This year, Christmas fruitcake has had a powerful competitor in terms of being the go-to punchline as the number of plays on Sarah Palin’s hunting prowess and the loss of poor Rudolph seem to have flooded the internet.
Once this season is over (and, one would hope, Ms. Palin and her hunting rifle will be put away to be played with some other time), fruitcake will again take its place in American humor along with jokes on wives, mothers-in-law, and George W. Bush’s prowess with a bicycle.
Frankly, I’ve never understood America’s seeming equation of fruitcake with the legs of couches, WMD and so forth – why use fruitcake when Lutefisk is at hand? (A Swedish-American co-worker from Minnesota described this traditional Swedish dish to me as “fish flavored soap.”)
Then again, I never had American commercial fruitcake until I was well grown.
I was brought up with my mother’s holiday dainties from the UK: Christmas “hard” pudding (“hard” as in soaked in brandy, lit on fire and served with an alcoholic sauce over the steamed cake-y pudding) and HER fruitcake, which is called Dundee Cake. (more…)
OK. We are NOT in the kitchen today. This is for those folks who read, way back in October, about starting a garden and perhaps went to their land fill or composting facility and picked up some compost and put out the cardboard and now have …frozen piles of compost out in the yard that has snow all over it. It’s hard to get romantic looking at that stuff – but trust me, in the spring, you will be happy you did the work. 
