Annually my parents would drive us up to Monterey and Carmel for an extended weekend. My father loved Monterey, having been stationed at Fort Ord as a young man, he had all kinds of fond youthful memories of the place. We would stay at a motel near the freeway with a pool. My sister and I could have stayed at the pool with periodic visits to the vending and ice machines and been perfectly happy for the whole weekend, but Monterey and Carmel had more to offer( according to our parents). The Monterey Bay Aquarium was not there at the time, Cannery Row was a street of T-shirt shops and derelict old cannery buildings of which my dad had fond memories canning fish in the late forties, with dark skinned beauties of Italian decent.

My dad always made us stop in front of Ed Rickets old apartment, boarded up and empty. My dad would quote from Cannery Row and tell us tales of “Doc” as he was called in the book.

“Doc never trusted a woman with thin lips,” my dad would say. I would always feel my lips and wonder if I was trustworthy. Only eleven I knew that I had time for my lips to fill out, if they were too thin, what was too thin? How were lips tied to being trustworthy anyway?

The most memorable parts of these weekends I can recall are the hours in the pool pretending to be a synchronized swimmer and breakfast at the Tuck Box.

The Tuck Box is still on Dolores Street in Carmel. It is a cute building made to look like a house that Snow White and the seven dwarves might live in. It has window boxes spilling red geraniums, and leaded windows dripping their age and twisting the morning light into kaleidoscope colors and shapes as people walked by. The Tuck Box serves only breakfast and lunch.

We never went there for lunch. We were there for the scones and jam. Yellow wedges of fluffy cake like scones we slathered with homemade ollalieberry jam that we dug out of small glass containers with silver spoons. My sister and I always ordered hot tea that we dumped copious amounts of milk and sugar into. It was a magical place for us. We pretended we were somewhere far away, in England maybe or somewhere else we had never been, but must be like this, pretty and small, old and delicious.

I do not know how they make these scones. I know that they add yellow food coloring. Years later when I visited the place, a waitress slipped that tidbit of information to me. She said, “We tried to make them without the yellow food coloring and people complained that they just weren’t the same.” I have scoured cook books for a recipe and have come fairly close, but as far as I can tell they are a Scottish scone batter, made more like a cake, baked in a cast iron skillet. They are they served warm, cut into cake-like wedges.

I walked by the Tuck Box yesterday with a friend. “ I like that place,” I said as we passed.

She nodded and said “Yea, we ate there once, it was just okay.”

I didn’t say anymore. I knew that she must have ordered wrong. She hadn’t had the scones. Maybe she just went for the simple eggs and toast breakfast. The Tuck Box is all about the scones I nodded to myself with a knowing confidence.

I have taken my husband and both my children on pilgrimages to the Tuck Box. They enjoyed the scones, jam and tea. I can’t understand why they don’t have the same feeling of elation and longing to revisit the Tuck Box that I have. I love waiting in the straight backed chairs for a table, watching the waitresses pass the plates of warm scones and pots of tea onto the waiting tables of deserving diners. The constant motion of jam slathering and scone eating is a dance to observe.

I looked on the internet for the scone recipe. There were plenty of inquires and praises for and about the scones at the Tuck Box. I couldn’t find it. As my husband walked by he asked what I was looking for. I told him ,“The scone recipe from the Tuck Box.”

“Oh those,” he said , as if he had forgotten about them. How could he?

“Those are just a cornbread recipe made in a skillet without the cornmeal. They just keep baking them off and serving them hot. They wouldn’t be as good cold you know. It is all in the presentation of the warm, freshly baked corn-less cornbread, slathered with butter and then served with that ollalieberry jam.” He continued upstairs to finish what he was doing.

I was struck dumb, he was right. How had I never figured that out? I pulled out my box of Albers Cornmeal and read the recipe.

