In this season, in the silence of night, who among us doesn’t pause, rewinding time back to childhood on Christmas Day?
Among those memories, there’s often a grandmother.
In my case, Grandma Danchuk. Alice. Born 110 years ago, on Christmas Day in 1908.
Picture Alice on her 60th birthday, hosting Christmas dinner for all six of her children and their families—some years there were up to thirty-two of us! A sturdy woman of Ukrainian descent, she’d wear her fanciest dress, usually something flowered and blue, a necklace and earrings, and she’d have curled her hair. Everyone dressed accordingly, out of respect and fear of “that look” of reprimand. (Note that I am capitalizing the word Grandma.) We were invited for 2pm but dinner, as I recall, it wasn’t serve until a few hours later.
For Grandma, Christmas—her whole life everyday, actually—was all about the food. For Christmas dinner she made roast turkey with stuffing and gravy (and many years, a goose as well), baked ham, cabbage rolls, perogies (my sister Joan says “She’d have all different kinds: potato, cottage cheese, prune, sauerkraut”) and I recall a cream sauce with wild morels she’d picked and dried), creamy mashed potatoes, buttered peas and carrots, lettuce salad with her dressing of cream, sugar and vinegar, homemade white-flour buns and cranberry sauce sometimes made from wild fruit she’d picked in autumn. You can see that it would take two hours just to set everything out. There were no appetizers, unless you count bowls of nuts and candy. Grandpa (Jim) contributed the whiskey, vodka and rum for the men. A ginger ale punch sweetened with something red sugared up the rest of us.
The adults sat in the dining room, we kids were relegated to long tables and TV trays in the living room. Grandma set her snow-white clothesline-dried tablecloths with her best china and silver. “Do you remember Grandma, in her rushed frenzy, telling us to ‘take these napkins and throw them out,’ meaning to put them on the dining room table?” asks my sister Margie. Were there red flowers on the table or is it my receding memory? I doubt the local grocery stores carried roses or poinsettias. Although no one in our Saskatchewan community of “scrub land” had any money, my grandparents seemed better off than most. Maybe Grandma bought flowers on a trip to Prince Albert?
After the main course, there was an interval. Leftovers were put away and the dishes were washed and dried by mom and her four sisters “wanted in the kitchen.” Grandma was in charge of all proceedings. “Remember she had us kids deliver a Christmas meal to Ivor Lynn, the guy who lived in a little shack across from them,” Margie reminds me.
Then the procession of desserts made their entry: pies—mock cherry (made with cranberries and raisins, a renowned Alice Danchuk creation), apple and pumpkin—all laden with whipped cream, Christmas pudding with rum sauce, Christmas fruitcake, chocolate roll, cream puffs, butter tarts, Japanese Mandarin oranges (Christmas was the only time we had them) and my favourite—Perishki, a crescent-shaped cookie filled with raspberry jam and dotted with lightly browned meringue and half a walnut. Plus, mom would bring a birthday cake for Grandma. “Usually an angel food cake,” she says.
When her daughters decided this feast was too much for their aging mother, grandma resisted for a few years before giving in—then she turned around and invited everyone for Boxing Day, cooking all the dishes she traditionally served for Christmas dinner.
Alice’s food was legendary, in Crystal Springs where she and Grandpa lived—and beyond.
“During the depression, men who were riding the rails would get off and come to our house. Mom would always take them in and feed them,” is a story my mom told us many times.
Oksana. Ukrainian for Alice, Oksana was likely what Grandma was called when she was young, a name that seems to suit her. A serendipitous gift I received this week (thanks Google) is that Oksana comes from the Greek word Xenia. And you know what Xenia means? “Hospitality.”
As the oldest grandchild, a day or two before each holiday from the time I was about eight years old, I’d help Alice, peeling potatoes and carrots, stirring cranberry sauce… Always, mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon, a neighbor (or two or three, sometimes with their wives) would drive into my grandparents’ farm at the edge of town for coffee. They came for Grandma’s baking: maybe cinnamon buns, poppy seed rolls or cake donuts and always, jam cookies. And they came for a visit with Grandpa, who was so gregarious, a constant storyteller, a man who embraced life. Grandma was too busy kneading her passion in the kitchen to stop and chat, pausing only to say “Eat, eat,” as she passed around another plate of goodies. I can still hear Grandpa saying “Alice. Alice. Come sit down.”
