Chapter One

The Brownie Theory, or When I Realized My Mom was Getting Old.

Whenever I make Caramel, I think about Alzheimer's.

Caramel is a tricky thing. To make it properly, you have to have patience and quickness. You start by placing sugar and water over a medium heat.

It doesn't take much time for the sugar to dissolve under the heat and water and turn clear, but it soon climbs up the sides of the pan, moving back toward its natural tendency to crystallize. If you are doing it right, you will have a pastry brush in a cup of water nearby to wash down the creeping crystals back into the water. You will not stir it after the sugar dissolves.  Then you watch the bubbling liquid, and wait.

While you are waiting, you may catch the smallest glimpses of something beginning to happen. Those glimpses really are tiny instances where a small bit of simple syrup has reached the right temperature, but then the rest of the pot of sugar swallows it up. You might see the sugar is no longer clear, but it isn't getting brown, either. Maybe while you are swirling the pan to make sure the heat is even, you see a tiny bit of brown color and think something is about to happen, only to see it subside again into clarity. Making caramel kind of sucks.  Until it doesn't.

And suddenly – usually when you are ready to call it quits -- POW! The caramel envelops the sugar and it goes from clear, to amber, to caramel in a matter of seconds. if you are not acting quickly and watching carefully, you will ruin the entire batch. Like much in life, in making caramel, patience and timing are everything.

Alzheimer’s is like caramel: there are flickers of what will soon be, and when the time comes, you must act quickly.

It is 2006 and we are orchestrating the annual precarious symphony of feeding 24 people at Thanksgiving. I am whipping cream in a chilled copper bowl by hand, because mom likes soft cream with dessert, and “you just can’t get it right with a mixer.” She watches over me as I sprinkle the smallest bit of powdered sugar.  "Not too much, or it will be chantilly cream," she warns.  I know.  I'm fucking 43 years old.

"Hey, come over here," my husband whispers to me, some urgency in his voice. "There are 22 people out there expecting chocolate mousse and this is not chocolate mousse!"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Taste the chocolate mousse. There's something wrong with it."

We are in the staging area (known the rest of the year as my mother's garage), prepping for the dessert course. We have just cleared, scraped, and stacked 22 dinner plates. They are waiting neatly on the washing table to be loaded into mom's dishwasher once the appetizer plates have completed their cycle, and Dan is unwrapping the various pies, cakes, and other desserts, at my mom's sergeant-like direction,  tasting any he can without being busted.

"Oh my god it's just awful," he says, as I walk over.

“Shut Up,” I say. “People can hear you.” I am giggling as I walk over to see what the problem is.

We head into the garage to talk.  The cars have been backed out of the garage, and it has been revamped into a staging area to fit my mother's cleanliness sensibilities, which cannot tolerate a messy kitchen. Assorted cheeses and other appetizers have been wrapped from earlier in the meal and they sit on one table. The cheese will be brought out again at dessert with the port. Tupperware filled with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, greens, corn bread, and corn pudding are neatly lined up on another table next to empty Chinese take-out cartons, so guests may make their own "doggie bags" when they leave. Mom hates leftovers.

There is the dirty-dish table, the main food table, the plating table where extra bowls sit waiting to be filled, and the dessert table. The set-up is not unlike every thanksgiving we've had for the past 45 years. My mom is a catering machine. My husband and his family think we're all crazy.

Seconds earlier, Mom had directed us to prepare the final course. She had scooped up a handful of dessert plates, forks, and coffee spoons from the plating table. On her way in to the dining room, she had pressed the start button on the coffee maker. She will make at least 2 full brews before she brings any coffee out (it's my job to decant the first batch into the insulated pots). While she is dealing out plates and telling stories to appreciative guests, we're discussing strategy. I taste the chocolate mousse.

It is inedible.  "Holy Shit. Again?" I say to my husband. Quite obviously, she mistook salt for sugar, the second time in as many years she has royally screwed the pooch on something she was tasked to do. We are looking at a massive crystal bowl of brown cream not suitable for human consumption. We cannot control our laughter now.

"Jean is losing it," my husband whispers about my mom, walking over to the giant garbage bag to dump the chocolate salty goo. "Thank god she didn't make the turkey!"

The past few years, Jean has done little more than host Thanksgiving and bark orders, which is still an undertaking. Done her way, there are days and days of proper cleaning and decorating, and, of course, staging, all of which she directs like a seasoned conductor. My husband and I are largely responsible for the actual cooking, which we do at home and cart over to her place in our truck. This arrangement satisfies both her desire to maintain a spotless kitchen and still serve as the hostess. She reserves for her personal preparation one special dish of honor, and as tradition dictates, we all oooh and aaaah as it comes out to the table. This year, as last, it is chocolate mousse. This year, as last, something has gone horribly wrong.

"Oh my god," I say between giggles. "This dish is her crowning glory. Remember last year what happened?"

"Yeah," says Dan. "Chocolate soup?" We burst out laughing again, and then shush each other and hide the bowl.

Last year, hours before guests were to arrive, we found Jean in tears, frantically, searching encyclopedic cookbooks for a way to fix her chocolate mousse.

"It just won't gel," she said, lifting the spoon out of the liquid chocolate and letting its gloppy contents slide back into the bowl. "I don't know what I did wrong. I've gone over the recipe again and again and I did everything right."

