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Things I Learned While Making Truffles With My Mother 1. Martha Stewart's recipes are never as easy as they seem. Never. If she says to chill the truffle mixture for 45 minutes, stirring once every fifteen, and then says it will begin to harden quickly after that and you should subsequently stir it every two to three minutes for another twenty and then it will be hard enough to scoop? She's lying. Or her underpaid employees are. What she really means is that after the initial 45 minutes, it will take at least another 45, some of which will have to be spent running back and forth between the kitchen and the chest freezer in the garage because the refridgerator? Just isn't working fast enough. 2. When your mother points out that making candy for her twenty-five employees was your idea, and you point out that what you said was "fudge" or "chocolate covered pretzels" with a heavy emphasis on the latter, she will deny ever hearing it and tell everyone within earshot (your brother and your husband) that you are telling an untruth and that the truffles (which you'd never seen the recipe for until she told you about it) were entirely your idea. 3. If truffle making takes nineteen times longer than it should, and you are supposed to dip said truffles in melted chocolate before rolling them in cocoa/crushed candy canes/cinnamon and sugar/red jimmies, something will go horribly wrong with the melted chocolate. After dipping about twenty truffles (out of two hundred and fifty), it will begin to thicken and turn very fudge-like. Nothing you do to save it will work. You will end up saying "screw it" and dipping the truffly centers right into the crushed coatingy goodness. (Isn't that all anyone cares about, anyway?) 4. If given the opportunity, your brother will burn every CD you own. All four thousand of them. 5. If you are planning on waiting for a friend to arrive before you have dinner, and said friend is not going to arrive until about 7 or 8, then perhaps eating more than one meal during the day would be a good idea. Otherwise, don't be surprised when you get a headache. (Washing down your Tylenol with cheap wine may help.) 6. After spending over six hours making truffles, touching truffles, rolling truffles, the smell of chocolate will start to make you feel sick. You wouldn't think this was possible - but it is, oh yes. It is. 7. Helping your mother make the truffles, no matter how much of your paper-writing time and cleaning time and general relaxing with your husband time it takes up, will help to make her life a little less stressful. That is a rare thing, and a good one. 8. However, when your mother begins to show off the urban slang she's picked up from her warehouse workers (because it makes them laugh), you will want her to go home. You will want her to go home before you ever have to hear her say Yo, what's the deal-i-o, yo? or Why you hatin' on me? again. Your brother will want to crawl under the covers of his bed, where he can pretend that the world has not spun on its axis in such a crazy fashion and return to the world where his fifty-two-year old reading-glasses-wearing mother has never said anything like Are you gettin' the bling-bling? 9. Finally, you will re-learn that your mother is cool. Your mother is fun. And when she walks out the door, thanking you profusely, to drive home with your brother, you only love her more. Because she would do the same for you - and has. Because you know you've helped to make her life a little easier. Because the truffles ended up coming out just fine. Because the kitchen will only take twenty minutes to clean up. (Because she's taken her slanguage with her and you can start forgetting you ever heard it.) |