The Key Ingredient (3 page)

Gran had a different idea about making dreams come true. She did it right there at home, late at night when the rest of the family slept. She was wide awake while everyone else was dreaming. As a young wife and mother who loved being in the kitchen, she discovered a talent for creative cookery. And so, with no formal training and nothing but a high school education, she wrote a cookbook. She had already edited the charity cookbook for the Switchback Congregational Church, meaning she pretty much had to write or rewrite all the donated recipes. After that, she figured she had enough experience to write a cookbook of her own from recipes she'd developed over the years.

I take a copy of the book from the shelf, hand it to Martin and tell him the story behind it. “Gran didn't rest until she found a publisher. Not just any publisher, but a major house in Boston that specializes in illustrated cookbooks. It became a regional bestseller and stayed in print for more than a decade.”

“She must have been incredible,” Martin said. “Now I see where your inspiration comes from.”

I smile, warmed by the comment. “When I was a kid, I set a goal to make every recipe in the book, and I met that goal by the time I was a junior in high school. I've done some of the recipes so many times that I've memorized them.”

I flip through the book, able to recall the occasion that went along with each recipe. Gran's maple-­glazed pumpkin-­spice cookies are a perfect example of a bake-­sale item. They're also the perfect cookie, if you ask me—­spicy, soft and comforting with a glass of milk or a cup of tea. The recipe makes about three dozen cookies, which will disappear at a startling rate.

To make them (and I recommend that you do, because they are delicious in the extreme), you need a half cup of unsalted butter, softened by putting the stick in your apron pocket while you get out the mixer, the baking sheets and the rest of the ingredients. Combine the butter with a half cup of vegetable oil, a half cup of canned pumpkin, three-­quarter cup of white sugar, three-­quarter cup of brown sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla.

Beat in two eggs, fresh ones from your own henhouse, if possible. Then, with the mixer turning on low, add the dry ingredients—­four cups of flour, one-­fourth teaspoon baking soda, one-­fourth teaspoon cream of tartar, a half teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of pumpkin-­pie spice.

Scoop onto parchment-­lined baking sheets and flatten the scoops with the bottom of a glass. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about nine minutes. As soon as the edges start to brown, they're ready.

Make the glaze by combining three cups of powdered sugar with a half teaspoon of pumpkin-­pie spice and about four tablespoons of maple syrup—­just enough to create a thick consistency. Drizzle the icing over the warm cookies. Try not to eat them all while you wait for the glaze to set.

I've never been good at waiting. Things take as long as they take. Gran used to tell me that at Thanksgiving, when it seemed as if the turkey would never be done.

We all crowd into the big farmhouse. It's warm inside, and the caterers hired for the shoot are putting out a spread of morning-­glory muffins and trays of fruit. The camera crew starts setting up. For me, this is where the real picture comes into focus. I step inside the frame, relaxed and self-­assured, knowing it's where I belong.

I'm standing in the center of the big country kitchen, organizing the set-­up. There's a riverstone fireplace and a large painting on the wall, a landscape my mother did of Rush Mountain at the height of Vermont's autumn glory. There's no glory here now. Gray-­toned winter light leaks in through the alcove windows that surround the scrubbed wooden dining table.

The table is hand-­made of taphole maple by my grandfather. Back when he honed the planks smooth in his woodworking shop, he assumed he was merely being thrifty by finding a new use for the tapped-­out maple trees of our sugarbush. A tapped-­out tree no longer yields a sap run in the late-­winter thaw. It has to be cut down and used for firewood or milled for lumber. Nowadays, taphole maple, with its patterns created by the spikes drilled into the wood, is not a matter of thrift. The distinctively patterned wood is highly prized by custom builders and marketed as a rare luxury item.

In the Vermont sugarbush area, it's not rare at all, although most ­people wouldn't know that.

I've always loved that table, not just the look of it, but its flaws as well. The scratches and divots it's sustained through the years are a road map of its life with my family. The dark and light ripples of maplewood have been a silent witness to our family's joys and celebrations, moments of soaring triumph, and sometimes trouble and tragedy. Its surface has been marred by spilled candle wax from countless birthdays, hot pans set down too soon, ink from an old-­fashioned pen, broken pottery, an angry fist slamming down, a pattern scratched with a butter knife by a bored child.

