Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Friendship and Amalgamation Cake

I connect a certain cake recipe from the 1950's to my mother and her best friend, Nell.  You don't hear much about Amalgamation Cake these days, so I was elated to find the recipe on a couple of sites through a Google search.

My particular memory involves going home from school one day and finding Mother and Nell putting together the approximately 20 ingredients(including jam, raisins, coconut, and walnuts) to make the cake, and having the time of their lives.

Nell always brought extra spark and energy into our home and my mother was the main beneficiary.  Nell was a nurse and kept my mother, a homebody with five children, informed about what was going on around town.  They were both beautiful women; my mother was a natural beauty but I always thought Nell was particularly glamorous; she was tall and tanned and wore red lipstick and nail polish.  My mother was shy, but Nell was an extrovert who was unafraid to express her opinion. I suspect that many considered her brash and unrefined, but I doubt that Nell spent any time worrying about what other people thought.

It's interesting that I connect Amalgamation Cake to my mother's friendship with Nell.  The word "amalgamation" means combining or blending and that's exactly what happened.  Mother and Nell enjoyed a friendship that bridged their differences and concentrated on things that they could enjoy doing together, such as baking cakes.  They were like Lucy and Ethel in some ways, always "cooking something up" that was different or fun.

Today, it's more difficult to forge friendships like Lucy's and Ethel's or Mother's and Nell's.  Maybe that's what I really yearn for, someone to bake an Amalgamation Cake with me.

Click here for a recipe for Amalgamation Cake.

Annie Joy

6 comments:

Stacey said...

Now that's a neat memory! I agree that it's a little harder to make those types of friendships. Maybe we all think that though, we just need to reach out to a neighbor and make it happen.

Annie Joy said...

Thanks, Stacey. I agree with you about reaching out and will plan to do just that!

A Bookish Space said...

Thank you so much for sharing such a personal and lovely memory. I think that all of us yearn for the type of friendship that you mother and Nell were so lucky to share :)

Annie Joy said...

Thanks! Maybe we can't all have that type of friendship now, but we're experiencing new kinds of friendship now, with our blogging friends!

Janice said...

thanks for visiting and leaving a comment about Inside the Whale on my Reading Diary blog

I seem to be reading a lot of books lately set during WWII. And I've just heard of another from a reading blogger buddy. I want to look for this one too.

Joy Street by Mirren Barford. A collections of letters, and I do love epistolary fiction, although this one isn't fiction.

Team Chastain said...

Social networking on the rise while just plain old chit chat around the kitchen table on the decline. Makes me a little sad. Especially where I live this is problematic, because beach towns tend to be so transient

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Recently Read Fiction Favorites

  • A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
  • A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
  • Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
  • Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
  • Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
  • Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
  • Confessions of a Former Rock Queen by Kirk Bjornsgaard
  • Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
  • Faithful Place by Tana French
  • Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner
  • Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  • Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
  • Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg
  • Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow
  • Innocent by Scott Turow
  • My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira
  • Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
  • Private Life by Jane Smiley
  • Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
  • Roses by Leila Meacham
  • Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos
  • So Much For That by Lionel Shriver
  • South of Broad by Pat Conroy
  • That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
  • The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson
  • The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
  • The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
  • The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard
  • The Help by Kathryn Stockett
  • The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg
  • The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
  • The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
  • The Sky Took Him by Donis Casey
  • The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
  • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
  • The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw
  • The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
  • The Wind Comes Sweeping by Marcia Preston
  • Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom
  • Wolf Hall by Hillary Mandel
  • World Without End by Ken Follett
  • Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Favorite Nonfiction and Memoir

  • All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
  • Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason by Nancy Pearl
  • Getting Over Getting Older by Lettie Cottin Pogrebin
  • Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
  • Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Sharing the Journey: Women Reflecting on Life's Passages by Katherine Ball Ross
  • Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
  • The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
  • The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin
  • The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl by Timothy Egan