“Why such a huge turkey?” I was asked by my butcher. “For ‘leftovers,’” I replied. My family loves leftovers as much as they love the original dinner.
After our dinner, the kitchen becomes a busy place with Ziplock bags being filled with leftovers from each dish I had prepared for our meal. Even gravy gets spooned into those baggies.
Growing up in my uncle and aunt’s home in Aberdeen, Wash., I cannot remember any family member taking leftovers home. Meat and poultry during those WWII years were hard to find in the marketplace as most were sent to our troops overseas. Aunt would barter with a turkey farmer—canned vegetables and jams from her larder for a holiday turkey.
However, there is one thing I do remember vividly. Aunt would check with uncle to see if he had noticed any smells of coffee drifting up from the Hobo Camp behind Miller’s Mill at the end of our street. If uncle had detected the coffee smells, after our big dinner, aunt would fill a cardboard box with one or two turkey sandwiches along with fruit salad, a mayonnaise jar filled with stuffing and gravy and always apple dumplings, enough for at least two hungry men. Uncle would let me tag alongside, and together we would cross the railroad tracks and enter the hobo camp.
I remember a little rickety building covered with sheets of tin of some sort and cardboard, but most of all I loved the campfire with a banged-up tin coffeepot sitting on rocks alongside. Uncle was known and welcome in this camp for many of those hobos, when they were in our town, would work piecemeal. That is, a few hours of work for a meal and possibly some change for coffee or tobacco, but not alcohol, uncle would scold. To a 7-year-old, this was an idyllic way of life.
We would spend a few minutes with uncle and one hobo, Frenchie, “chewing the fat.” Uncle and Frenchie would talk about Frenchie’s travels; where had Frenchie’s travels taken him and was there plenty of work along the way. Hobos “rode the rails” free in open boxcars, which they would hop into or out of and always staying out of sight of the train’s switchmen who usually turned their backs the other way. Frenchie would travel from Washington state to Illinois, returning to Washington through Texas.
The depression was responsible for so many hobos, tramps and bums. Hobos, basically honest, would travel and work for food or money and tramps would just travel, never staying in the same place for long. How tramps ate is beyond me. Bums, however, neither travel nor work for food—remember the apple pie cooling on the windowsill?
Uncle and aunt had a soft spot in their heart for anyone having less than they. I often wonder just how many hobos did aunt feed during those years. Our home was “marked” by a symbol of some sort, on a telephone pole or post somewhere near our house. That symbol meant that this was a house that would feed you for a few hours of work. I remember so often there would be an unfamiliar face weeding our garden, chopping wood or some other job to lighten uncle’s load. I remember aunt’s words I heard her say so often as she wiped her hands on her apron, “Well, there’s another stomach filled.”
Aunt’s apple dumplings were large. A full apple, unpeeled but cored and then filled with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, raisins and pecan pieces and wrapped in a square of pie dough. And always a splash of brandy prior to baking.
I have included a recipe for apple dumplings that friends and family love. This recipe is a little unusual in that it requires pouring a can of Mountain Dew soda around the edges of the dumplings prior to baking. The ingredients are the usual. However, the apples are cut into eighths and wrapped into Pillsbury crescent rolls prior to baking. No need to make a piecrust—Pillsbury has taken care of that!
If you do make this recipe, make sure that each person gets two as they are so good. I see NO LEFTOVERS here.
Merry Christmas, dear Readers.
Crescent Apple Dumplings
Makes 16 servings
Preheat oven 350deg.F
Spray 13”x9” baking dish with PAM.
• 2 Cans Crescent Rolls
• 2 Macintosh or Granny Smith Apples
Peel and core the apples. Cut each apple in half vertically and then each half into 4 wedges.
Working quickly, unroll the crescent rolls onto a lightly floured board. Separate the 16 triangles. Place one apple wedge at base of triangle and roll up toward tip of the triangle. Place in baking dish with point on top.
• One 12oz. can of Mountain Dew Soda
• 1 cup of butter
• 1-1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp. light Karo
• 1 pinch of salt
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the sugar, Karo, vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Barely stir. Mixture will be grainy. Pour over apples.
Pour Mountain Dew soda around the EDGES of the pan. Bake 30 to 45 min. until tops are golden brown. Pour any remaining sauce over dumplings.
Colly Gruczelak, a Ben Lomond resident, loves people and loves to cook. Contact her at cz****@*****st.net.
