It was inspiration by way of nostalgia. I wanted to bake my mother's Bűndnernusstorte for Christmas dinner because other than the little individual pieces I could afford to buy on intermittent trips to Switzerland, I had not had this pie any where near my person (nor the smell of it baking) since 2008, the year Muetti ("Mom" in German) died. And I miss her every holiday season, well l miss her every day actually, but I especially miss her on the holidays where she would produce even more magic in the house than usual. There was the ever present braided bread Zűpfa, but I make that, the Christmas cookies that, given the large amounts produced, seem overwhelming to me, and then Bűndnernusstorte. Ah Bűndnernusstorte. It is a round one inch thick torte with a delicious thick crust, that is filled with walnuts and carmel gooey goodness. The thing is, I had only ever made it once with my mother because, well, 1) I was spoiled and usually just ate the goodies, 2) I was a tomboy and nobody was going to catch me dead in a kitchen, not even for Bűndnernusstorte, and 3) I was scared of creating the carmel-walnut center. On point 3 my mother was of no help. She explicitly warned me to stay away when she was creating it. And the one time when, as a young adult I made it with her, (I realized I better make it with her or I would never, ever know what I was doing once she had passed on), when it came to creating that deep brown, walnut and melted sugar center, I really watched in awe as she worked quickly to not let it harden to an unusable mass, and also not get any of the stuff on her skin. And again she reiterated how careful one must be to not ruin the center and also not hurt oneself. My fate was sealed. My cousins also didn't help matters because none of them made the cake either, rolling their eyes in my request to make one together saying, "Why? We can just buy one at the store. That tort is way too hard to make!". Good for them. Switzerland is the land of Bűndnernusstorte.
This was the year I decided to stare my inadequacy and fear straight in the face. 2019 Christmas dinner would, by God, have a Bűndnernusstorte. My step daughter had moved in with us and she works in a kitchen plating desserts. So who else to help with that touchy, difficult walnut gooey center? It was a perfect converging of talents, knowledge, and context for me to taste my childhood. To combine the ingredients just as my grandmother had done, after all it was her recipe, and as my mother had done, so many times. To be suggested back to that kitchen at 1112 34th Ave in Sacramento, as the smell filled my home in San Diego. To be brought back to the sight of that torte waiting on the counter as we ate. To feel it's weight in my hand as I brought it to the table, like my mother had. Like my father had. Like my sister had. Like I had. We loved that torte. With Christmas dinner shopping list in hand, my husband and I headed off to the store to gather up our various supplies and in my mind, most critically, the walnuts needed for the Bűndnernusstorte.
"How much are those walnuts?" David asked in shock.
"Well, around $11 a bag." I said as calmly and as non-affected as I could. They were pricey after all. But damnit I needed them for the torte and so I was going to push him into the emotional space of sensing he was being the unreasonable partner if it killed me. "We are making Christmas dinner, which is always expensive. It was like this last year when I bought the groceries. And everything is always more expensive at this store and you know it is. If we had gone to the other store this wouldn't be an issue." (It would have been an issue, but he didn't need to know that).
"I am NOT spending $22 for 2 bags of walnuts and then god know how much on the rest of the ingredients! That is like making a $40 cake for Christ's sake!"
"It is not a cake, it is a torte." I always tend to bring things back to specific instances of vocabulary failure when I feel like meaning is beginning to spin out of control. I don't know why I do this because it is not helpful. Of which his response was evidence.
"I don't fucking care what it is! Don't talk to me like I am some kind of idiot! What I do know is that $40 is too goddamn much for a cake!!!"
"OK. I just wanted to make my mom's torte, that's all" I said, trying to keep my voice low because people were starting to stare.
"Oh, wait. Is this some kind of sentimental thing? You miss your mom and so you want to make this cake?"
Now I was embarrassed, so I mumbled "Never mind, I will put the ingredients back and I will come get them later when I have my wallet." I felt like an idiot not just because of his tone or his volume, but because he highlighted my Achilles heel, my nostalgia. My tendency toward the sentimental. I walked away with the golden ingredients to return them to their rightful place on the shelf.
"Don't you fucking walk away from me! Get back here now!! I want to talk about this!!! Barbara, I will leave this cart right here if you don't get back here."
"You don't need to get them. I will get them later. Let's go." I said all of this without meeting his gaze, furious with his voice which carried our private exchange 3 aisles over by the cold cereals.
With that David shoved the cart down an aisle and stalked out of the store. I followed him briefly to only, upon exiting the store, turn sharply to the left, down the side of the building, and out back to the labyrinth of the neighborhood. I would, I had decided, walk home. There was no way I was going to get into the car with that monster. Husband or not.
I walked home, and he went, as is his wont, to his sailboat. It was a very quiet evening. The phone didn't ring and sleep was at a distance. Finally at 3:00 am I fumbled for my phone and called him. He answered in a single ring. "Hi". "Hi", he said back. "So what happened?" I asked. We talked it over. It turned out his questions about the walnuts initially had just been to verify their price, because he had been surprised. But then my response had pushed him to just dig in. He explained that his asking me about the reason for wanting to make the cake was a way to find an out of the conversation so he could just return to getting the walnuts. He was trying to create a door for us to walk through, but what I had experienced was a public humiliation. We apologized. We agreed to try to be better at talking things through in a way that was respectful.
So we made the torte. Mom's recipe called for it to be baked at 325 degrees, so we did, but I had forgotten an important bit of information, which was that the oven in my childhood home ran hot. SO, the torte baked for too long at a heat that was too low, which meant the crust was too dense and tough. Lesson learned for next time. The gooey walnut center? It was heaven. Perfect in every way. Just as I remembered. The only thing that has changed is that this torte is no longer just the Bűndnernusstorte. It is now also the Fighting Torte, or the Fighting Walnut Torte, as David told our Christmas guests. We all laughed as he and I recalled the story.
It's funny how we fight over the smallest things because there are bigger things attached. My heart is attached to that damn Bűndnernusstorte because it comes with so much of me that I have to search for now. So much that I have to just rely on memory for. But with things like the Bűndnernusstorte that memory comes to life. I don't have to rely on just the immaterial memory because now I have the actual thing in front of me. I can experience my memory in a much more first hand kind of way. That is what materiality does. It brings the past into the present, but it also reconstructs that past so that those memories are more vivid. It is like adding color back into a faded photograph so that the details sharpen. And now David and I will likely always recount the unhappy Christmas walnut saga of 2019. And it will make us smile.
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