Sometimes town people came to buy eggs or cream and, on occasion, a chicken, duck or goose. Maybe vegetables too, as Grandma grew a huge garden. For years she stored the money from these sales on a high shelf in a sealed coffee tin, until her distrust in banks dissolved sufficiently for her to open her own account.
As a child, I remember we grandkids would get two envelopes at Christmas: one with a card and money (none of us remember how much) from Grandpa, and one with a card and two dollars from Grandma. (Worth about thirty ice-cream cones in my nine-year-old hands.) In their last years, instead of cash we got separate cheques: one signed Alice Danchuk, the other in Grandpa’s hand. Grandma also had a quarter section in her own name, although none of us know how the annual proceeds from her land were accounted for before she had her own bank account. Undoubtedly, she had the amount sharpened to the penny.
Perishki is not for the novice baker, the impatient or the perfectionist. In a panic not having made Perishki for a few years, I emailed my sister Joyce. “Grandma has no indication of sugar in the cookie dough. Is that what you have in your recipe?” She did. True to its etymology, Perishki perishes easily, the meringue turning weepy unless the cookies are kept cool. They stick together if stacked, so you have to store the cookies in single layers without the meringue from one touching another, and who has refrigerator space for that at Christmas? Grandma kept hers in their veranda. Uninsulated, its windows rimed with hoarfrost, it held the perfect temperature for Perishki during a prairie winter and offered easy access off their living room. I store them in our wine cellar under the stairwell.
Perishki has appeared infrequently at Christmas dinners at Casa Magellan and Spice. But this year I made the effort, following Grandma’s recipe, hand-written about fifty years ago on a splotched file card you see above. Our Christmas gift to you is Alice’s recipe—and to enlivening the memory of grandmothers in your life.
Alice’s Perishki
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- 2 cups flour
- 3 eggs room temperature and separated
- 2 Tbsp sour cream
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 cup raspberry jelly or jam thick, NOT runny
- 1 cup walnut halves
Instructions
- Blend the butter and flour until completely combined.
- Beat egg yolks lightly. Add the sour cream, vanilla and lemon juice. Beat together and add to the butter/flour mixture.
- Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.
- Grandma writes to take a bit of the dough and “form the size of a marble.” Using your rolling pin, flatten the marble on both sides. With your thumbs, flatten and stretch the dough, like Italians do when making pasta. Don’t worry about the shape—it doesn’t need to be perfect.
- Put some jam in the middle of the flattened marble of dough. Grandma writes “a teaspoon;” take it as your challenge—about 1/2 a teaspoon is all I can manage to include without it oozing out. Fold and seal the dough in a crescent-moon shape. Repeat about 64 times.
- Bake the cookies at 325°F for 10 minutes, 300°F in a convection oven.
- Meanwhile, beat the egg whites to soft peaks, then add the sugar and beat until it’s a stiff meringue.
- Remove the cookies from the oven. Don’t be alarmed if they’ve spread open a bit. Put a teaspoon of meringue on top of each cookie. Lastly, stick a walnut half into the meringue of each cookie.
- Return the cookies to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes until the meringue is lightly browned.
36 Responses
Loved this Gloria and Kerry! It’s never Christmas without memories of Grandma and Christmas spent at Grandma and Grandpas house.Grandma was a special lady and the best cook and always welcoming. Thank you so much for this beautiful tribute.
Maybe you can solve the mystery of the red flowers. Mom wonders if they were (a) artificial? or (b) straw flowers that Grandma would have grown herself?
So lovely. Thanks for sharing.
Merry Christmas.
Щасливого Різдва Христового (Ukrainian wish for happy holidays in the period between December 25 and the first of January)
Gloria , finally I think I know what it is in polish , pierozki .
Small pierogi .
Beautiful post like always .The pictures with Christmas tree like from my album from Poland .
Thank you , merry Christmas
love
jola
That’s what Lynn referred to them as last night: little perogies. She remembers how poorly they fared in her lunchbox. And Grandma’s tree with thin strips of tinsel that looked like aluminum foil cascading down? It makes my teeth hurt thinking about it. Best of the season to you.
