Each holiday season, food lovers look forward to homemade treats from friends and relatives: a plate of sugar cookies, a rum-soaked fruit cake, a batch of granola. We went in search of a few folks known for their edible holiday gifts and found a Durham man who buys 40 pounds of Bertie County peanuts to make peanut brittle and a Clover, S.C., woman who makes as many as 175 loaves of pumpkin bread for her co-workers, relatives and friends.
It's the effort that makes the recipients of gifts from the kitchen feel loved. "It's just really special to have a food gift," says Marcie Cohen Ferris, an assistant professor of American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and a recipient of one of our cooks' gifts.
Maybe these generous cooks will inspire others to start a tradition.
Joel Muse has been making peanut brittle as a holiday gift for 35 years. "The more you make it, the better you get at it," says Muse, 70, of Durham.
Even his niece, chef Amy Tornquist, can vouch for that sentiment. She has had varying degrees of success trying to replicate his recipe. "His is always better," says Tornquist, who owns Sage & Swift Catering and Watts Grocery in Durham.
Tornquist attributes Muse's brittle brilliance to his training as a scientist. A Williamston native, he is a semi-retired chemist who spent decades working in research and development at Goodyear Tires. While living in Ohio, Muse got the recipe from a friend about the time a cousin sent him five pounds of raw Bertie County peanuts for Christmas. A tradition was born.
Muse is so particular about how to make brittle that he brought two samples to illustrate success versus failure: a golden yellow batch that was perfectly caramelized and pale yellow brittle that didn't measure up.
"It's only within a few degrees and a few seconds," Muse says about the different results.
Muse says his Goodyear co-workers used to line up to get their brittle when he brought it into work. Now he gets to use Tornquist's commercial catering kitchen to make his holiday treats. He still buys raw Bertie County peanuts, as much as 40 pounds a year, and cranks out several batches over many days for about 20 friends and relatives.
Tornquist asks her uncle to make brittle for her to give to customers, friends and her daughters' teachers. She plans to sell it at a bakery and sweets shop that she will open on Durham's Broad Street in late spring.
When that happens, anyone will be able to get a taste of Uncle Joel's peanut brittle.
Loaves of pumpkin bread
Last year, 64-year-old Mary Simmons of Clover, S.C., baked 175 loaves of pumpkin bread to give relatives, neighbors, co-workers and church friends. This has been her holiday gift-giving tradition for more than 25 years.
When Simmons got the recipe 30 years ago, she thought this spiced, moist bread would be a special holiday treat. "You only use pumpkin that time of year," she says.
Baking that many regular and mini loaves of pumpkin bread is a major undertaking. The bread can sour quickly so Simmons has to turn her home kitchen into production central for about two weeks in December. Her shopping list includes more than 24 cans of pumpkin, 30 pounds of flour, 32 pounds of sugar. "That's not even the raisins, the pecans or the eggs," she says.
Simmons will get home from work by 6 p.m., eat a quick dinner and stay up baking until 1 a.m.
"I stay very busy in the month of December," she says. "It's very hectic." And after baking, she has to deliver all the loaves.
The lucky recipients include more than 100 people at her church, Greater Life Ministries in Clover, and all 51 employees at the Charlotte advertising firm, Luquire George Andrews, where Simmons is treasurer and office manager.
Judi Wax, a vice president at Luquire George Andrews, says she and her husband, Saul, a retired chef, look forward to Simmons' pumpkin bread each year. "In two days, it's gone," Wax says.
Despite her list of recipients that grows each year, Simmons says she can't scale back. "Now they look forward to getting it. I don't want to disappoint them."
Jars of homemade soup
Penny Rich, a Chapel Hill personal chef and city council member, is known about town for the jars of homemade soup she gives as holiday presents.
This tradition, only a few years old, started with her friend, Ferris, whose birthday falls on Dec. 30. Rich figured Ferris' birthday got overshadowed by the holiday season, and so she gave her friend 12 jars of different homemade soups to heat for quick lunch breaks between classes. "It was extra special because it was the gift that kept on giving," Ferris says.
The soups were so well-received that Rich, 52, started expanding her gift list to neighbors, friends and clients. She makes up to 50 jars of soup and stores them in a second freezer. The flavors range from black bean and minestrone to curried butternut squash and shrimp bisque. From mid-November to mid-December, Rich is in soup-making mode, turning out two to three flavors a week.
The only problem is that Rich's teenage sons raid her soup collection. "I often see Ball jars missing from the freezer," she says.
Because the soups are frozen, Rich has to deliver them in person so they don't perish on a doorstep.
The response has been good. "I always get the jars back," Rich says. "I think that means 'Let's refill them again.' "
Cheese straws galore
George Fisher, 66, of Charlotte, has spent the past 22 years fine-tuning his recipe for cheese straws. He only gives the final product as a gift to about 10 friends and business associates. Fisher works in customer service for a golf products company.
Among the lucky recipients is Karen Cooley, owner of Charlotte's Cooking Uptown store.
"He's very serious about it," Cooley says. "He's constantly trying to perfect it."
Fisher insists on using good quality cheddar cheese; store-brand doesn't cut it with this recipe. He says he reduced the amount of flour in the original recipe because the dough was so tough that he almost broke his cookie press trying to make the straws.
If the final dough is still too stiff, Fisher recommends leaving it on the counter for a bit longer. And he says watch the cheese straws closely in the oven: They can go from savory bliss to burned in seconds.
Fisher makes two batches right after Thanksgiving, but many never last to become gifts: "I eat so many when I fix them."
His recipients appear to have the same reaction. "Everybody seems to like them," he says. "Maybe they are just being nice, but they sure do eat them all."
