wasn't until college when I would accompany an all-nighter with a ridiculously large Coke from the campus Pub--no ice, please, I need as much Coke as you can fit in there. 

In high school, coffee did take on another association, though: working at McDonald's for a couple of years, there were periods--particularly in the summers--when I opened to store on a regular basis (there were also periods when I closed: I guess that's part of being a high schooler, none of the adults managing the schedule give a damn about your sleep schedule). The first thing we did each morning when opening the store, before a single egg was cracked, muffin toasted, or hash brown fried, was to make a pot of regular and a pot of decaf. And even though I wasn't a coffee drinker, it was like the coffee maker there pumped the caffeine right into the air, because it was invigorating. Sure, it was 4:30 in the morning, but once the coffee pot was going, I was ready to go too. 

I first became something of a social coffee drinker at my first job, a small boarding school in western Pennsylvania. One of the traditions there was that all the faculty members--after we'd been to the day's required dinner with students--were invited to the Headmaster's house for coffee and maybe some sweets. It was a good time to grow closer with your colleagues, and if the old man was in attendance, you could hear some wild stories of the way things used to be, back in the days when teachers smokes cigars in the classroom (using the chalk trays as ash trays) and could more or less strike students at will. You know, the good old days of concussions in history class and lung cancer in English. 

I would have felt out of place there not drinking coffee, so I did what any sensible sugar addict would do: I loaded my cup with the cute and oh-so-sophisticated sugar cubes provided as well as cream, so that I had a sugary-milky substance with a dash of coffee for color. 

But what can I say, I suppose it was a gateway for later coffee explorations. I think I became an inveterate drinker of coffee when I started playing around with low-carb diets, because incredibly fat-filled coffees are kind of a staple of those dietary communities. I tried "Bulletproof" coffee, which is basically coffee blended with coconut oil and butter--it's decent, but after a brief flirtation I've felt no calling to make it my regular joe. I drank coffee with coconut milk--fine, but it seems to end up a little watery (but then, I could probably fix that if I just didn't insist on using everything that comes in the can). My favorite though, the one I come back to day in and day out, is coffee with heavy whipping cream. 

My god. 

It's just so rich and amazing. I never put any sweetener in my coffee, just loads of cream, and it's wonderful. If I'm out and about, I'll often go for the Starbucks flat white with heavy whipping cream--basically it's just espresso and heated and frothed HWC, and it's perhaps a thousand calories of fat, but what a thousand calories they are. Not something to drink every day, unless it's basically the only thing you consume  every day. Which, now that I think about it, doesn't sound half bad. 

And that's my coffee story: it's a long way from my father's relationship with coffee, but still, that whiff of brewed or brewing coffee just sometimes takes me back to being six years old and hugging my dad as he said goodbye to go off and drive a semi to the next state, putting bread on our table and coffee in our thermoses. 

St. Nicholas Eve

When I was growing up, we only celebrated St. Nick in one way: as Santa Claus, on Christmas. When I was in college, though, I discovered the celebration of Saint Nicholas Eve.

One of my friends with whom I shared an apartment senior year was a local boy--his father was a professor in the English department and his mother was a locally-famous caterer who, along with her catering partner, held a beloved "Friday Afternoon Luncheon Cafe" at the local Parish House every week. Their family had a tradition, presumably coming from their Czech ancestors, of celebrating the Feast of St. Nicholas Eve, and senior year I was invited to the celebration. There were a number of our college friends there as well as adult friends of the family. It was a really nice gathering, and I felt very adult just being there, especially when the Scotch was served. I hated Scotch, but I loved being served Scotch.

At the same time, I suppose it was one of my last chances to be a kid.

The bulk of the meal traditionally is pork chops and Czech dumplings, which--like all the food served at their house, regardless of who is cooking--is absolutely fantastic. For dessert, my friend's mother brings out a cake in the shape of St. Nicholas, at which point, as my friend describes it,

Pa then starts berating her for not making enough dessert for all the guests (some years this has led to female guests attempting to kick my father under the table), then she invites someone to check a silver platter we have. No dessert, but inside the platter is a note, which tells the story of St. Nick, and says maybe he stopped by the house to leave sweets and presents. Ma then suggests that if he did the sweets and presents will be on the front porch.  The kids run to check the front porch, no sweets, of course.  So then the back porch and voila a plate with chocolate apples and marzipan and oranges and nuts, and presents (almost always books).

When I was there, my friend got to do the berating act, which is largely for the benefit of the new guest. There always seems to be at least one new guest each year, and that year it was me, which also meant I got to check the platter.

