Below is a note from Mahasti’s friend and fellow baker, Jeffrey Hamelman, about his experience working with the Adama Foundation in Uganda. It is a beautiful and powerful telling of his experience teaching Ugandans to bake bread.

Dear Friends,

I recently returned from Uganda, where I spent two weeks with another American baker, Sara Molinaro, training about 20 members of the Oruchinga Refugee Settlement to become bakers. These people have next to nothing, except their hopes and their undiminished innate dignity, and have escaped unspeakable horrors in their native countries. The trainees began with absolutely no baking experience. Seeing their daily skills progress was an immense joy, and when they sold the first breads, on the ninth day of training, it was a time of rejoicing. The genesis for creating this bakery (this is the first of several that are projected to be set up in refugee settlements) came from Ayelet Berman-Cohen of Los Angeles, who established the Adama Foundation to fund them. On the ground in Uganda are two exceptional women who are part of the daily operation: Angella Kushemererwa who oversees the Vibrant Communities Initiative, and Sophie Karungi, who is a counselor to the most at-risk women in the settlement. All three of these women are absolute pillars of strength and commitment.

The trainees walk to and from the bakery, many of them for over an hour each way, several of them with a young child swaddled to her back (75% of the trainees are women). Several times each day, the mothers move away to sit and watch the work as they nurse their baby. There is an outside area adjacent to the mixing room and the room that houses the wood burning oven. This is the main production area, and it is covered by a pole structure with a wattle and tarp covering for the roof. The rainy season has begun, and we occasionally had to move the work benches to avoid the steady drips from the leaky tarp. We got very good at winding our way around children and chickens in this area as we went through the day!

The goals of the bakery are clear: to empower people, mostly women, with skills that will enable them to earn a livelihood; to become a focal point for the community; and to feed the most vulnerable refugees—the children. In all, we made four forays deep into the settlement, and ultimately handed out thousands of little buns to the children, providing a brief cessation to the anguish of their bellies. We also gave bread at the settlement hospital, to listless patients in the maternity ward and the malaria ward. Once the bakery is fully operational as a bread-selling enterprise, Sophie and Angella are committed to distributing 20% of the products for free to the neediest refugees.

The bakery had just been completed when we arrived. The $16,000 that was spent to build it was adequate to get it started, but there remain many items, large and small, that are required for it to become sustainable. To give one example (unfortunately there are many others), there were electricity blackouts on more than half the days we were there, and the need for a generator to power the mixer during blackout times is critical. Being a poor country besieged with poverty, there are very few resources available. If you can help with a donation, however small, it will be a great benefit to this worthy endeavor. For the record, the bakers will be paid about $2.85 per shift (10,000 Ugandan shillings). A gift of $100 pays more than one month of salary. One hundred percent of each donation will go directly to the bakery. The link to the donation page is found here: https://lpicorp.networkforgood.com/projects/132871-uganda-bakery-initiative.

The gratitude that I feel for your consideration will be amplified one hundred times by those who will directly benefit—the bakers, whose lives are being beautifully transformed, and those who receive their breads. Please feel free to forward this donation request to any of your friends and colleagues who may be interested in helping.

