"It's always the same: a morning arrives in November and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat"

Page 14 A Christmas Memory (to read the whole page go to "Flipping the Pages")

Alright, so it wasn't until a night in late December when friends and neighbors gathered to chop and macerate and measure and whisk and sip and bake...but as far as I'm concerned, on December 21st the Christmas season was officially inaugurated- AND even though I measured for more- we wound up with exactly the number of fruitcakes in the book... 31!

I will be bathing these beauts in Bourbon for the next week or two back in "Truman's kitchen" (a.k.a. my window installation) as you all help me decide who should be the recipient of a "random act of fruitcake".

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who stole away on the Monday before Christmas and "fueled the blaze of my heart" as they made my favorite story come to life.

Here we are (Irene, Sally, Francesca, Moriah, Martha, Belinda, Claudia, Tom & Diane) in the throes of chopping madness

still chopping- okay, so we got a little exuberant and chopped enough dried fruit and nuts for 331 cakes...I blame it on the Knob Creek.

luckily, we had our jelly jar of bourbon and Bill reading the book to distract and entertain us while we diced pineapple, ginger and sour cherries.

Nancy made sure the pans were plenty buttered and ready to go.

Martha was on the egg and brown sugar creaming station as Bill cut out cats and watermelons (yes, you guessed it, another reference from the book)

Moriah made a "mama mix" of 10 times the original recipe

That's a blurry picture of a WHOLE lotta fruitcake goodness- and boy did the smell of nutmeg, allspice, a dash of white pepper and caramelized bourbon smell divine!

a spontaneous fruitcake assembly line

We finished reading the story in the library as the room filled with a heavenly aroma...31 fruitcakes ready to be steeped in booze...