Barbara Bluestone
Cranberry Bread
4 c. flour1 small can frozen orange juice
2 c. sugar4 T melted butter
3 t. backing powder2 eggs
1 t. salt1 c. chopped nuts
1 t. soda1 pkg. Cranberries
I’m not sure that cooking best reflects my personality; I am certainly not the domestic type, but I do enjoy cooking and baking if only because it gives me a chance to meditate and do something constructive at the same time. I think that my personality is what I think of when I have free time to ramble. Not only is the following an overview of my personality but also delicious recipe.
First the flour and sugar need to be sifted together into a large bowl. Flour reminds me of the powder now that falls in to West. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania where our snow falls more like sugar, granular and icy, and makes us hardy skiers unlike those spoiled by Western snow. Cold weather also is conducive to reading, which I love to do. I received my first Bobbsey twin book on my sixth birthday and have read my way through birthdays ever since. I just read A Room With a View by E.M. Forster and adored it. The baking powder, salt, and soda go in next. I have ceased to measure these any more. My mother taught me that to estimate is easier and sometimes the recipe will turn out better for an innocent mistake and a little adventuring. Always adding more chocolate is one of her ideas of an innocent mistake.
The orange juice needs to be thawed, opened, and added. Orange juice makes me think of poetry. The color is vibrant and the taste is sour, sweet, and tangy all at the same time, just like poetry. I write it and read it in search of new ideas and emotions-writers like John Keats, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens never let me down. My own poetry allows me a freedom that is not there in prose, ideas that conflict or are confused can just add to the richness of the poetry. The butter needs to be melted, probably a microwave would be easiest. Technology, money and the free market system has done some wonderful things, not just for the art of cooking obviously. When I was younger, I liked to sit on my daddy’s lap while he read the newspaper and he would explain to me what the stock market was, the meaning of options, the Dow Jones, etc. I still enjoy watching the stock analyst this year. All this would account for my goals of majoring in economics and then to work for my M.B.A.
The two eggs should be added to the bowl next. Then the nuts need to be chopped and put in the bowl. My little brother dislikes nuts immensely. He feels that I have betrayed him because I like nuts, when before we were united against mom for putting nuts in chocolate chip cookies. Jonathan (my brother) calls the school I go to the “Geek School”. He is wrong. My school is a mix of people that might not know where they are going but they know that they are going somewhere. If I didn’t attend the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, I know that I would be jealous of those who did. The atmosphere of purpose that exists here is one I hope to also find in college.
The last ingredient is cranberries which need to be chopped in half before being added. Cranberries are autumn which is my favorite season. Fall is cool and shrewd and alive with those can survive winter.
Grease and flour pans before putting mixture in. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. Eat well.
from Essays That Worked: 50 Essays from Successful Applications to the Nation's Top Colleges edited by Boykin Curry