Where there is bread, there is hope. With deep thanks,

Jeffrey

~~~~~

If you care to keep reading, below is some pre-dawn journal writing I did several days after the trainings began. Some of you may have seen it already.I write while it is early, still insect time, not yet bird time. I’m in the midst of the Uganda days, which have brought wave after wave of blunt profundity. I have never experienced anything close to this. Every aspect of life here is new to me, and fortunately I have been welcomed and accepted, I dare say even respected. That is, except for a small child now and again who is terrified at the sight of this white monster and turns away with piercing wails. This was most poignant on Saturday, the second day of the training. Sophie, who along with Angella, are the two saints who are the prime movers of this endeavor, and fellow trainer Sara, a baker/instructor from Michigan, and I, were driven by Kevin, who works from time to time as driver for Angella, to the Burundi community in the Oruchinga Refugee Settlement, close by the bakery. The bakery was conceived as a way of assisting this settlement, the oldest in Uganda, with a population of 7,000. There is a group of Burundi drummers who are somewhat supported by Angella and Sophie, and we were bringing loaves of freshly sliced bread to them, as well as hundreds of little buns in neat packages of six, for the few dozen Burundi children who are being trained by the drummers–this whole group will be at the bakery later in the week to perform for us, and I can only imagine what that will be like. It had rained hard for an hour or two during the day (fortunately not until production was done, since all the shaping is done under a pole structure with wattle roof and tarp, and the tarp leaked pretty badly), and there were puddles in the deep ruts and ravines we traveled on to get to the community–it would be quite a stretch to call this a road. On left and right were huts that were the human version of what mud daubers build. A dozen people living in three small rooms, one of which is for cooking, is not at all unusual. When the sun is up there is light; when the sun goes down it is dark–there is no electricity. Maybe there is a door.

We arrived at the community (there are also Rwandan and Congolese communities within Oruchinga) ready to implement our neat plan of bread and bun distribution. This changed almost instantly, as Sophie surveyed the scene–people streaming towards us by the dozens. I knelt in the mud, Sara ripped open the bags of six buns and handed them to me one after another, as I handed one bun to each desperate outstretched hand. The bodies were encrusted with mud, there was not one shoe in sight, the look of desperation on the faces of the children pierced my soul like a burning rock. And then it happened–the buns were gone but by no means were the splayed little hands. Partway through the bun-handing time, Sophie knew it would not be possible to give entire sliced loaves to the drummers, so we briefly decided to hand out the sliced loaves in portions of one-third. This lasted just seconds, and we began handing out just one slice to each child. Now some adults got bread too. Of course, the slices too ran out, and you can imagine how wrenching it was to tell all those without that we had no more. Earlier, at the bakery, I had brushed the crumbs from the slicer and brought them out to where the chickens peck (they also freely roam around the outside covered production area under the tarp); I am sure one of the Burundis would have been grateful for those crumbs. One woman said to Sophie “Thank you for this bread. Because of the rain I could not collect firewood, and we have not eaten any food today.” It was partway through the handing out of the buns that one poor little child concluded that it was too fearful, in spite of his pounding empty echoing belly, to risk getting close to the white apparition–he fled as if from the devil, wailing inconsolably. Today we will increase the production so that when the drummers and children come, all will receive bread.

The definition of family here is quite different, fluid and amorphous. Here are some examples: Marion is not a child of Angella’s, but she and her daughter Bridget live safely with her. Marion is 20, and an ace–one of the most eager of the trainees for sure, she also makes beautiful traditional baskets, earrings from bone, pottery, and works tirelessly. Bridget is her only child; she had her when she was 12 years old. This was not a consensual sexual act.

Sophie is raising Sarah. She found her, nameless then, when the infant was two days old. Her birth mother had thrown her, face down, into a septic pit at a hospital where Sophie was visiting a sick niece. Fortunately, her little wails were heard by the night watchman, who rescued her from the pit, but not before she had spent enough time in it to become quite sick. UN personnel helped to tend to her along with Sophie, but they have a three-month rotation, so once that group left, Sophie took her in and adopted her. People told her that the baby was cursed and she should abandon her. Sophie said “this baby was abandoned once, and I will not let her be abandoned a second time.” Sarah is five now, and was at the bakery most of the days of the training. She is a beautiful and charming little girl, a true gift to Life.

On Sunday (our one day off) we spent the day in Mbarara, where Angella lives. Towards the end of the day, we drove to the home of Sophie’s mother. “How old is she?” asked Sara. “She doesn’t know. Maybe 58, maybe 61.” We arrived to be welcomed with the simple quiet hospitality that characterizes the best of the human character. Her mother looked to be in her mid-70s, but not surprisingly, when she smiled, which was frequently, a decade was removed. Four young boys were brought out to meet us as we drank tea, and they danced for us. Sophie’s mother is raising the oldest of them (he is maybe 12). He was abandoned by his mother at one month old. She wanted to make money, so left for the city to work in the sex trade. So Sophie’s mother took him in. Sophie grew up in that house, choking on kerosene fumes; now there is electricity. She described the time, when she was five years old, that there was a drought and famine in Uganda. Once each day her mother would prepare a thin porridge, carefully measure one cup of it into bowls for each family member, and serve it at 4:00 PM (so that there would be a vague sense of food in the belly by the time the children went to bed). This was the entire food intake for the day; it went on like this for five months.

