Thanksgiving Recap--Napoleon

Napoleon is one of my favorite desserts that my grandmother used to make when she was younger. Napoleon, the dessert, refers to layers of puff pastry frosted with pastry cream. When done well, a Napoleon is light, moist and melts in your mouth, and my grandmother’s Napoleons did just that. When I learned that my grandparents were coming to Boston for Thanksgiving, I decided that it was my one-in-a-million chance to learn how to make Napoleon from the master herself.

When my grandparents came over to my apartment, my grandma and I set out to prepare the puff pastry dough. Under Grandma’s close watch I mixed water, eggs and flour, and rolled the butter into the dough folding it into envelopes. In the course of the day I repeated the rolling and folding process one more time. Grandma said that she sometimes rolled and folded the dough two more times, but she thought that the extra effort was unnecessary.

In the evening, after my grandparents left, I made a double portion of the pastry cream from the Boston Cream Pie recipe. Unfortunately, I accidentally overheated the mixture, and the cream cooled into a jingly solid. So the next evening I made another batch of the pastry cream, now using Grandma’s recipe.

Unfortunately I had to bake the puff pastry without Grandma’s supervision, and I might have kept it in the oven for too long. It was well after midnight, when I frosted the baked puff pastry sheets with the newly made pastry cream.

After spending the night out on the counter my Napoleon acquired the proper sweetness and flavor thanks to the pastry cream. Still the pastry was far from melt-in-your-mouth. In fact it was so hard, that breaking a piece off with just a fork was impossible. I tore into my piece with my teeth, while Nick, civilized as he is, used a knife.

Gladioli

Gladioli bloom at the end of the summer. They start appearing in stores and flower markets in mid August. Gladioli back in the Soviet Union did not behave differently.

For as long as I can remember Grandma always got a bouquet of bright gladioli on her birthday. I assume my grandpa gave them to her, because the flowers were always already in the vase when I got to their house.

If anyone asked me what Grandma's favorite flower was, I would say "gladiolus" in a heartbeat. Yet, when I think about it, I do not remember Grandma ever saying that she preferred gladioli over other flowers. Did she? Or did I make that assumption because she always got gladioli on her birthday? Or did she get gladioli on her birthday because she really did like them a lot? Hopefully, members of my family reading this blog will kindly share their memories on the subject.

13, 17, 67

Dates, numbers, time... When we were finally allowed to move to the United States, February 1st was the first Friday for which dad could buy us airplane tickets. Yet after waiting for over a year, my parents decide to delay our departure one more week. Why?

On February 1, 1991, we gathered at my grandparents' to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Exactly a week later my parents and I moved to America.

Four years later, 13 years ago today, grandma passed away in a hospice in New Jersey. My grandfather visited her that morning, but only mom was there when she died.

My mother remembers her mother:

'My mother. I heard the expression “Nobody would love you the way your mother does.” It’s a cliché. The more I live the more I realize how true this statement is. I wish I could say to her how much I miss her love, how much I long to have a hug from her. We never appreciate enough what we haven gotten used to having, and often we don’t even notice its presence.'