Editorial | The green, red and white divinity of Christmas past | Dennis Box

Christmas is right around the corner and as usual I am completely unprepared for everything. I have no idea what to buy, where to go to purchase anything and my daughter will be home for the holidays, which means life as I know it is over.

It is truly a joy to know I have sent my daughter Katy to college to become smarter so I could become dumber by the day.

I do enjoy cooking for Katy and my son Chris. I make them all the stuff I never eat. This Sunday I will bake cinnamon rolls. I make it with brioche which is a French butter dough that clogs your veins just looking at it. Brioche also makes the best stuffed French toast. I stuff it with a mix of cheeses for Katy and make a fruit syrup.

I enjoy experimenting with food and recipes, which I admit can lead to certain problems. There are some who seem to think I have weird eating habits, actually almost everyone. I get a lot of snarky comments here at the office when I eat my homemade granola mixed with cottage cheese and buttermilk.

When I was a kid I could never understand how my grandma could drink a glass of buttermilk in the morning. Now I do it. I guess I’ve turned into my grandma.

I can report that a scientific experiment I conducted in the office last week created a little stir. Remember scientific experiments that don’t go quite as expected are not necessarily wrong or bad.

I decided I would hard boil some eggs in my microwave I have in the office. I had it all planned out perfectly, until someone called me with a hot tip and I forgot to check on the eggs.

Three eggs left in a microwave covered in water for eight minutes will amazingly blow the door open on the microwave with a very loud bang, spread eggs all over the office and cause everyone to look at you and point for quite some time.

One of my favorite memories of Christmas is the divinity and almond roca my grandma would make. It was the only time of year she would make them and I loved them both.

Grandma would start her baking right after Christmas. There were five of us kids and it took a lot to keep us happy.

I remember watching her make candy with thermometers sticking up everywhere and stuff boiling and steaming. It was great.

I make candy, but grandma always had the chaos under control. Admittedly, that does not always seem to be the case when I am making candy.

There has been more than a few times I’ve created an unholy boiled black substance on the bottom of pan that couldn’t be cleaned out with a blow torch. I know because I have tried.

I hardly see anyone make divinity anymore.

Grandma made three colors – red, green and white. She would put them on this fancy three-tiered silver dish. I can see that dish filled with divinity on her table in the living room right now. Mom and grandma would always tell me I couldn’t have any sweets until after dinner.

My job every year was to steal as much divinity as possible, but figure a way to fill in the holes so I wouldn’t get caught.

I was always very successful. The only thing I was consistently smart at as a kid was stealing divinity.

I’ll probably try to make some divinity for the kids this year, but it won’t taste like grandma’s.

She used some special kind of magic, and I will never forget it.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.