I know that what I am doing is immensely insignificant relative to the needs here, and at the same it may well be the most significant event of my life.

Now it is bird time . . .

Cookies are magic.

We know it instinctively.  It might be that some of us grew up believing that little elves who live in hollow trees make magic in the form of fudge stripes on shortbread.  Or perhaps is the Christmas Eve ritual of leaving treats for old St. Nick. For me, the magic is in the memory of family kitchens filled with palpable holiday enchantments: forbidden cookie dough clinging to spoons and beaters, the bewitching and tortuous aroma of baking cookies almost ready.  Just writing those words casts a craving on me that won’t quit.

And of all that aromatic cookie magic, the most potent is gingerbread.  The secret, methinks, is in the formidable combination of ginger and molasses which creates a darkly sweet but lively dough that produces a rich baking aroma that gets inside of me and makes me feel warm and, of course, very, very hungry.

It’s not a new magic. Gingerbread in various incarnations populates the histories of the world, and the ritual of shaping food into shapes for a little magical mischief is an ancient juju.  It may have all started with clay and idols, but, as the idea evolved into something more like hope than sorcery, the tools of enchantment became more toothsome.

By about year 1000, gingerbread was being baked into the images of saints, and in Medieval England, ladies would sometimes eat gingerbread husbands in hopes of acquiring the real thing.  But how gingerbread men came to be a part of the Christmas tradition is unclear – it might have evolved from a German tradition of making gingerbread houses for the yuletide that started sometime in the 16^th century.  Or maybe it’s just one of those things that happens – somebody made a gingerbread Saint Lawrence and decided it would look good on a tree, and, abra cadabra, a tradition was born.

But the real magic of gingerbread isn’t in the shape – it’s in the creation, the act of the shaping, and the fact of the making.  But it’s something that must be shared.   Sharing kitchen time and recipes between generations is more than a link to a family’s tradition and history, it’s a bonding ritual that creates love and memories rooted in the practical magic of the senses and made firm by the sharing of that most precious of all enchantments: time.

The rich aroma of gingerbread in the oven is the aroma of home. And isn’t the magic of home a big part of what we observe this time of year?  No matter what holiday we celebrate, it’s always better at home – whether that’s a family moment or time shared with close friends, perhaps even pets, spending time with those we love is the real charm.

Homemade gingerbread is the by-product of love, which, of course, is the greatest magic of all.

It’s never too late to find your inner wizard.

Recipe

4 large eggs

1 tsp Salt

½ tsp Black Pepper, ground

2 TBL Parsley, chopped

¼ cup Schmaltz (chicken fat), or melted shortening

¼ cup Chicken Stock

1 ¼ cup Matzo crackers, ground

In a medium bowl whisk eggs.  Add salt, pepper, parsley, schmaltz and chicken stock and mix until incorporated.  Add Matzo meal and mix until everything is mixed well.  Refrigerate the mixture for 3 hours or overnight.

To shape the balls: 

Scoop the mixture using an ice scream scoop, or a large spoon.  Roll the scoops into balls and place in a pot of salted boiling water.  Drop the matzo balls into the pot, making sure you leave enough room for them to double in size, and reduce the heat to simmer.  Simmer the matzo balls, covered, for 45 minutes until they are very fluffy and floating.

To Serve Matzo Ball Soup:

Heat and season your homemade chicken stock with salt to taste.  Place some thinly sliced carrots in each bowl.  Place a matzo ball in each bowl and ladle hot chicken broth into each bowl.  Garnish with fresh dill.

