And the Other's Gold

Entrance to "Rotten Grade School",
originally uploaded by Ablevaybel

It was so much fun to have one of my oldest friends visit Sunday with her husband and three of their four well-behaved children. I've known Bets since kindergarten, when we were both subjected to the vagaries of Mrs. "She would have been fine if you hadn't taught her to read" Balsley's arcane educational theories, such as reading the same book over and over again in a monotone every day for a week. It was over 35 years ago that we both walked up the steps of Rockton Grade School to afternoon kindergarten, learned about jimmies and the reindeer dance and the multiple rules of monkey bars, slide and the not-so-cryptically named "boys chase girls". I can distinctly remember sitting on the teeter-totter in the school yard, behind the cyclone fencing, kicking at stones in my scuffed tan Red Goose shoes, waiting for my grandfather to show up in his Rambler and wondering how I was going to stand eight more years of school without going out of my mind.

Old friends are not only like gold, as the old Scout song says, but they are good mirrors. Someone who has known you from your earliest days, through all of your attempts to figure out who you are and where in the world you're going, has known all of your family for good and bad - that is person really is a treasure. One of my grandfather's few articulated regrets of living to be 100 was that no one was alive who knew him back in the day, no one who remembered his parents, let alone his extended family. The mutual sharing of memories is powerful stuff.

Couple those memories with a keen eye and a good sense of humor and you couldn't ask for a better mirror than Betsy. But she isn't just a reflection of the past, but also someone who definitely lives in the here and now. Caring for a large family, busy (and wonderful) husband and good-sized home are a more than full-time job, yet Bets manages to keep up on domestic politics, all manner of blogs and information, current trends and opinions and is almost never too busy to take the time to share what she has learned with me. Clearly, she's not just a mirror, but a transmitter.

As I mentioned, she is also fortunate to have a great husband, Fred. Betsy knew a good thing when she saw him. I am lucky as well as he was also a classmate of ours, having come from Michigan to our high school, so we have all known each other for a good chunk of time. It is also fortunate that my own dear husband likes him well. Somehow there are far too few couples where we truly get along with both partners equally well. But Betsy and Fred fit the bill.

Their sons were remarkably patient with us, even their highly interactive five year old Will. The older two, Jon and Alex, were very attentive to our conversations, often participating, when they weren't trying to figure out an "old school" mattel (R) electronic baseball game. They were also quite patient with the food which featured several kinds of smoked fish, beet and feta salad, challah and other delicacies are probably not the daily fare of most teenagers. The challah got full points, as did the old standby, 6 Minute Chocolate Cake. I served it without the glaze, as I find it sweet enough, though Will thought it could have been sweeter.

Parve 6 Minute Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar - brown is ok
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup strong coffee or water (if you must)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cider vinegar

***Chocolate Glaze***

1/2 pound parve semisweet chocolate
3/4 cup hot water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375F.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, soda, salt, and sugar into an ungreased 8-inch square cake pan. In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure and mix together the oil, cold water or coffee, and vanilla. Pour the liquid ingredients into the baking pan and mix the batter with a fork or small whisk. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. It will leave lighter colored-swirls in the batter, which is as it should be.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, test with a knife or toothpick (should come out clean) and set aside to cool.

Glaze: melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Stir the hot water and the vanilla into the melted chocolate until smooth. Spoon the glaze over the cooled cake. Refrigerate the glazed cake for at least 30 minutes before serving. Can also be served with sifted confectioners sugar.