Today I baked a cake pan (not a skillet) of corn-less cornbread with yellow food coloring. Bingo, I had done it. I pulled them out of the oven and brushed a big spoonful of butter on the top and then opened a jar of my homemade ollalieberry jam. I cut a wedge out of the “scone-cake” and applied the jam. It was good, very good. I decided that I could reduce the salt by half and the rest was just as I remembered it. Funny how there was really was no mystery to the scones at all, except for figuring out that it wasn’t really a scone recipe.

The Tuck Box was and is a simple place making simple food, replicated over and over thousands of times; repeated, synchronized perfectly.

I wiped the jam off my mouth after eating the wedge of scone-cake today. I still don’t think my lips are thin, although they are not the full glamourous lips of the fashion magazines of today. I know that I am trustworthy, though I did just sleuth out and blog the mystery of the Tuck Box scones. Maybe they are a bit thin.

Scone-cakes

Adapted from Albers Corn Bread

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 TB baking powder
• 1/2 teas salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 teas vanilla

Combine all the ingredients, whisk together.

Pour into a greased 9” cake pan.

Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes.

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Ella keeps begging us to go back into the ocean. She wants us to lift her over the waves. She squeals with joy each time a wave rolls under her legs that she holds lifted at a ninety degree angle. She yells,”Bam”, each time the waves breaks on the shore. She trusts us completely as we hold her suspended over the water. We let her down into the shallows that darken the sand and we three wait for the next rolling wave of happiness to bring the anticipated thrill.

Ella doesn’t touch the wave as it rolls under her. Is it the thrill of being lifted that causes the joy or the uncertainty of being dropped into the rolling wave? Again and again she wants us to lift her until our arms are aching with fatigue. We have to beg for a rest on the beach through which she relentlessly paces and begs to begin again the lifting and laughing.

Finally cold enough to want to stop Ella flops down and covers herself in the complete warm sensation of hot sand. She stands up and brushes it off unaware of the direction of the wind and any unwary recipients. She asks for a sandwich and grips it greedily with sandy hands as she starts to dig a hole.

Ella never stops talking. She asks questions, she points out all my inconsistencies. Ella asks if I like to brush my hair and then wants me to stand up so that she can inspect the front of my beach chair. She drops shells she has collected and laughs hysterically at the mishap.

Wandering away is not something Ella will do. We still are able to intimidate her and make her believe that we know what is best. Someday she will question it.

My mother’s opinion was not something I wanted. I had stopped asking or accepting her advice at some point, thinking that my peers knew better. I wanted to listen to them. I don’t know why I did this. I was so determined to do it on my own. I trusted no one to really have my best interest at heart. I should have known that my mother would have. It wasn’t until now that I am fifty that I understand.

I call my mom and apologize for the years of my resistance. She is silent on the phone. I know this silence now. I use it myself. It is opinion silence. I means I have something very strong and important that I want to say, but I know if I say it, you will reject it and I will feel hurt and disappointed. We sit on either end of the phone line together in silence. Will this apology lift us over the next wave or will we plunge into yet another rolling uncertainty?

When gathering our belongings to leave, Ella puts on her flip flops and announces that she will lead the way back to the car. The rest of us are laden with lunch bags, beach chairs, umbrellas, towels, and reading material. Ella strides ahead as we struggle under our portage.

“Come on you guys!” She yells in her tiny voice. We listen to her and comply.

Mom’s Banana Coffee Cake

My mom has this coffee cake waiting everytime I visit her Oregon. Breakfast is always ready to be served when I walk down the stairs of her lovely home. I know that this coffee cake will accompany whatever other delectable breakfast treats she has prepared.

Adapted from Carol Steel’s Aravaipa Farms Morning Banana Cake

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup pecans, slightly toasted
• 1 cup dried cranberries, or dried strawberries
• 1 teas baking powder
• 1 teas baking soda
• 1 teas salt
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup mashed ripe banana
• 2 teas vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup melted butter (salted)
• 1 cup buttermilk

Mix the flour, pecans, cranberries,baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

In a separate large bowl mix the sugar, banana, vanilla, and eggs until blended.