Makes 7 large or 10 medium Matzo balls.

Yum

Collard Green Salad Recipe

3 large Collard leaves

2 TBL Oil

¼ cup chopped onion

1 medium tomato – about 1 cup, chopped

1 TBL Parsley, chopped

1 TBL cider vinegar

½ tsp salt

Wash Collards in several rinses of cold water.  Shake off the excess water and cut the leaves into 4-5 long strips.  Cut the strips, including the stems into ½ inch strips crosswise.  Keep the stems separated from the leaves.

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat.  Add oil then add the collard stems and sauté for 1-2 minutes.  Add the collard leaves and sauté just until all the leaves have turned bright green.

I am not superstitious. Not very much anyway.

Though it is true, as a rule, that I don’t break mirrors, walk under ladders or open umbrellas indoors, and I certainly never, ever utter the name MacBeth aloud in a theatre.  But despite what you may think, it’s not superstition – it’s practical magic.  After all, shards of glass are decidedly unlucky, as is a hammer, or any object, when dropped from an elevated position; and while I don’t mind raindrops fallin’ on my head, a wet entryway has only ever brought me unhappiness and a sore backside.

As for saying the name of Shakespeare’s bewitched tragedy – I don’t worry about bringing a curse upon my head by saying the name aloud.  I do however, worry about other people who worry.  Believe you me, you meet one neurotic actor who believes in that superstition, and you’ll honor it all your days.

Nonetheless, I eat lucky food on New Year’s Day because I believe.

Almost every culture has a set of good fortune foods. In the South, many of us make a habit of eating collard greens and black-eyed peas, often with fried hog jowl or any bit of pork in order to guarantee good luck for the coming year.

Where Collards are concerned, my mama says it’s all about the color of money.  And that sounds reasonable enough to me, though one wonders if this hearty green is thought lucky because of its preference for cool weather.  Green vegetables that taste better after a frost seem like a providential find for folks who grow their own.

Black eyed peas come with a whole host of luck associations – some tracing the tradition to a reference in the Babylonian Talmud about foods to eat at Rosh Hashanah, and others crediting the humble but plentiful pea with saving countless starving Southerners after the Civil War.  But, as with collards, both of these associations may have their roots in more pragmatic thought than a concern for fortune.  A good bowl of peas can last you for a couple of days so you don’t have to cook daily, and it’s an abundant crop that keeps well.

In many parts of the South black-eyed peas are mixed with rice and, thus, create Hoppin’ John.  Rice itself is an ancient symbol of prosperity and fertility, and, I reckon, putting the two to together makes some powerful juju that can carry you through 365 days of life’s varied twists and turns with a favorable edge.

But, of course, it’s only good juju if you actually eat it.  And honestly, a plain old can of peas and instant rice isn’t gonna be very

tempting.  But if you’ll take a look at Mahasti’s recipe below, at the very least you’ll have pretty good luck at getting folks to eat your New Year’s creation.  It’s a simple recipe with an unexpected and delicious ingredient that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.  Plus, Mahasti tops her Hoppin’ John with a vibrant collard green salad that adds a very healthy crunch and a welcome splash of the color of money.  I can’t swear that it’s good luck, but I can assure you that it all tastes good.

At the end of the day, though, I believe less in good luck than I believe in good habits.  This simple dish is nutritious, frugal, and easy to make at home in family-sized batches that keep well.  And while I don’t make resolutions for the New Year, I do believe that making a start with good food habits is a sensible response to the sheer indulgence of the previous weeks; I can weigh the sugar I’ve consumed in pounds.  And getting into the habit of eating well and eating things you’ve cooked with or for people you love is the kind of good sense that may not make good luck but will make you feel pretty darn lucky.

Find our recipe for black-eyed peas here and one for the collard green salad here.

Cookies are magic.

