Weezer's Chocolate Sundae Pie


Chocolate Sundae Pie
This recipe is at least 60 years old and was often the dessert at special dinners of our family back in South Dakota. The Weezer refers to our mother, Louise.

1 cup evaporated milk
½ cup water
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
3 egg yolks
½ cup granulated sugar
1/8  teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon gelatin
3 Tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 egg whites beaten stiff
1 cup sweetened whipped cream
¼ cup grated unsweetened chocolate
1 baked pie shell

Heat milk and water in double boiler with nutmeg.
Beat egg yolks, sugar and salt until light.
Pour hot milk over the egg mixture returning to double boiler and cook until the consistency of thick cream.
Remove from fire, add gelatin which has been soaked 5 minutes in cold water and vanilla and cool.
When cool and ready to set, fold in beaten egg whites.
Pour into baked pie shell.
Set in refrigerator.
When cold and set cover with whipped cream and grate on chocolate.

Ukraine, Hello

My Morning Surprise

Some mornings when I check the stats on my blog I see that there has been a large number of "hits" from Ukraine. My biggest audience is of course the United States, followed by Russia and then Ukraine. I'm always curious about how this happens. What is the attraction to my writing in far away places? I may never know, but I do appreciate it and enjoy thinking about what it might be that brings my readers in Ukraine back so often. A German friend said that back in Germany her mother's English class uses my writing as part of the curriculum. I don't know if it is style or content, but I'm happy whenever it's found worthwhile for any reason. Some of the writing is so personal, it pleases me that this technology allows that personal connection across the globe. So, for me it's "Good Night" and to my readers in Ukraine, "Good Morning, I'm glad you are there.'


Christmas Traditions Recycled

Friends are spending this holiday in ways they didn't plan. They are not with the people they usually celebrate with or they're not taking trips to family in snowy areas -- so they must "adjust". Here's my story of adjustment from the San Francisco Chronicle  10 years ago. It has gotten easier.

As times change, make new traditions from old

Susan DeMersseman, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
The holidays often create the challenge of melding traditions from different families. Also, those who moved from places that look like a "winter wonderland" in December must find ways to feel the holiday spirit in the California sun. In either case, adjustments are required.
As I pull out our holiday decorations, I can see that I am adjusting, and it's starting to feel a little more natural.
For the first 14 years of marriage, we returned to be with my family in South Dakota at Christmas, as I had done every other year of my life before that.
Then five years ago, a decision I had long avoided loomed. My mother was 90, no longer really conscious and unable to leave her care facility. I didn't think that I could stand being at our family Christmas events, knowing that she was just a few miles away and not with us. It felt equally hard to remain in California for Christmas, away from my brothers and their families and from the many traditions we shared at the holidays.
On the other hand, my husband, who is a California native, was ready for a Christmas here. He had long felt we needed to come up with some local traditions. Our kids didn't put up too much of a fuss, so we spent our first Christmas as a family in California.
I bought a tube of waterproof mascara and tried to stay busy. We had always "gone to Christmas," and now we had to bring it here. Though I had moments when I felt like curling up under a warm comforter and weeping, I had to find a way to make it feel like Christmas here, for my children and for myself.
I started by planning a big party. I sprayed fake frost on every window. I cheered when the temperature went down. The house smelled of mulled cider and logs burning on the fire. Every corner was decorated in some way. The menu and traditions were like those we usually celebrated back home. Everyone had a great time.
Our quiet family event on Christmas Eve also went fairly well. We ate fresh crab by the fire, shared some with the cat and opened our gifts. Sensing my misery, my husband even agreed to play board games with the children and me.
I took just a few breaks for tear attacks, and each year since has gone a little better.
One thing that has helped is to focus on people for whom the situation is truly serious. We have helped at a local church putting together Christmas packages for families in need. The children have earned money and donated to local causes or have done special things for some of the children whom I work with.
Each year we've had a crafts day with close friends and their kids, making decoupage plates, doll quilts and Christmas ornaments.
Now that my daughter is a teenager, we have "fancy cooking days," where her friends come and learn how to make dishes like meringues and red pepper relish . When we're done the kitchen is a disaster. And even the mess is comforting.
For my children these traditions will be added to their Christmas memories. As a fervent recycler, my mother would be proud that I made new traditions from old ones.


Susan DeMersseman is a psychologist and parent educator in Berkeley. E-mail her at home@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/03/HO63D1SS1.DTL
This article appeared on page HO - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Listening -- The National Day.


Today is the National Day of Listening. Story Corps has a guide and a wonderful website in general. Here is an older piece on the power of listening from the Christian Science Monitor.


