The Magic Fruitcake Can

There was a time when people cooked with lard. Today people prefer oil with less cholesterol or none. One of our neighbors used to own a restaurant downtown and everything they had was, cooked with lard. My Mother asked the owners for an, empty lard can; she brought it home, cleaned it good and put it away for storage. I was around four or five years old when I saw it again.

A few days before Christmas, Mom would take off work and bake. Her Christmas dinners were well planned and partially prepared, ahead of time but, as a child, I had no concept of what the holiday dinner entailed. Mom would get me involved in some sort of craft to keep me out of her way while she did her holiday preparations, so I was oblivious to much of them.

Christmases at our house were quite a big thing, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents would all arrive, bringing their contribution to the meal. Mom would prepare both a turkey and a ham and she would bake oyster casserole and make rolls. Unbeknownst to us kids, she also baked a fruitcake. The thing is that being totally oblivious to the fact that she’d baked one, it appeared that one appeared in the lard can every year on its own, with a small glass of bourbon in the center to ferment the flavors. The curious thing is that us kids all had the same idea, that Mom didn’t bake it, the magic fruitcake can did.

Every single Christmas, after the meal, Mom would bring out the magic can, pull off the top, and there was the fruitcake, sitting right in the bottom! It was tasty too, not like the candy-like fruitcakes you buy in a store; it actually had cake, in-between the chunks of nuts and fruit.

I miss those fruitcakes; they were one-of-a-kind treats that made the holidays quite special.

Copyright, 2019, M.L. Kiser

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