We know it instinctively.  It might be that some of us grew up believing that little elves who live in hollow trees make magic in the form of fudge stripes on shortbread and the like.  For me, the magic is in the memory of family kitchens filled, especially at this time of year, with palpable enchantments; the lust of the forbidden cookie dough followed by that bewitching but tortuous aroma of cookies in the oven.  Just writing those words makes my head spin like no love potion could ever hope to do.  To this day, even the memory of that smell can cast a craving on me that won’t quit until answered.

And of all that aromatic cookie magic, the most potent is gingerbread.  The secret, methinks, is in the formidable combination of ginger and molasses which creates a darkly sweet but lively dough that produces a rich baking aroma that gets inside of me and makes me feel warm and, of course, very, very hungry.

It’s not a new magic by any means, gingerbread in various incarnations populates the histories of many cultures.  Likewise, the magic of shaping food into shapes for a little magical mischief is an ancient bit of sorcery.  Of course, it probably all started with clay and idols, but those aren’t particularly tasty.

In Medieval England, ladies would sometimes eat gingerbread husbands in hopes of acquiring the real thing.  I can’t imagine that was particularly efficacious magic – gingerbread is sweet and adorable and, from what I can tell, men in medieval England were not overly sweet as a rule.

But how gingerbread men came to be a part of the Christmas tradition is unclear – perhaps it evolved from the German tradition of creating gingerbread houses which were associated with the yuletide.  Or maybe it’s just one of those things that happens – somebody put a cookie on a tree for decoration and, abra cadabra, a tradition was born.

But the real magic of gingerbread isn’t in the shape, per se – it’s in the creation, the fact of the making, the act of the shaping and most importantly, the cooking of it.  The rich aroma of gingerbread in the oven is the aroma of home. And isn’t the magic of home a big part of what we observe this time of year?  No matter what holiday we celebrate, it’s always better at home – whether that’s a family moment or time shared with close friends, perhaps even pets, spending time with those we love is the real enchantment.

Homemade gingerbread is the by-product of love, which, of course, is the greatest magic of all.  And it’s never too late to find your inner wizard.
Yum

Gingerbread Cut Out Cookies

3 ¾ cups All Purpose Flour

1 cup, packed Light Brown Sugar

½ tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

4 tsp Ground Ginger

½ tsp Ground Clove

4 tsp Ground Cinnamon

2 sticks plus 1 TBL Unsalted Butter at room temperature

3 TBL Whole Milk

1 cup Blackstrap Molasses

Mix together the Flour, Brown Sugar, Salt, Baking Soda and spices in the bowl of your stand mixer with the paddle attachment until all the ingredients are mixed together well.  On low speed gradually add the butter and beat until the mixture resembles coarse sand.  Mix together the milk and molasses.  With the mixer running gradually add the molasses mixture to the mixing bowl and mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated and a soft dough is formed.

Divide the dough up into 2-4 balls.  Flatten into disks, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.  Dough can also easily be frozen for up to 30 days.  Simply remove from the freezer 24 hours prior to baking.

When ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.   Line your cutting board with a sheet of parchment paper big enough to cover the board and also fit your cookie sheet.  Remove your gingerbread dough from the refrigerator.  Dust the surface of your parchment paper heavily with flour and roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness.  Cut your desired shapes into the cookie dough, leaving ¾ of an inch, enough room for cookies to expand in the oven, between each shape.  Remove the excess dough from in between the cookies shapes and reform the excess dough into a disk, which you can either re-roll out or refrigerate or freeze for future use.  Lift your cutting board off of your work surface and gently tilt it towards your cookie sheet, sliding the parchment paper with the cookies onto the cookie sheet.  Gently re-arrange the cookies if necessary, giving them enough room to expand in the oven.

Bake the cookies for 10 – 12 minutes for a soft cookie and 12-14 minutes for a crispy one.  Allow cookies to cool.  Ice with Royal Icing and decorate with sprinkles.  Allow icing to harden and enjoy.

Check out our recipe for royal icing to decorate your cookies.

