Grandpa "Cheese"

I've been thinking a lot about my grandpa lately...which is a little odd since we really never met.

Maybe it's that we were just in Tahoe and I think of him every time we drive by the old King's Beach bar he built with his own hands in the 30's. That's him chopping down the trees...


And here is the finished product! Over the last 80 years it's lived through many incarnations and today, us young folk know the spot as Caliente.






Maybe it's that my Mom just had a birthday and each year I am reminded that, that day many years ago, he welcomed his third baby girl into this world while, sadly, he watched his wife leave it forever.

Here is my beautiful Grandma Alice with her first two girls, my aunts. When Grandma Alice passed in childbirth, her sister Josephine (we called her Grandma Finy) would leave all she knew back home, come to America and raise Mom as her own (and that, my friends, is another story)...

Maybe it's that I heard on the news that the old building in Alameda that housed their dairy and soda fountain in the 20's and 30's is being restored and, under layers of siding and stucco, they found a faded sign touting their State Fair-award-winning cream.

Maybe it's that everyone in the family called the old Swiss dairyman "Grandpa Cheese" and sometimes the thought of that just makes me smile.

Growing up in my family, you probably wouldn’t have found it odd to have a Grandpa named “Cheese.”

Every morning, his daughter (we called her Mom) served our toast with a slab of butter as thick as a deck of cards. "Special" occasions, from Arbor Day to Hanukkah, were frequent, and always warranted a free pass to top anything with a Matterhorn of whipped cream.

The freezer was always jammed with at least four flavors of ice cream and when we’d unwrap the mystery square of waxed paper in our lunchboxes, we’d often find a hunk of Swiss cheese partially covered by an afterthought of two thin slices of Roman Meal wheat bread posing as a sandwich.


French Brie, Danish Blue, Irish Cheddar, Greek Feta…Mom did not discriminate. A United Nations of cheese products always filled our fridge, hurriedly wrapped in a waif-like sheet of Saran and crammed into one of three dedicated drawers like dairy delegates waiting their turn to represent the motherland.


Why would we not have a Grandpa named “Cheese?” He was a huge part of our lives.  He had everything to do with who we are today. But, the funny thing is, us kids never really knew him. We were just babies when he died...


Grandpa Cheese was born in 1889 in the Kanton of Uri Switzerland. His given name was Ambros Furrer and he thrived as a young man along with his brothers and sisters in his mountain home along with the other real-life mountain-dwelling, cow-herding, lederhosen wearing dairymen. Here is the mountaintop village where he was raised, complete with cow.

Here's the way up...

And here are my cousins who operate the lift...to this day...yikes! That's Mom in the black jacket visiting them a few years back.

This is where they live. Come on...does it get more Swiss?

There he met the beautiful and adventuresome Elisabetha (she came to be known as Alice in the new country). They married in 1922, set out to America on their honeymoon...and never looked back.

Doesn't this photo taken on the deck of their honeymoon cruise ship remind you of a scene from The Titanic? A little spooky, I think, until you peer through the mist and notice the sweet smile on my grandmother's face and the proud posture of her loving groom. 

Two little girls soon made a family of four.Together, they settled in Alameda and opened a creamery on Webster Street. Along with making and delivering milk, cream and cheese, word has it that their soda fountain was the place to meet! Grandma ran the business, Grandpa worked the dairy and my aunts were the coolest cats in town.

Even though my mom was never a part of their lives together, I like to think about those days and imagine that somehow they are a part of ours.


So, by now, you've probably figured out that my thoughts and feelings usually manifest themselves eventually into something edible. I've been wanting to experiment with making cheese for a long time, and given my recent need to get in touch with my milkmaid roots, I thought it would be fun to finally make it happen. I got my hands on the ingredients, dug up a recipe on the Internet, and dove in without a whole lot of forethought. Mom stopped by so I handed her the Flip camera and we documented our journey through curds and whey.