There's more to listening than shutting your mouth

By  / July 19, 2004

I Think some people are temperamentally predisposed to being good listeners. At least they seem that way, because they don't interrupt or talk about themselves a lot. On the other hand, maybe they're just shy, or they're not really thinking about what the speaker is saying.
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I am not one of those people. I am an active listener. So active in fact, that I sometimes show I am "with" the speaker by finishing his or her sentences.
But after years of training as a psychologist, and years of living, I have gotten better. I have come to appreciate the skill of listening, both for its value and its rarity.
Living in an ambitious urban environment, I find that people are eager to talk about what they are doing. Sometimes it's hard to get a word in edgewise.
Periodic trips back home to the Midwest remind me that large numbers of people exist who are actually interested in what another person has to say. They understand that the opposite of speaking is not just waiting to speak.
Once in a while an experience comes along that reinforces my appreciation of the power of listening. One such took place in a Honda service waiting room. I was a frequent visitor there with one of my cars, so I usually went in with some paperwork, prepared to wait. On one of those visits, a small elderly lady sat down next to me. She wore gray wool house slippers and a plaid scarf covering white hair fixed in pin curls held with bobby pins.
I can't remember how the conversation started, but I soon found out that she too had grown up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. As a youngster in the town of Deadwood, she remembered the grocer borrowing her sled in the winter to ferry packages up the steep hills of that old mining town. The major business of the town was the Homestake Gold Mine, but her father had emigrated from Germany and was a master craftsman. He did fine plaster work. Sixty years later, she still spoke of his work with pride.
In the hour we waited, I learned more about him, her mother, and her childhood in the 30s. I shared almost nothing about myself. I don't think the woman noticed. As I asked questions about those times, she remarked, "Oh, my - I haven't thought about that in years!"
I asked her what they wore in those days, what they ate, what games they played. I asked about how she made it to California. I learned about her son who lived far away. I learned that she lived alone in a little apartment and had a quiet life with a few friends who lived nearby.
I asked mostly about the past. "What things did you do for Christmas?" I could see that, just for a minute, she was back home in Deadwood, 8 years old, looking out the frosted window and waiting for her father to climb the wooden steps on the hillside with packages from the five and dime. Her answers were interesting, but watching her delight at going back to retrieve them was even more satisfying.
As a psychologist, I'm a trained listener. I know how to be quiet. I know how to ask helpful questions, guiding people to think about how to solve a problem. But it was a pleasure to use the same skills to help someone take a walk down memory lane. I never let her know what I did for a living; I didn't want her to think anything other than, "What a nice little visit!"
She must have, for when the clerk called her name, she paused for a minute and said, "I wish I could talk to you every day." For so many people, it is a rare gift to be able to tell their story and have someone really listen.
So simple, and so rare.

Traditions at the holidays


Holiday traditions strengthen family ties

Susan DeMersseman, Special to The Chronicle
Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, November 26, 2008
  • It wouldn't be Thanksgiving at Susan DeMersseman's house without the turkey-shaped candle holder of painted wood. Photo: Raymond Holbert
    It wouldn't be Thanksgiving at Susan DeMersseman's house without the turkey-shaped candle holder of painted wood. Photo: Raymond Holbert

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This year I was reminded of the power of tradition when my daughter, Lauren, was looking for the turkey-shaped candleholder that we "needed" to put on the Thanksgivingtable. This candleholder is special in no other way than that it has been on our table for all the Thanksgivings I can remember. On our table, too, will always be stuffing from the recipe of the children's grandmother Carolyn. And for as long as I am at the table, there will be a short prayer of thanksgiving; I'm grateful most for the ability to see the things that we can be grateful for.
In good or bad times, the holidays can be intense periods in peoples' lives. The holidays can create all kinds of expectations, often fueled by commercial interest, some by family pressures. Regardless of the elements that surround one's holiday, there is a powerful and comforting role that tradition can play. There is something grounding in the familiarity and continuity that traditions bring to a family. More are present around the holidays, but in many families there are regular practices that give strength to the fabric of that family.
Years ago, after spending every Christmas with my family in South Dakota, we spent our first Christmas in California. My mother, who had been the center of the family, was no longer living, and it seemed like the right time to make the change. Many of the traditions of that first year were what might be considered recycled. That year, I yearned to see the Black Hills turn white beneath a blanket of snow. But that would not be, so that Christmas was drenched in Dakota tradition - the menus, the parties and the decorations. Fake snow on the windows and a sympathetic husband helped, but it was celebrating in ways that were familiar to all of us that made this transition easier.
Many of the most precious traditions cost very little or nothing, important in these challenging economic times. Some families take walks before or after dinner, get together with the same friends, or as a family perform acts of charity. Tradition does not draw its power from a price tag, but from the sense of continuity that can come from something as small as a 23-year-old daughter who remembers a turkey-shaped candleholder for the Thanksgiving table.