Purchase Mahasti’s Recommended Utensils

Stand Mixer

Cutting Board

Measuring Cups

Measuring Spoons

Glass Measuring Cup

Rolling Pin

Gingerbread Man Cookie Cutter

Gingerbread Girl Cookie Cutter

This is a great icing for icing sugar cookies and gingerbread cut out cookies

 1/3 cup Pasteurized Egg Whites

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

3-4 cups Powdered Sugar, sifted

Beat the egg whites in the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment or with your hand-held mixer until the mixture looks frothy.  Add the vanilla and with the mixer running on low speed gradually add the powdered sugar.  If you want an icing that is easily spreadable add enough sugar to get the icing to slowly ribbon off the beater or whisk.  For an icing that can be piped, add enough powdered sugar to get the icing to form stiff peaks and cling to the beaters or whisk without leaving the beater or whisk when held away from the bowl.    Divide the icing up into smaller portions for coloring or use white.  Place the icing in pastry bags fitted with the tip of your choice and pipe onto cookies.

Purchase Mahasti’s Recommended Utensils

Flour Sifter

Every holiday has a unique set of traditions, of course, but Thanksgiving is special because it comes with an extra set of conventions for the flip side of the holiday.  Naturally, there’s football, football and football, but there’s more: many families use the day after Thanksgiving to put up a Christmas Tree; there’s the annual depleting or deploring of stores that open on Black Friday; and there’s also the ritual complaining or rejoicing about the abundance of leftovers.

For many folks, eating the remains of the day is a simple thing; turkey sandwiches are legion and come layered with dressing, perhaps a generous spread of mashed potatoes and a side of gravy for au jus style dipping.  And it can be a fun way to close the holiday and play top chef as you present your creation with chefly jargon like “a clever riff on the holiday” or “a deconstruction of the feast.”

And as much fun as all that can be, leftover turkey presents yet another opportunity to gather together at table, touch the souls of your family and friends, and maintain the comfortable mood of the holiday regardless of bad punt returns, strands of lights that expire only after they’re on the tree and even the stress of maddening crowds at the mall.

A steaming pot pie, fresh from the oven is a nearly iconic symbol of the special kind of comfort that comes with a Sunday at Grandma’s house. But it’s easy to create that feeling at your own home with Mahasti’s simple recipe – especially since the bird is cooked, and you’ll probably have many of the other ingredients on hand, too.

There are two things that make Mahasti’s Pot Pie stand out. One is the inclusion of pumpkin.  It will be easy to think about leaving that out, but, if you do, you’ll miss a rich and almost mysterious flavor element that really amps up this recipe.  When cooked like this, adds a subtle sweetness and earthy flavor that matches perfectly with potato and cream sauces.  And it enhances the velvety, even luxurious texture of the sauce.

The other element that makes this recipe stand out is that instead of a pie crust or puff pastry, Mahasti tops the pie with biscuits.  I don’t have to tell you what a biscuit can to do a meal, but when it sits on top of a pot pie it gets a beautiful brown top, a fluffy middle, and a bottom that’s happily situated in the pie’s gravy-like sauce.  These particular biscuits get a seasonal surge from the inclusion of fresh sage that fills every bite with flavor – and if you haven’t tried sage and pumpkin together, you’re missing a very fine savor sensation.

Pot Pie is a simple way not only to put those leftovers to a delicious use but also to extend the warmth and fond memories of family time around the table.
Yum

For the Filling: 

¼ cup oil

1 cup celery. diced

1 cup carrot, sliced into half moons

¾ cup onion, diced

1 medium sized potato -1 cup diced

1 cup cooked turkey, shredded or diced

Peel the potato, cut into ¼ inch thick slices.  Cut the slices into strips and dice the potato.  Place the potato in a pot of cold water.   Place the pot on the stove and cook the potato until it the chunks are just firm, 20 – 30 minutes, depending on the size of your chunks.  When the potatoes are cooked through, drain them and place them in a large bowl.

Meanwhile, dice celery, carrots and onion, and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, over medium heat.  Add onion and sauté for about 1 minutes, then add celery and carrots and sauté for 2-3 minutes until vegetables are just beginning to soften.   Add the vegetables to the bowl with the potatoes.  Add the cooked turkey.

