Barbara Martin’s Sweet Potato Casserole.
5 or 6 large sweet potatoes
3 T butter
fresh orange juice to soften
1/4 tsp each nutmeg, clove, ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon.
brown sugar to taste (1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Drizzles of maple syrup or pale molasses
Boil and peel sweet potatoes. Mash with other ingredients, mixing well.
Put into buttered casserole. Hatch top with fork, drizzle molasses or maple syrup over the top.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour.
I’ve been cook-cook-cooking and getting ready for Easter. I always enjoyed that sentimental song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” For those of us who wear the badge of “Mother”, we’ll be home for every holiday–because wherever we are we’ll be making some place into home for the people we love.
I got this recipe from my neighbor Barbara–now I live hundreds of miles from that neighborhood, and Barbara died of cancer not long after I moved away. But cooking the foods we shared is one of the ways we keep track of lost friends.
I miss my friend Barbara. I miss her courage. I miss her wit. I miss her enthusiasm. Barbara and I were “Early Birds” together. In Princeton, NJ, the Early Birds are an almost-religious cult. Devotees get up early and drive or walk to the YWCA to exercise every morning at 8 a.m. Barbara had been an Early Bird for 20 years before I met her, and we carpooled there together for 10 years more.
Barbara started going to Early Birds when it was a tiny group meeting in a basement at the Princeton Seminary. As a group, Early Birds predated aerobics, jazzercise, Pilates, and jogging. Before there was Earth Day. Before cars had seat belts. Before VCRs, before Xerox, back when the transistor radio was a novelty and that weighed more than a 5 lb. sack of sugar–Way, way back then, there were Early Birds and Barbara was Early-Birding.
Barbara wanted to keep her figure and her agility, and she kept them. I have a photo my daughter took of Barbara sitting on the floor, leaning forward and gripping the soles of her feet. I couldn’t do that! And she looked darn good in a leotard while she was doing it.
Barbara was a person who set high standards for herself. I think most of us do, but Barbara was of the generation that set high standards and then met them–whatever it took. I’ve heard it called the Greatest Generation because they lived through the Depression and World War II. I missed those events. I think of them as the Early Bird generation. They knew what they had to do and they did it. They didn’t expect to talk their way out of it.