While seated around the table, we've dealt with all of life. Straight-­A report cards. Money troubles. Getting a varsity letter on the Switchback Wildcats swim team. A college scholarship. Laughter over everyday happenings—­a new puppy, a failed cake recipe, a goofy joke perfectly delivered by my brother, Kyle, funny photos just back from being developed at the drugstore. Tears were shed at that table as well—­
Your father and I are getting a divorce. The dog died. Gramps had an accident.

Yet even through the worst of times, there was a sense of belonging. A safety net to catch me no matter how hard I fell.

My spot at the table was by the heating vent, next to Gran. In the 1950s, she moved up to Rush Mountain as a young bride from Boston, and she was always cold. I could feel the warm air wafting from the furnace, swinging my feet while I dawdled over homework or daydreamed while looking out the window at the snow-­covered hills.

On baking days, we would spread out the flour-­dusted rolling cloth and then we'd get to work creating pale circles of dough for pies or cookies. The scent of butter and sugar filled the air, luring Dad and Kyle and Gramps in from their chores, and Mom down from her painting studio above the garage. I always loved the way food—­and Gran's cooking in particular—­brought ­people together. Through my eyes as a child, it was a kind of magic. When I open the pantry door for the film crew, I can still smell the yeasty aroma of Gran's baking bread. Like the scars on the table, some things never fade away.

We film some footage in the house. Mom is fluttery, her voice high-­pitched with nerves, but I hope the shots of the old-­fashioned kitchen and rows of tin maple-­ syrup jugs will be usable. Afterward, we all head out to the sugarbush.

Her bewitching way with food and friends was at its most powerful during the sugar season. That's when we collect the sap from the maples and boil it until it turns to maple syrup.

Timing and weather rule our world during those dark weeks at the tail end of winter. When the temperature thaws during the daylight hours and freezes at night, that's when the sap runs like a faucet. It has to be collected at the peak of freshness and then boiled right away in the evaporator pans over in the sugarhouse. Forty gallons of sap, boiled to a temperature of 219 degrees Fahrenheit, yield a single gallon of syrup. But the moment you taste a drop of Sugar Rush on your tongue, you know it's worth all the trouble. The work is exciting, miserable, muddy, gratifying and everything in between. On days when the sky spits some nasty combination of rain and snow down on the sugarbush, it's the hardest labor imaginable. Slogging through the woods across frozen ground or sucking mud in temperatures that make you forget you have fingertips or toes.

Gran knew how to keep everyone happy during the sugaring-­off. Her baking skills were legendary in Switchback. When word got out that she'd made a batch of fried doughboys or maple scones and was serving them warm in the sugarhouse, everyone came for a taste. Her baking created a party atmosphere. Workers and neighbors would stand around the huge stainless-­steel evaporator pans. The wood-­fired heat under the pans kept us all warm while we sampled her wonderful cookies and breads with hot cinnamon tea or coffee with cream. For the little ones, Gran would step outside the sugarhouse and drizzle boiling syrup over the snow. It would harden instantly into amber webs of sweetness.

During the sugar season my final year of high school, my chores were confined to the sugarhouse—­managing and monitoring the boil. I didn't mind that so much, because I could crank up the radio and daydream about the life I would have one day. I scheduled my hours at the evaporator pans to coincide with Fletcher Wyndham's shift collecting and transporting the sap. I was no Celia Swank, but I knew I'd have no trouble at all inviting him into the sugarhouse. It's warm and cavey inside, aglow from the fire. The whole place is redolent of maple-­scented steam, curling up to the roof vents. Never hesitant to show off my baking skills, I'd made salted maple-­pecan bars—­the ones that had once won me a blue ribbon at the county fair.

