Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times

by Suzan Colon Narrated by Suzan Colon

Overview

What is the secret to finding hope in hard times?

When Suzan Colón was laid off from her dream job at a magazine during the economic downturn of 2008, she needed to cut her budget way, way back, and that meant home cooking. Her mother suggested, "Why don't you look in Nana's recipe folder?" In the basement, Suzan found the tattered treasure, full of handwritten and meticulously typed recipes, peppered with her grandmother Matilda's commentary in the margins. Reading it, Suzan realized she had found something more than a collection of recipes-she had found the key to her family's survival through hard times.

Suzan began re-creating Matilda's "sturdy food" recipes for baked pork chops and beef stew, and Aunt Nettie's clam chowder made with clams dug up by Suzan's grandfather Charlie in Long Island Sound. And she began uncovering the stories of her resilient family's past. Taking inspiration from stylish, indomitable Matilda, who was the sole support of her family as a teenager during the Great Depression (and who always answered "How are you?" with "Fabulous, never better!"), and from dashing, twice-widowed Charlie, Suzan starts to approach her own crisis with a sense of wonder and gratitude. It turns out that the gift to survive and thrive through hard times had been bred in her bones all along.

Cherries in Winter is an irresistible gem of a book. It makes you want to cook, it makes you want to know your own family's stories, and, above all, it makes you feel rich no matter what.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

As the economy tanked throughout 2008, magazine editor Colón began strategizing and was better prepared when she lost her job. At her mother's suggestion, she unearthed her grandmother's recipe file, and with it a greater sensitivity about a family history that spanned the hardest years of the 20th century. The resulting book is half cooking memoir with recipes, some more practical than others, and partly family chronicle, some personalities more resilient and dimensional than others. The menfolk, including the narrator's husband and her forebears are mostly given their due (though the disappearance of Colón's biological father is elided), but the story reads as a substantial homage to a strong matriarchal line, from the author's own determined persona and voice to the prominent and similar roles played by her mother and her maternal grandmother. The narrative has ample Working Girl spunk and shifts deftly if quickly among stories and decades and geographies. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

Delicious. Delectable. Truthful, funny and poignant.... A treat to share with those you love.” —Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap

“Perfectly in sync with today’s tough times.... Cherries illustrates the difference between broke and poor, using recipes—simple, sturdy, inexpensive—as well as family wisdom to show that when poverty looms, your best weapon may be a well-nourished soul.” —People

“Colón’s warm, poignant, honest voice and down-home, mouth-watering recipes make me want to go over to her house for dinner immediately.” —Kate Christensen, author of PEN-Faulkner award-winning The Great Man

"I love this book.... One of the best reads I’ve had all year.” —Julie Morgenstern, bestselling author of Shed Your Stuff Change Your Life

MAY 2010 - AudioFile

Colon writes a charming, uplifting story of getting her mojo back after losing her dream job at a famous magazine. The book is part celebration of family and part cookbook as the author finds strength in her own family's struggles through the Great Depression. She learns about these when she unearths a folder of family recipes in her efforts to economize. When an author opts for reading his or her own material, it's always a gamble. In this case, one can hear that this material might have been better served by a professional actor’s ability to bring out the humor and quiet drama in this appealing little book. D.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171994716
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/03/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1
YOU'RE HOME EARLY TONIGHT

Suzan's Rigatoni Disoccupati
[Pasta of the Unemployed]

1/2 lb. pasta
1 small jar prepared spaghetti sauce

Heat a large pot of water until boiling and add half a box of rigatoni or whatever pasta you have. Take lid off jar of sauce and microwave for a few minutes, stirring after each minute to check temperature. Test pasta frequently so it doesn't get overcooked because you're a little distracted. Drain. Put large, comforting amounts on plates. Top just-this-side-of-mushy pasta with nuclear-hot spaghetti sauce. Serve with Italian bread and an explanation of why you're home so early.

•••

SEPTEMBER 2008
HUDSON COUNTY, NEW JERSEY

"I got laid off today," I tell Nathan.

"Oh," he says, looking to me for a sign of how he should react—How bad is this?

"It's fine," I say. "I'm fine. We're going to be fine."