Place skillet back on the burner, over medium heat and make the sauce.

For the cream sauce:

2 ½ Tbl unsalted butter

2 Tbl all-purpose flour

1 cup whole milk

1 cup water

½ cup heavy cream

1 cup pumpkin puree, optional

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper

1 Tbl fresh Italian parsley, chopped

Add the butter to the skillet.  When the butter has melted, add the flour and whisk until all the flour is absorbed into the butter and no lumps remain.  Mix together the milk, water, and heavy cream, pour the mixture into the butter mixture and whisk constantly until the sauce thickens slightly.  Add the pumpkin puree, if using, then add salt, pepper and parsley.  Pour the sauce over the cooked vegetables and turkey mixture and stir until the everything is mixed well.

Pour the pot pie filling into an 8×11 baking dish.  Top with Sage Buttermilk Drop Biscuits and bake in a 400-degree oven for 25 – 30 minutes, until biscuits are slightly golden brown on top, and the mixture is bubbling.

Remove the pot pie from the oven, and serve.

Serves 6-8.

Prep time: 30 – 45 minutes

Cook time: 20 – 25 minutes

Purchase Mahasti’s Recommended Utensils

Measuring Cups

Measuring Spoons

Cutting Board

Chef’s Knife

Vegetable Peeler

8″ x 11″ Rectangular Baking Dish

Words, as anyone who has said bumfuzzle aloud can tell you, are funny.  How they came to be and where they came from can be amusing when not just strange.

Consider dessert – as, of course, we hope you often do- that word comes from a French word, dessevir, meaning to remove what has been served or, easier on the tongue, to clear away the table.  In fact in the third person desservir takes on a familiar form: il dessert (or he clears away). Which isn’t particularly funny if you haven’t finished your dessert before he clears it away. Sacre bleu!  What a tragedy that would be.

Other folks say that the meaning of desservir is more akin to “un-serve”.  Which, in dessert parlance, is the worst thought ever.  Who would have a heart black enough to un-serve dessert?

Of course, no one we know, especially not the French, would un-serve dessert or take post prandial candy from babies of any age, but as we celebrate National Dessert Day it seems worthwhile to linger over our coffee and consider the vagaries surrounding the sweet spot of the meal.

I grew up in a home with lots of sweets, but not many desserts.  That is to say that we rarely had a final course to the meal; cookies and milk might come later, but they were never served at the table.  It was a rare and special occasion when Mom would have something sweet that we would eat together after dinner. Usually it arrived in a footed, faceted dessert cup which I have forever since associated with chocolate pudding (my favorite treat from back in the day).  It was an indulgence that never got old because it never came too often – so you couldn’t get used to it or take it for granted.  It was mother’s whim and a delight.

That’s why, perhaps, to this day dessert remains a completely separate experience from grabbing a quick bite of cookie.  The very idea is a comfort – just think of clearing the table for a last sweet moment of communion over a bit of food that you can enjoy in small bites thus facilitating the especially fine conversation that comes from the good mood of the well fed.

Because it is more than nourishment, and follows essential eating, dessert contributes to the feeling that life is good.  Whenever I feel discontent or worried about the budget or the Jones’ new car, I remind myself that in the grand scheme of things I’m a rich man.  I have food daily and dessert often.

Dessert’s pretty special at The Tomato Head – it’s made with the same care and careful selection of ingredients as everything we serve.  And, thanks to the delectable work of Flour Head Bakery, our dessert case is almost an embarrassment of riches, and one that’s accessible, too.  What good is a wealth of sweet stuff unless you can share it?  We take pains to make sure that our vegan and gluten free options are as appetizing to the eye and as scrumptious to the tongue as every other treat we serve.  And, as a general rule, we’d never un-serve dessert – we’re just good like that.

Happy National Dessert Day!  Be sweet to someone you love – or even someone you don’t: a little sugar goes a long way…