Thanks to an extra freezer and a lot of catering dishes, we froze the soup into individual ramekins and called it frozen mousse. Dolloped with whipped cream and a feathered strawberry, no one was the wiser.  For the record, freezing almost any floppy dessert and changing the name will work.  People don't care, or don't know.  But this year, that is not an option.

Jean scurries back in to the garage and claps her hands together. We don poker faces and stand at the ready to carry out her orders.

"Alright now, let's get moving. Dan, can you put the coffee cups out and count how many people want coffee or tea? Tsan, let's bring the pies out to side buffet and the mousse to the center of the table. Where is the mousse?"

"Mom, I don't think we should serve the mousse," I say. "You accidentally used salt instead of sugar. It's not edible. Let's just go with the pies and the cheeses," I say as nonchalantly as I can. There is enough pie and cheese to feed the entire Plymouth Rock expedition. We don’t need the mousse. There is pumpkin pie, because there are white people there. There is sweet potato pie, because it’s better than pumpkin. There is pecan pie, and apple pie, and ginger cake, and a pear upside down cake. There is the giant box of chocolates mom bought at Costco just in case, and the disgusting little brownie bites that come in packs of 500 she had taken a fancy to in her old age. Pro-tip:  don't buy them.

Still, when she hears my words, every bit of energy, spark, and twinkle leaves her and she is instantly deflated. Her mouth is just slightly agape. There is a moment of silence where none of us is quite sure what to say.

In the smallest of voices, she says, "what?" and we can see that she is overcome with feelings that go far beyond messing up a little chocolate pudding. My husband, motivated by his intense desire to avoid conflict at all costs, starts collecting up the pies and leaves my mother and me in the garage together.

I try to brush off the matter as insignificant. It is, after all, just one bad day in a kitchen that is largely responsible for producing two professional chefs in the family.

"Oh mom, we've all made that mistake before, " I say, smiling. "It's no big deal. We've got a ginger cake, a pumpkin pie, a sweet potato pie, a pecan pie, and an apple pie. We couldn't have eaten all that anyway." Five years ago I might have teased her -- just a little -- but I know better. Five years ago she was 71.  

Jean doesn't move. She just stands there. I try another tack.

"You know, that recipe is just a shitty recipe, mom. It’s very unpredictable. I think you need a new recipe. It's just not stable. I mean last year it didn't gel, remember?" It was the exact wrong thing to say.

"Oh my god, not again," my mom says. Tears begin to form.

"Last year this happened. I had completely forgotten that I ruined the chocolate mousse last year, too." She lowers herself to a stool and sits, her upper lip trembling. "Oh dear," she says clearly demoralized.

And Me?  Now I feel like an asshole. I try for the recovery.

"You didn't ruin it last year – it was just frozen. And anyway, no one knew."

"But I promised chocolate mousse. People love my chocolate mousse," she said, still sitting, hands covering her face.

There are 20-odd folks talking in the dining room.  No one gives a shit about her chocolate mousse. We never have. It's her big deal, but like most things we think people notice, no one's breath is bated for it. None of it.

No one cares that she bought her cream at the farmer's market. No one will notice she used Valrhona chocolate instead of Nestle. No one will remark on the delicate richness added by the Madegascar vanilla from Penzey’s. People are neaderthals.  We get the same reaction having spent several hours perfecting a creme brulee as we get slathering a store-bought pie with some Reddi-Whip.

I need a Hail Mary or everything is going to hell.  It's time to invoke The Brownie Theory.

The Brownie Theory, as was taught by my mom, begins with the premise that people who think they know food are often idiots who will plotz over a batch of box brownies made with fake chocolate, but sniff at a plate of perfect vanilla sables. Over the years, we have tested this theory at potlucks and dinner parties.

I walk over and kiss her on the forehead.

“Mom, remember The Brownie Theory.”

This manages to raise a smile. I continue.

"I've got two quarts of heavy whipping cream in there,” I tell her. “There’s some cocoa leftover from dusting the truffles, some vanilla, some Grand Marnier, and some powdered sugar. I bet we can make chocolate mousse in 5 minutes and no one will even notice.”

And we do. Minutes later it is on the table and soon disappeared into the bellies of waiting guests. Jean has all but forgotten her moment of terror. She is happy again, in her element, lobbing jokes and filling wine glasses. Oh yeah, and people said it was the lightest most creamy mousse they had ever tasted.  It kinda was.

Here is the recipe for fake chocolate mousse (which is really Chocolate Grand Marnier Chantilly Cream). It fooled everyone except my husband, who loves chocolate mousse so much he once ate the entire evening supply of it from a restaurant (and was subsequently asked to leave).

2 cups heavy whipping cream, very cold
¾ cup sifted powdered sugar
½ cup sifted cocoa
1 tablespoon double-strength vanilla
2-4 tablespoons Grand Marnier liqueur

Combine the sugar, cocoa and cream in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a wire whisk. Whip the cream until it reaches soft peaks, then add remaining ingredients and continue to whip until the mixture holds stiff peaks. Spoon into a large bowl and keep your mouth shut.

Back at the house, later, Dan and I are still giggling about the incident, but not with the complete abandon we could have, being alone at home where no one can hear. We know without saying so that her memory is going. Almost without thinking about it, we begin to recount the times she’s lost her glasses, forgotten to put coffee in the filter before brewing a pot, lost her keys. They are more frequent. We decide she’s just getting old because we don't want to talk about what we know is really happening.