Yesterday was Reformation Sunday, next week is All Saints, and then we’re onto Remembrance Day. Remember, remember, it’s almost November.
Perhaps it is the darkening days that do it. When the nights lengthen and we’re all staying inside a lot more, we get reflective and ponder the past We light candles and dress up. We celebrate. We wonder. And remember.
We remember our own stories. The feeling of October almost over. The dark Halloween nights. Snowsuits shoved under costumes, the weather threatening snow already and the feeling of thick make-up on your skin, the fear of smudging it with your hands. Some houses on the street were decorated, others only lit with a jack o’lantern, and there were a few with no lights at all. Likely they didn’t have candy, but you never knew, did you? So maybe you knocked and waited and scared yourself for a moment or two, wondering before deciding they weren’t coming after all and so moving on to the next door dragging your pillowcase of candy.
Why is it that I can remember almost all the names of the kids in my grade two class, but can barely summon up the names of the parents I talk with every day at the school gate?
But I remember how I hide my candy-filled pillowcase under my bed after Halloween and how I ate the Chicklets and Tootsie Rolls first. I remember how cold my feet felt in rubber boots and how hard the ground got in early November. I remember the words to In Flanders Fields and standing silently in the school gym, being serious and holding the cuffs of my sweater between my fingers.
Remembrance Day was very difficult then. How could we remember what hadn’t happened to us? How do we remember what we hadn’t seen? The narcissism of childhood, I suppose. I hadn’t understood the plurality of remembering.
Remembering becomes an imaginative act. We are given stories and we imagine feelings. We wonder where we would fit into a story like that. We wonder how we would feel and what we would do. What might have happened and if only and what if…
Perhaps remembering like this is a faithful discipline, gathering all that we’ve been and might have been, and connecting us to those who have gone before . We’ll be celebrating All Saints this Sunday at church. We will be remembering all those who have helped us to imagine and to be faithful. We’ll be remembering that stories continue on, and remembering the continuing witness of our church and the larger Church, too. We’ll be remembering together.
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Perhaps it is disingenuous to include a Madelene recipe in a column about remembering when I haven’t read Proust. But these little shell-shaped cakes are wonderful, and I do hope that when my children have grown up and find themselves eating madeleines, they think of these days, and remember, too.
Madeleines
If you have the pan, you likely have the recipe – they often come together. But if you don’t, go borrow a pan from your neighbour and here’s your recipe. Blue likes them best when I add chocolate chips. You might also try with lemon zest. And I know it looks persnickety to ask you to weigh the ingredients, but these cakes are too small to be forgiving. When you fudge it, they just aren’t quite right.
90 g butter, melted plus 1 tbsp to grease the pan
1 tablespoon clear honey
2 eggs
75g sugar
pinch of salt
90g flour
icing sugar to serve
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and salt for five minutes. They will be ready when they look a bit like mayonnaise. Then sprinkle the flour gently on top and fold it in with a wooden spoon.
Mix honey to the melted butter, then add to the bowl and mix well.
Set the bowl in the fridge for 1 hour, then take it out and put it on the counter for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400º. Add one tablespoon of mixture to each divot in the prepared pan – this won’t look like enough, but it will puff up beautifully when baked.
Bake for 6 minutes or so – until your madeleines are golden but not too toasted. Turn them out and cool on a rack, then arrange on a plate and dust with icing sugar.