Add the butter and the buttermilk. Mix this into the egg mixture. Add the flour mixture and fold together until incorporated.

Butter and flour a nonstick decorative tube pan.

Bake for approximately 1 hour at 350F or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Cool the cake then release the cake out of the pan and serve.

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Last year some friends of ours and ourselves, placed a bid at a school fundraising auction. We bid on a week-long stay at a house on the island of Hawaii, specifically Puako. This was the second time we had bid on it. The first time it was again at a school fundraising auction. That time it had been in the silent auction and we were the only bidders. There were a few mummers circulating the bidding room about its funky qualities. We don’t usually mind a bit o’ the funky. Equally said we don’t mind the lap of luxury either. Mark grabbed the pencil and with that middle age devil-may-care attitude scribbled the bid and won.

Our friends were excited and anxious to book the week. I had lingering fears of just how funky “funky” meant. I feared for the safety of the children with images of centipedes lurking in dusty corners. I pictured a worn out kitchen with a broken oven and a microwave. Yet again bolstered by the enthusiasm of my family and friends we arranged our visit for spring break.

If this was funky, then bring it on! Perfection can only describe the house, the week of swimming and cycling, ice cream afternoons at the General Store, late night card games with the warm night air blowing in through the screened doors, the sound of the wind through the coconut trees like crackling and sighing simultaneously. Oh and the turtles, ahhh... the turtles, sunning themselves on the smooth black lava rocks outside this house in Puako on Turtle Bay.

Eddie made tacos. Crispy white corn tortillas filled with just the right amount of ground beef and the fixings, minced onions, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, grated sharp cheddar cheese, and sliced avocados. McCormicks Taco Seasoning is one of the secrets. The other secret is the frying of the corn tortilla shells. I never use packaged seasoning. I must admit that before I could turn my nose up at it, I was singing praises to the chef about just how delicious these tacos were. I know that this is not health food or even food without additives that we may think are potentially harmful. But for the love of God, they were good.

The other necessary technique was to fry the corn tortillas in a small pool of corn oil. Eddie fried them carefully, turning them in half so that they were slightly opened half- moons. They were just barely browned, more like tanned. Eddie lined them up on a paper towel lined tray and when he had finished frying them all, filled them with the meat and our personal additions.

We tore into those warm crispy shells and caught the drippings on our plates while we watched the whales splash in the approaching twilight. The wind performed its symphony through the coconut fronds, dry and whistling, sweetly comforting, just like the tacos.

We played our favorite card game Krups after dinner and feasted on butter cookies filled with Lilikoi jam I had bought at the Waimea farmer’s market.

Puako Tacos

• 1 package of McCormicks Taco Seasoning
• 1 1/2 lb of ground chuck
• 2 TB water
• 1 package (24) white corn tortillas
• 2/3 cup corn oil

“Fixings”

• 1/2 bunch minced green onion
• 1 avocado sliced
• 2 tomatoes diced
• 8 leaves of lettuce finely shredded
• 1 1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

Fry the ground beef and when done spoon the drippings out of the bottom of the pan and discard. Add the taco seasoning and the water. Stir into the cooked meat until well distributed and absorbed.

Have all the “fixings” prepared and placed in separate bowls.

Pour the oil in a saute pan and heat until hot, not burning. Add the corn tortillas one at a time. Using a pair of metal tongs fry on one side for approximately one minute and then turn over and fry a half minute on the other side. At this point fold the tortilla in half to form a half-moon. Fry until tanned. Take out of the pan and set open side down on a paper towel lined tray. The shells should be stiff and stay standing up. They will harden more as they cool, this is good.

When you have finished frying all the shells, pick one up at a time and fill with meat, then the desired “fixings”. Place on a plate and serve. A good serving is three to four per person. One warning is to not over fill with meat. They are not to be hearty. The meat and the ‘fixings” are delicate and not too much of one or the other.

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