One piece I inherited was a Welsh cabinet my father built from antique pumpkin pine lumber. It's elegant, simple furniture with two drawers, two doors underneath and a shelf enclosure with plate rails above. To this day is my favorite among favorites.
When we were packing up to move I went to collect it from my grandparent's basement and noticed the drawers were still full with years of odds and ends. This cabinet had served the time-honored purpose of hosting the Junk Drawers and no one had bothered to clean them out when the farm was sold. Without a second look we loaded up the truck and headed off to Michigan.
I never much bothered to look in the drawers once we had the house set up, at least no more than they were looked into in the prior 30+ years. Maybe a cursory inspection in pursuit of a pencil, or to grab the stub of a candle to help fix a new taper into a candlestick. I knew there were a couple decks of cards in there missing their Jacks and some wax paper laxative bundles from the 50's. Cleaning through those drawers was the kind of task one schedules for "later", meaning "never".
Right around the end of Thanksgiving that year, as we prepared to get married and to spend our first holiday season together in our own home, I decided to make a fruitcake. She'd been working at a bakery that made a gorgeous and super-moist variety that were the only fruitcakes I had ever honestly enjoyed until that point. I was inspired to give it a shot.
As I dug around the pantry making a list of ingredients we had or didn't have, I called out items to my fiancée who was keeping the list: brown sugar, molasses, candied fruit.
"There's a container of candied fruit in the Welsh cabinet, left-hand drawer." she said from the dining room.
And so there was, a half-used and perfectly fresh looking container of brightly colored fruits glacés circa 1975. They were 20 years old and could have been purchased that very day as far as either of us could discern.
The sight of bright red maraschino's and bitter yellow citron reminded me of what I did not like about fruitcake as a kid. The taste of those fruits and their synthetic appearance was so loathsome it just killed my enthusiasm for the project. The fact the looked so well after so long sealed my fate.
"How about we stick with your cakes from work?" I suggested.
It was no skin off her nose since like many people she doesn't enjoy fruitcake and wouldn't be eating it either way.
A few years later I found an old handwritten recipe in my great-grandmother's turn of the century cookbook. It contains home-made candied fruit and no citron or bitter peel. I decided to have a go at it and discovered that with patience and the right ingredients fruitcake can be wonderfully delicious.