We did, of course, all run dutifully run to the porch, even though as wise old college seniors, we could smell a set-up a mile away. We could also smell the rewards of playing along, I suppose! I received the book Snow Falling on Cedars, and the marzipan was amazing.

There were just so many wonderful things about that evening, far beyond the gift and the food. It was the good company--not only other students who I liked very well, but adults as well, which is a nice social change at that age. Even more that that, though, there are just so many things to like about the ritual celebration. First, there's the simple fact that most people don't celebrate this holiday; whereas Christmas ends up being almost strictly a family event for most people, this can more easily include friends. I also love the inclusive nature of the celebration, the way that it draws in new people each year, a new group, continually including "fresh blood." The danger in a ritual, of course, is that it can become the same old same old very easily, but the ritual berating act really only works if there's someone new who isn't "in" on the joke. And that yearly re-mixing, I'm sure, brings a new energy each year as well.

I always thought that when I was older, I should like to carry on this tradition myself--my own memory of my singular celebration of the event made such an impression on me that it makes me want to perpetuate it. Isn't that where ritual celebrations really (or really should!) come from? From doing something over and over again because doing so seems meaningful and worthwhile to you? Well, we've got three children now, and I even bought a cake mold shaped like Santa Claus, but so far I haven't made the inadequate cake and we haven't invited people over for the celebration. My wife has at least driven the celebration by having the girls write letters to Santa and having them wake up to a little gift in the morning, so this whole Saint Nicholas celebration is a thing, just not the thing that I'd like it to be.

Maybe next year.

Christmas Music

Tonight was our school's Christmas concert, with an array of instrumental and choral groups, some dancers, and even a guest artist, a professional singer (alumna). It was nice, but I'm not going to say much more about it. Instead, I wanted to use it as a springboard to talk about some of my favorite memories of music and Christmas.

1) Vinyl. Growing up, our Christmas music in the home was on vinyl, and it was just about the only time of the year that we listened to music, aside from some patriotic stuff (Dad love Kate Smith's "God Bless America") around the 4th. The music I remember most was Mitch Miller's Christmas Sing-a-long with Mitch, which I think I loved as much as anything for the included singalong sheets. Also firmly lodged in memory were the Bing Crosby Christmas albums, particularly White Christmas and some record that had "The Little Drummer Boy," which was quite possibly my favorite Christmas song.

2) One year, right before Christmas, my parents bought a new car. From my young perspective, the most amazing feature of this vehicle was that it had a tape deck. I think we literally bought the car on Christmas Eve. On the way home, we stopped at a gas station and bought two tapes, both filled with Christmas music. That night, after an early Christmas Eve service at church, we spent a couple hours driving around looking at lights and listening to the two tapes we'd bought.

3) From my youngest days right up 'til now, I've always had a soft spot for Christmas Eve services, because they were almost exclusively made up of the singing of carols. That plus the solemnity of an evening service by candlelight equaled magic.

4) In high school, I was in our show choir, the Choraliers. I was in it three years, and with the director we had my last two years, it was awesome. We performed a lot of Christmas shows, and I loved it. Our director put together a good show and emphasized professionalism to us. It was so much fun to put on a good show, to bask in the appreciation of the audiences. I don't remember all the songs we sang, but two of the most fun were "Fruitcake" and "The Monotone Angel."

5) Also in high school, one year I had a solo at the Christmas concert. There's a tenor solo in "Twas the Night Before Christmas," and I had it. It was a real confidence-booster to be chosen for the solo. It was also a big dose of reality when I messed up at the concert. It would hardly be the last solo I would fail to carry off perfectly, but I survived the experience relatively unscathed.

6) My freshman year of college, I got pulled in to be the tenor in a barbershop quartet. It pulled me out of my comfort zone and gave me plenty more opportunities to botch music (the karaoke contest we entered was a particularly embarrassing example). One of the things we did, though, was to go around to the freshmen dorms and sing Christmas carols in 4-part harmony. It was so cool. Even after our lead--the guy who put the whole thing together--failed out of school, we got together a group the next three years to continue (and expand) the tradition. It was such a cool experience.

7) In graduate school, we did a Madrigal Feaste. So much work, so much fun!

8) As a young choral director at an all-boys school, I drew on my college experience and had our Double Quartet (which, sadly, rarely seemed to have 8 members) go around campus caroling every year. It would take us 2-3 hours on a night that was cold in a time of the year that was incredibly busy, but I don't think any of the guys ever regretted the time spent doing it. Their fellow students were appreciative (for the most part) and the faculty whose homes we went to were positively adoring. We could usually consume our weight in cookies and hot chocolate if they knew we were coming.