After all, it's not as though I didn't see this coming. I've written for magazines for twenty-four years now, and there have been two recessions during that time. When the economy starts tanking, people cut back, and if they have to make a choice between food and a magazine, I go from being employed full-time to starting another stint as a freelance writer.

So, months before I got the call from Human Resources at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon (a meeting, I guessed on my way downstairs, that was probably not about a raise and a promotion; I was right), I had begun economizing. I kept a record of my expenses and was surprised to find that I was spending upward of ten dollars a day on lunch—nearly twenty if it was a bad day and I treated myself to sushi.

I stopped eating in the fancy company cafeteria and started brown-bagging it. My lunches were simple: tuna sandwiches, salads, last night's chicken. I asked Nathan what he spent on food in a week. The amount was so startling it led me not only to make his lunches but to bake muffins and put coffee in a thermos for him to take to work as well.

Every morning, once I got from New Jersey to New York, I skipped the subway and walked the remaining mile to the office, weaving through crowds of European tourists buying Levi's jeans and tickets to The Lion King. The summer went by quickly, and the walk became easier when the hordes in Times Square thinned out; as markets all over the world fell with ours, I heard fewer exotic accents.

The closer I got to the glass tower where I worked, the faster I walked, like a woman hurrying to an affair so good she knows it can't last. Oh, did I love that job, and everything that went with it. I loved saying good morning to the dignified security guards who wore not uniforms but suits and ties, and I got a thrill from going up the long escalator that was built into an indoor waterfall. I'd give myself a once-over in the mirrored elevator before stepping out onto my floor, wanting to look good when I walked past the fashion editors at their morning meeting in the conference room. I felt important as I settled down in my office—my own office, with my name on the door and a partial view: a chunk of Central Park and a sliver of East River. In between going to meetings with my bosses and editing features, I'd write about subjects that our readers, and I, found rich and meaningful. I'd always hoped to do this kind of work, and I was proud to be a part of this prestigious team. (Both staff and content were of such high caliber that a friend nicknamed the magazine "Harvard.") My job was so busy and exciting I'd almost forget about the plastic-wrapped sandwich in my bag, and why I'd felt the need to bring one instead of getting the chef's plat du jour in the cafeteria.

Between the two of us, Nathan and I saved about a hundred bucks a week, and I lost around five pounds with those mile sprints. I even wrote an article about my lunch savings for the magazine. (When it was published, the tuna sandwiches and leftover chicken I'd described were accompanied by recipes for Pan Bagnat and Brown Rice Salad with Salmon.) I baked on Sundays and ate a little less at night, the better to have enough for lunch the next day. At work, one of the company chiefs held a special meeting to assure us that there were no plans for salary freezes or layoffs. I kept baking.

Every little bit I did, every dollar I saved, helped me stay calm, as did rehearsing on the walk to work what I would and would not say the day the layoff came. And when it did, I was able to take the news gracefully, accept a hug from a boss relieved that I wasn't throwing a stapler at her, and pack my personal effects quickly.

•••

Normally, eating two bowls of pasta would put me in a carb-induced coma. Tonight, after getting a six-figure pay cut, it's calmed me down enough so that I can begin to take stock.

My family's history of rainy days gave me more than enough incentive to put part of each paycheck into a savings account. It also made me frugal-to a fault, in my mother's eyes. "You need this coat," she said when we were in a department store one afternoon.

"But Mom, it costs six hundred dollars . . ."

"And it looks like it cost a thousand! Buy it, or I'm buying it for you!"

Her rationale betrayed our humble background: "In order to make money," she said as I reluctantly handed over my credit card, "you have to look like you already have it."

Fortunately, I wasn't wearing that coat when I negotiated a freelance contract with my now former company. The monthly stipend won't be enough to retire on, but between that and my unemployment benefits, I can put my bag lady nightmares aside for a while. Another relief is that I'm not doing this alone anymore—now I have a husband who says things like "Don't worry. I've got my job. Have another cookie and relax." Together, we have enough to pay our rent and bills and to buy groceries (less expensive ones, anyway; I may need persuasion to buy fine clothes, but not fine food).

All in all, I feel relatively safe, especially when Mom tells me about what Nana went through during her childhood and the Depression. By those standards, I'm nowhere near trouble.

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