A jet setter? Me?

Hello bloggers,
I've made it into the clinical trial at Sloan Kettering. I have also been randomized to the experimental drug which means I will not be on chemo and I will be taking a pill a day. My blond dye job gets to stay. In about an hour I leave for the airport to start racking up my frequent flier miles. I have to fly to NYC today just to take a pill.

This heralds my entrance back into the real world. I go back to work next week for a half day or so. I'll ramp up pretty quickly I think. The original purpose of this blog which was to keep you updated and let you know if we needed anything is probably past. I think I'll keep writing though because it's fun. Of course, the new drug may not work and I may end up getting chemo (think good thoughts now).

In other news, I've been issued a challenge by my mother. I complained that fruitcakes are too easy these days. When I was a little kid my mother would round up the three of us kids into the kitchen for the annual ritual of slicing the candied fruit for her fruitcakes. I don't know when she started baking them. It's not a long family tradition. She tried the recipe out when we were very young. Within a few years she had escalated to a small factory with us employed as child labor. Well, she has seven other siblings, one for our neighbor, some for us. I think she made at least a dozen.

My favorite job was cutting the citron. Citron is a citrus fruit that is essentially all peel. It's candied and it used to be sold in big blocks. I loved the stuff. Mom was very particular about the size. Not too small, not too big. Didn't matter to me, I ate my mistakes. We also chopped candied orange and lemon peel (not as good as citron) and cut up rings of candied pineapple which would do in a pinch if the citron was all cut up. Neither Kate nor I liked the cherries too much until they were in the cake. Even as a kid I was deeply suspicious of a neon green cherry. If you put a red cherry in green food color you get...brown. What unspeakable thing does one need to do to a cherry to turn it neon green?

Mom made the batter and monitored quality control (stop eating!). Ted would eat anything, even the cherries. That batter was good too, like liquid brown sugar. Sometimes a mixer bowl of batter and fruit would be left on the counter while another batch was in the oven. There's a reason some of those cakes were smaller than others...

After they came out and cooled (and had any large pieces of fruit sticking out removed-purely for quality control purposes, you understand) they were then prepared with all the ritual of an egyptian mummy. They were wrapped first in cheesecloth and then in tin foil. Before being sealed up in their little sarcophogi they were annointed with that blessed liquid, brandy. And plenty of it.

I actually hate brandy to drink, it's like drinking gasoline. However, a magical transformation happened to those cakes as they rested in their dark little wrappings and soaked up the amber goodness. If you don't like fruitcake it's because you haven't put in enough brandy. This ritual was referred to as "watering the fruitcake." It would be repeated several times during the fruitcakes ageing period. Even after the thing was aged enough to eat it would get a little dry. After all the thing was dense; I mean black hole dense and a whole slice was a lot to get through. Although Ted could manage it just fine. Let's face it anyone who used to eat in the shower probably wouldn't have a problem with one whole slice of a fruitcake. "Mom, the fruitcake needs watering!" It would be annointed again and sent to rest in it's cheesecloth for a day or so.

Not everyone had the same response to the fruitcakes. Some of my mother's sisters made cracks about them. Uncle Bill held his in a sacred place in his freezer carefully doling it out until the next one arrived. One year my mother got sick of the jokes and didn't make any. You'd have thought Frosty the Snowman had been killed by a salt truck.

Nowadays you can go to the supermarket and buy little tubs of pre-cut fruit. Where is the challenge? Where is the sticky paring knife and tacky finger tips turning green and red from the cherries? The uncut stuff isn't even there if you wanted it. That's when I told my mother it was too easy these days and she issued the challenge, "oh yeah?" I don't think I have enough time to age anything before Christmas rolls around. They'd have to be New Year's cakes but I do have a secret weapon: mini loaf pans.

Dr. Bif