9) During one of the two years I lived in Rhode Island, I was pulled into a Victorian Carolers group called VOX (Voices of X-mas). We performed probably 2-3 times each week during the month of December, with gigs split charity work--hospitals, nursing homes, and the like--and swanky, exclusive events that paid well. Even the latter was ultimately charity work, because all the money we raised beyond operating costs were donated to charity. I loved that experience, and I've been meaning to recreate it where I am now, but it's just so hard to find the time when you're starting a family. One of these years...

10) The final spot is reserved for whatever it is I'm going to think of tomorrow, because right now I'm just rushing to get this thing written before the day's over! I'm sure I've forgetting at least one incredible experience with Christmas music. And if I'm not, well, then consider slot number 10 to be reserved for your own use, to share a story!

The Present Conflict

Lauren told me today of a story a student told her from her childhood: at some point, her older brother sneaked down to the tree early on a Christmas morning and opened his presents before anyone else had gotten up. To solve this little problem, her parents started putting coded tags on the presents so that no one knew who each present was for until their parents revealed the code on Christmas morning. I thought that was a pretty clever solution.

But her brother wasn't nearly as bad as either Lauren or I were. Once, when I was probably preschool age or early in elementary school, sometime in mid-December I took a couple of my presents into a space behind the couch and opened them. I was definitely young enough that I had no plan whatsoever, so my misdeed was quickly discovered. Lauren, meanwhile, at age 12, had an aunt who taught her the tricks of opening her presents and resealing them without being detected. Another time, Lauren found the boom box that her parents were getting her and played with it--several times--before Christmas. She is, by her own admission, a terrible present-seeker: by which I mean that she has the terrible habit of searching relentlessly until finding them--she's quite good at it!

Speaking of hiding presents though, my mom had what must have been a terrible experience sometime around when I was in kindergarten. She was taking me to the babysitter one foggy morning when she ran into high water and pushed forward far enough into it that she got stuck. She made it worse when she opened the door and water flooded in. What I didn't know--but she was acutely aware of, was that she and my father had hidden all of my Christmas presents in the trunk of the car! She was sure they would all be ruined, but someone soon came by with a truck and pulled us out, and she discovered later to her relief that the gifts were undamaged.

So what stories do you have, either as parents or as children, of the arms race betwixt the two, in seeking to surprise or to be surprised (just a bit earlier than scheduled)?

The least-half-assed Christmas pageant ever

Today was the kids' winter pageant. It was our first one in a Unitarian church, and it bore more or less no resemblance to the pageants of my childhood. Celebrating an almost ridiculous number of religions, it consisted of a parade of children with little readings--mostly from parents, but also from older kids--about the religions in question. Oh, and in between the congregation sang words that almost fit the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It was nice enough, I suppose, and it seemed like they were working under entirely different constraints than we did when I was a kid, which is to say that they had no rehearsal time and no idea which kids would be there on the day of the pageant. Lauren ended up doing one of the readings, while holding Thea, who was holding a star. In my mind, that made her the star of the show.

The pageants of Christmases past were, by and large, the usual Christian fare: Mary and Joseph and shepherds and angels and wise men and wise guys. My mother was often critical of these--not the kids, of course, but the adults who were running it. Really, we were a fairly small, rural church--you can't expect off-Broadway Christmas pageants. As volunteer things not infrequently are, it was probably half-assed more often than not, put on by someone under-qualified and not particularly ambitious, either.

Neither of those adjectives described my mother in this arena, however, and one year she put her money where her mouth was, running the Christmas Pageant.

The first thing she did was throw out the script. We all know the story, so why bother telling it badly? Mom spent her working life teaching elementary school, mostly 5th grade, and at some point she had acquired a big book of Christmas stories that she would read to the kids. My mom loved reading out loud to the kids, and anecdotal evidence suggests that they enjoyed being read to. For that matter, I seem to remember loving when our teachers would read us stories throughout elementary school too. I wish I could remember the title--or, really, anything--about the story she chose, but I'm pretty sure it was something about bells. And then I'm pretty sure she paid someone in the community to write for our pageant a script based on this short story. Mom was determined to do it right and spare no expense.

My memory of the event is, admittedly, pretty vague. I think it was well received... but perhaps not as well-received as Mom would have liked for all the trouble she went to. In any case, that was her one and only foray into the dramatic scene of rural northern Ohio churches. I won't say, though, that it was because of a bad experience. I like to think there were just more half-assed things going on that she had to prove she could do better than whoever was making a mess of it.

Seriously, though, I think what sticks with me, with all the specifics stripped away, is the simple fact that she wanted to do something different and she wanted to do something well. The same old same old just wasn't good enough. And that's one of things I love my mom for teaching me by her example.