Oh G & K, what a treasure your Xmas story and video today is! Your Grandma Danchuk was truly a very Special Lady—talented, energetic, caring and positive. Thank you for sharing these grand memories.
This blog was written in honour of xmas traditions and memories of grandmothers. You have been a special grandmother to many grandchildren, and we are honoured that you are the only nonagenarian to have commented on our blog. Impressive! Thank you.
What a warm and lovely story to tell.All the photos and the video are treasures. Wishing you and Kerry a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
Love,
Bonnie and Mark
Without all you dear readers, we would never have gone to the work of doing this, so thanks and best wishes for the season.
Loved reading this memory of a wonderful Grandma (deserving of a capital G)!
Wish you and Kerry a most fabulous Christmas 🌲🌴🌲
Thanks Newlyweds (capital indented), and the same to you.
So the cooking gene was nurtured early Gloria. Christmas is all about nostalgia for me. Every year as I patiently roll the lefse dough I picture my Dad standing over my shoulder, telling me how my grandmother told him it had to be thin enough to see through. If I see the shadow of my hand through it is that thin enough I wonder? I can see him with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and flour everywhere. I think he and my grandmother would be proud of how it turned out this year.
What a lovely memory Karen. The nostalgia of Christmas memories reminds me how we need to thank the people we love, now, while we’re still able, for the joy they bring into our lives.
Great story for Christmas! Wishing my ‘Vancouver family’ all the best and looking forward to seeing you soon 🙂
You’re soon going to get a preview of what’s coming next year…
What a lovely Christmas memory. We have to appreciate how hard these old girls worked to feed us all.
So true. Never an idle moment. Even when Grandma went to live in a care home, she had a waist-high container garden (may have even initiated it?) and helped them fold laundry.
Thanks Gloria & Kerry for sharing your Christmas memories. Brings back memories of my rural Christmas’s with Grandparents. Yes you definitely followed in Grandma Alice’s footsteps.
If she’d seen my feeble attempts at a garden over the years, Alice would have been horrified. And can you imagine what she’d say when she saw the prices we pay for say, fresh beets, at Farmers’ Markets here in vancouver?
Happy story making over the holidays to you, Orval and your family Arlene.
Thank you Gloria for this wonderful story about your family and the Christmas Tradition your family enjoyed for so many years.
Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year.
An old-fashioned candle-lit time for you for a few days…Happy Holidays and may your generator live on.
This is what it is all about.
What a nice Christmas message guys!
Merry Christmas from Pat & Dallas
(plus we have our power back…..30 hours in the dark.
My mother & sister just got theirs back in Cowichan Bay 20 minutes ago😊- good thing it wasn’t a minus 40 Saskatchewan winter)
The queen of The Danchuk household, her domain was the kitchen, and there was never a doubt about that.
The scene never changed year to year, similar to an ant hill, as Alice was either delivering the current dish or working on the next, non stop food and service, always with a smile.
Hospitality was non stop and the day, week, month hour made no difference to Danchuk’s, when the door opened into her kitchen, you were greeted by a smile and the aroma of the latest baked goods filling the air.
Love the pictures and the people within, brings back a most awesome set of memories from the “Way Back” machine. Perfect.
The video is the best Christmas Present ever.
Yes, the aromas at her house linger through the years don’t they? Coffee on her yellow stovetop. The earthy smell of mushroom cream sauce. The yeasty waft of warm buns in a tray on her kitchen table…
❤️💕So many great memories! Thanks Gloria and Kerry, and yes loved hearing those voices❤️
Always, there was a cacophony of voices at G&G’s place wasn’t there?
Wonderful blog, great memories of an incredible lady and family.
When I was young, I even named my imaginary playmate Alice after her…
Love it, so nice to hear the voices again, that thing that photos can’t give you. Merry Christmas to you and your family, all the best for 2018…
Magellan recorded about 35 minutes of footage from the 1985 Christmas holidays at the Danchuk’s, a real treasure now.
Melancholy memories …Enjoyed this Gloria and Kerry! Thank you
Bittersweet isn’t it? I wish mom could see this.
Well its obvious where your interest and talent with food came from. It was in your gene pool all along! Such great memories. Merry Christmas!
Thanks Di. From that gene pool I’ve inherited a few other traits you may recognize…