Tasha Tudor: A Simple Life, A Sprawling Garden
(Page 4 of 4)
December/January 1994
By Kathleen Halloran
Given her enjoyment of winter and her fantasy way of life, it’s not surprising that Tasha’s Christmas is a storybook holiday. She hangs garlands of laurel over the front door and swags of hemlock in the barn. Her tree comes from the woods, and it goes up on Christmas Eve, lit by homemade candles of carnauba wax and beeswax and decorated with her great-grandmother’s collection of delicate ornaments that date from 1850, as well as cornucopias filled with homemade pralines, butter toffees, vanilla cream caramels, taffy, and fudge. In a place of honor on the tree are large gingerbread cookies cut into the shapes of her animals. (The recipe for these cookies, which also adorned the White House Christmas tree during the Johnson administration, is given below, along with her good-eating gingerbread recipe. Both are from The Tasha Tudor Cookbook by Tasha Tudor, ©1993 by Tasha Tudor, reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.)
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The grandchildren and other young relatives and friends get presents from Tasha’s old dolls; the animals receive goodies, including sardines in the dogs’ stockings, and they have their own Christmas tree. “Of course, it’s a known fact that all the animals talk on Christmas Eve,” she has written. Small, handmade gifts fill a big wooden chest. Christmas music plays on an old music box.
At the end of each year, Tasha can look back and know that the fabric of her life is intact, that she has again ignored the twentieth century, that the magic continues. And for the rest of us, here’s a bit of advice, Tasha style: “Nowadays, people are so jeezled up. If they took some chamomile tea and spent more time rocking on the porch in the evening listening to the liquid song of the hermit thrush, they might enjoy life more.”
Kathleen Halloran, writer and associate editor of The Herb Companion, would spend more time rocking on the porch if she had a porch. Her home and garden are in Laporte, Colorado.
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