I'm pretty sure that the laughs we had along the way were more delicious than the actual end result but, for our first try, I'd have to say that the cheese wasn't half bad. We're looking forward to our next go at it, with modifications, but know that "Grandpa Cheese" would have been proud to see two generations up to their elbows in the family business.


So, here's my thought for the day...take a minute to think lovingly about the ones who came before us...the ones who came from so far away, some by choice, and some by need, to make a better life for themselves and their families. Dig out Auntie Nora's old Irish soda bread recipe or the closely guarded formula for Uncle Guido's famous Bolognese and fill your home with the tastes and smells that bind families across generations.


Bon Appetit, Buon Appetito and Guten Appetit!

Anna Banana

My cousin Karen sent me an email the other day.

After seeing herself in a vintage family photo I posted a couple of months ago, she thought it would be fun to reminisce about Gramma Anna, the patient, simple, fun-loving, albeit vertically challenged better half to our fiery French-blooded Grampa Henry.

Among her many virtues, I think the thing we loved most about Gramma Anna was that she was consistent. As the self-appointed family historian, Gramma Anna wrote smack dab on the front of every photo...most of which she took with her old Brownie box camera. Formal portrait or family snapshot, it really didn't matter, Gramma would record the facts on each photo. It drove us crazy then...but what would we do without those notes today!

"Anna-Banana” she’d say to us kids in her deliberate, syllabic way as she'd peer through the little Brownie viewfinder and we’d shriek with delight each time at her wacky wit. “Anna-Banana”…how clever! It really didn’t take much to make us smile.

Topping off at an honest four feet-eleven, Grandma Anna also faithfully served as the family’s human grow stick. Posted like a diminutive sentry at the threshold of their Outer Mission headquarters, she would stand at the top of those terracotta steps, hand held high in the air, waiting to tap the top of our heads as we walked through the door to gauge where we measured up against those almost five feet of hers. With a smooch on the lips, she'd proclaim how much we’d all sprouted since our last visit and how she must be shrinking too…and she was!

At every family event we’d gather at "Eight-Ee-Se-Ven-Na-Va-Ho" (pronounced by Gramma as seven separate words) and the six of us grand kids would run off to the back of the house not to be seen until the turkey made its way onto the crochet-clad dining room table. We’d leave the grown-ups to their chit-chat, their log of Gallo salami and their jug of Carlo Rossi red table wine and be off to explore the wonder that was Gramma and Grampa’s house.

We’d rifle through the designated toy drawer in Auntie Janet’s old bedroom, and fight over the same old trinkets that waited patiently for us to abuse at every visit. We’d play Circus Bingo and Yahtzee and when we were bored with that, we’d explore Gramma’s jewelry drawer and admire her precious “Oh-Pal” (pronounced as two separate words) and Grampa’s silver dollar bill clip.

And, on the rare occasion that Mom and Dad needed a babysitter, we were treated to a city sleepover where Gramma would give us her undivided attention, teaching us how to play poker for dimes or letting us transform a loaf of Wonder bread into stacks of fake hosts so we could practice for our much anticipated First Holy Communions.

When we got a little older, we’d descend into the basement wonderland where Grampa kept his tools and wood scraps that the boys would consistently craft into some form of weaponry. The girl cousins loved the easy access into the garden where we’d mix up muddy concoctions and bury coffee cans full of treasure stowed to unearth on future visits.

The old chest freezer was down there too and if we were feeling especially naughty, we’d pick the lock and steal a nibble of the Carnation coconut-covered vanilla ice cream snowballs that were always there around the holidays, nestled between 40 pounds of butcher-paper wrapped red meat and stacks of thin white boxes filled with frozen ravioli. We learned that if we repositioned the decorative plastic holly leaf just right over the tell-tale bite marks, no one would know that the snowballs had been compromised.


That basement was our clubhouse and we were happy to share it with the old, early-70’s model Oldsmobile (which Grampa insisted on calling a Cadillac) that faithfully ferried them to our house almost every weekend. They were professional fans and never missed one of the many Little League games or dance recitals that commanded their attendance.