It's one of those treats that sells out first at any bake sale. You start with a soft shortbread crust, then add the maple-­pecan filling and bake it until it looks like a pecan pie. After it cools slightly, drizzle with maple butter and then finish with a few pinches of fleur de sel. Fleur de sel is one of those small touches that elevates an ordinary dish. It's something Gran would call a key ingredient. The flaky character of this salt makes for a delicate finish. Don't bother using it in cooking, because it will only melt and salt the food. You want it to rest like weightless snowflakes atop the food, dissolving on the tongue at first bite and melding with the sweetness of the syrup.

It's doubtful that Fletcher knew anything about fleur de sel, but as an eighteen-­year-­old boy, he knew that when you come into the sugarhouse after working in subzero temperatures, and the whole front of you is damp from spilled sap, and a girl gives you a warm, salty-­sweet maple-­pecan bar, it's like spending a few minutes in heaven.

Never let anyone tell you that food isn't a kind of love.

Yet even though I loved Fletcher Wyndham with every cell in my body, I lost him—­not just once, but twice. Blame it on youth, or on bad choices or rotten luck or unfortunate timing; a broken heart doesn't care how the love got lost. And I don't mean lost like losing your car keys. I mean like losing a piece of yourself so that you don't feel whole anymore. You walk around with a part of yourself missing, the way Fletcher's dad is missing his leg—­the incident that touched off a chain of events no one in Switchback could ever have foreseen.

After loving someone the way I loved Fletcher, it's hard to open up again and let anyone else in.

There are things a person can't leave behind, even when a relationship ends. You keep bracing yourself for the next disaster, the next problem, the next betrayal.

Gran always said you can't spend your life mired in regrets. You have to move forward, so that's what I did. I managed to put myself back together, eventually. I managed to move on, even though it meant heading across the country to LA and totally changing the course of my life.

Now I look at Martin, who is intently listening to the director. Martin must feel me looking at him, because he offers his trademark heart-­winning smile.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

­People who work with me on the show think I'm all that and more. Annie's Yankee determination, they call it.
She gets things done. She doesn't take no for an answer. She's like the Energizer Bunny
.

What they don't realize is that most of the time, all that energy they admire so much is driven by fear and insecurity. In this business, you can't let anyone sense any kind of weakness, or you're culled from the pack and left behind. As far as anyone knows, I'm a homegrown success story with a real shot at creating a hit TV show and a bright future.

That's what I thought, too. It's all been going extremely well . . . but now that we're here with cameras rolling, I can't help but feel a sense of impending disaster.

The weather sucks. The snow has melted prematurely this year, something we didn't anticipate. The pristine winter woods is now a dun-­colored swamp of bare maples, strung together with plastic tubing for the running sap, which doesn't exactly create the homey image of those old-­fashioned collection buckets ­people picture when they think of Vermont maple syrup. The sugarhouse, where the magic is supposed to happen, turns out to be too noisy and steamy for the crew to film. The lenses keep fogging up and the crackle of the fire and the clanging of utensils interfere.

When Melissa says something perky and friendly to Kyle, trying to draw him out, he stares at her blankly, clearly at a loss.

“So your brother,” she whispers to me later. “He's incredibly good-­looking.”

“Thanks,” I reply. “His wife thinks so, too.” Melissa can't stand being single. She's told me so herself.

“I'm not
hitting
on him,” she insists, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “It's just . . . is he okay? He seems like he might be kind of . . . simple.”

I burst out laughing. My brother? Simple? He's run the entire operation since he graduated high school and our dad took off. Yet his discomfort on camera is extreme and makes him seem like a country bumpkin.

“No,” I tell Melissa. “Kyle is anything but simple. Just not fond of being in the limelight. He knows everything there is to know about maple syrup, though.”

She nods, then turns away to let out a sneeze. Anton, the director of the shoot, is having a whispered conversation with Martin. I'm not catching everything that's being said, but I'm pretty sure I hear the dreaded
I told you so.

When I was a kid, eavesdropping on my parents' arguments, I honed my listening-­in to a fine art. I could hear them quarreling from three rooms away. Huddled in the stairwell or under a window, I overheard them talking about broken dreams and family responsibilities, about the deep ache of unfulfillment, something I didn't understand until I was much older.