Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Thankful For A Mistake

On this Thanksgiving Day, I’m thankful for not always getting what I want. I know, it’s such a corny, trite statement, and you can probably hear a Keith Richards guitar line in the back of your mind, along with Mick Jagger starting to sing, “I saw her today at the reception …”

But it’s true. In this case—I’m thankful for a little bonsai tree I bought for my wife for Mother’s Day. I ordered a pink azalea bonsai from an online florist, only to have the tree arrive with no pink azaleas. It looked like a dull green house plant devoid of color, and it presented no surprise when my wife pulled it out of the box. An online chat failed to resolve the matter, meaning no replacement or refund, and I had to live with the bonsai.

But then a strange thing happened. I began to care for it—setting it on top of a windowsill, exposing its branches to sunlight, using a measuring cup every morning to pour a generous amount of water on the soil and splashing droplets of water on its leaves with my fingers.

My bonsai tree. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

I gave the plant daily positive reinforcement before placing it back in its spot—saying things like, “You’re doing good. We’re proud of you. We love you. You’re a member of the family.” I also breathed on it, hoping my exhalation of carbon dioxide would help sustain the plant.

And the tree remains alive today. This is quite a feat, considering I’m no plant person. I have no green thumb. I don’t spend my summers tending to a garden of tomatoes, beans and corn in a vast plot of land in my backyard. I’m an urban apartment dweller.

But I am proud that six months after Mother’s Day, the little bonsai is still going strong. I’m grateful that it adds a little life to my drab existence. And I do believe if the bonsai had come with blooming pink azaleas, it would have been tossed out in the trash a long time ago.

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Happy Thanksgiving: Italian Style

I wanted to share a recent Thanksgiving tradition in our family. During Thanksgiving week, my wife, Pamela, and I make Italian pizzelles—both anisette and chocolate flavored—according to the recipe of my late mother, Carmella DeCosty Ruane. This simple Italian cookie pairs well with a cup of coffee; it’s also one of the few things I can make from scratch, along with pasta fagioli (fazool), lentil soup with ditalini pasta (box version) and marinara sauce (pronounced madinad in Rome, New York). The pizzelle tradition is even more meaningful as this time of year always reminds me of my mother, since she passed away seven years ago on Nov. 22, 2011.

You will need a pizzelle maker in order to cook up a batch of your own.  Here’s a snapshot of our final product:

Chocolate and anisette flavored pizzelles.

And here are the instructions from Carmella’s original recipe, with some slight modification by Pamela and me:

Italian Pizzelles

3 Eggs
1 Tsp. Anise Flavoring
1 Tbsp. Vanilla Flavoring
2 Tsp. Baking Powder
2 Cups Flour
½ Cup of Butter or Margarine, melted
1 Cup Sugar

Beat eggs and sugar. Add cooled melted butter or margarine, and vanilla and anise. Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg mixture. Batter will be stiff enough to be dropped by teaspoon. Makes 30 Pizzelles.

Before the first pizzelles of the day only, use a pastry brush to carefully coat the entire surface of the both halves of the pizzelle maker with vegetable oil or melted shortening. Spray shortenings work very well for this purpose. Do this only at the start of each day that you bake pizzelles. Wipe excess shortening off the grids. The first pizzelles may not come out well. These directions are for my pizzelle maker. Your pizzelle maker may not require you to do this.

Pick up about one heaping teaspoon of batter and place in the center of each grid pattern. With some experimenting, you will learn that placing the batter slightly behind the center (that is, away from you) can produce full-size pizzelles. You may also prefer to use half as much batter to produce smaller pizzelles with a snowflake border. Baking will take approximately 30 seconds depending on your preference for browning, or the consistency of your batter. Remove pizzelles with spatula and place on a flat tin. Once pizzelles are completely cool, put in a plastic container or a plastic bag so the pizzelles stay crisp.

Chocolate Pizzelles

Use 1 ¾ cups of flour (not 2 cups), add 3 heaping tablespoons cocoa and add 3 tablespoons sugar to the basic pizzelle recipe. If desired, you can substitute chocolate flavoring instead of the vanilla. Do not add anise flavoring.

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