Wearing a floral polyester, long-sleeved dress and sun visor, Gramma Anna would sit patiently in the bleachers, notepad in-hand , meticulously recording statistics and observations. At the end of each event, she’d tuck her notepad into her well-organized purse and announce that it was time to go home to “San-Fran-Sis-Co-Watch-My-Fist-Go” (pronounced like eight separate words) and off they would ride into the Sunset, so-to-speak.

As they’d pull into the driveway of "Eight-Ee-Se-Ven-Na-Va-Ho" Grandma would reach into the glove box for yet another notepad, record their mileage and fuel consumption, neatly re-secure it with a rubber band and stow it back away. She’d then hop out of the passenger seat, stand in front of the open garage door and waive Grandpa in as if together they were landing a fighter plane on the deck of the USS Nimitz.

Sometimes Grampa would make it through the narrow portal unscathed, but the deep battle scars stretching down both sides of the Olds proved that their success rate was less than 100%.

When we’d come back upstairs, our first stop would always be the kitchen. After a couple of hours in the tunnels, we’d worked up quite an appetite and could always count on finding handfuls Oreos in the chipped, glued and re-glued Raggedy Ann cookie jar (which I now proudly display in my kitchen) and an opened, less-than-fresh box of chocolate-covered Hostess mini-donuts on the counter.


We’d wash it all down with a cold glass of Tang (pronounced by Gramma as “Tanj”) and while we were in the fridge we’d sneak a spoonful of chocolate pudding (the cooked, Jello-brand kind, of course) digging beneath the characteristic surface skin to find that familiar, chocolaty, lumpy, goodness. Yes, it’s true, Gramma Anna wasn’t known for her culinary prowess, but a visit to their house wouldn’t be the same without those donuts, that pudding, and that “Tanj.”

So, as a gift to my brothers and my cousins, but most of all to celebrate our “Anna Banana”, I share with you my version of chocolate pudding that I hope you will all enjoy in good health. It may not be Jello-brand, but it is cooked, it is chocolaty and it is guaranteed delicious. I make it today in the shadow of that Raggedy Ann cookie jar and as I put it in the fridge to cool, I look up, and raise a cold glass of “Tanj” to our beloved Gramma Anna. Enjoy the pudding, my brothers and my cousins…enjoy one-and-all. I think I’ll play some Yahtzee tonight.



Get all of your ingredients together...this recipe cooks up fast...no time to go searching for the vanilla or you'll get lumps! My favorite chocolate to use is the Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Dark...and it comes in a 4 ounce bar. Carly made a double batch last night and brought it to school today with 10 spoons. She used Trader Joes Dark (which is what I had on hand) and it was good too...and way less expensive!

 Throw the sugar, cornstarch and salt into a heavy saucepan and whisk it together...

Add the chopped chocolate then whisk the egg yolk into the milk and add it to the pot...keep whisking...

Melt everything down until it looks (and smells!) like hot chocolate then gently bring it up to a boil over medium high heat. When it starts to thicken remove it from the heat (about one minute).





Add a tablespoon of butter and the vanilla and whisk it until it is smooth and glossy. Pour it immediately into two 8 ounce ramekins or whatever fancy dish or dishes you'd like and chill. The recipe serves two but I think the portions are too huge...it's sooo rich! I suggest putting it into two smaller dishes then leaving a big glob of it in the pot to eat right then and there sharing spoonfuls with whomever is in lips' reach.

Bittersweet Chocolate Pudding

In a heavy saucepan whisk together:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 Tablespoons cornstarch
• pinch of salt

Add:

• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Whisk together then add to the pot:

• 1 1/3 cups whole milk
• 1 large egg yolk

Keep whisking over medium-high heat until the chocolate melts and when it starts to bubble watch it until it thickens then remove it from the heat (about one minute). Add and mix until smooth and glossy:

• 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Pour into two to four serving dishes, chill and garnish with:

• whipped cream and chocolate shavings if you've got 'em.

Serves two to four