Mary Simmons, who has been LGA treasurer and office manager since the early days of the agency, appeared in the December 7 edition of The Charlotte Observer in a feature story on holiday cooks. 

Each holiday season, food lovers look forward to homemade treats from friends and relatives: a plate of sugar cookies, a rum-soaked fruit cake, a batch of granola.

We went in search of a few folks known for their edible holiday gifts and found a Durham man who buys 40 pounds of Bertie County peanuts to make peanut brittle and a Clover, S.C., woman who makes as many as 175 loaves of pumpkin bread for her co-workers, relatives and friends.

It's the effort that makes the recipients of gifts from the kitchen feel loved. “It's just really special to have a food gift,” says Marcie Cohen Ferris, an assistant professor of American studies at UNC Chapel Hill and a recipient of one of our cooks' gifts.

Maybe these generous cooks will inspire others to start a tradition.

Loaves of pumpkin bread

Last year, 64-year-old Mary Simmons of Clover, S.C., baked 175 loaves of pumpkin bread to give relatives, neighbors, co-workers and church friends. This has been her holiday gift-giving tradition for more than 25 years.

When Simmons got the recipe 30 years ago, she thought this spiced, moist bread would be a special holiday treat. “You only use pumpkin that time of year,” she says.

Baking that many regular and mini loaves of pumpkin bread is a major undertaking. The bread can sour quickly so Simmons turns her home kitchen into production central for about two weeks in December. Her shopping list includes more than 24 cans of pumpkin, 30 pounds of flour, 32 pounds of sugar. “That's not even the raisins, the pecans or the eggs,” she says.

Simmons will get home from work by 6 p.m., eat a quick dinner and stay up baking until 1 a.m.

“I stay very busy in the month of December,” she says. “It's very hectic.” And after baking, she has to deliver all the loaves.

The lucky recipients include more than 100 people at her church, Greater Life Ministries in Clover, and all 50 employees at the Charlotte advertising firm, Luquire George Andrews, where Simmons is treasurer and office manager.

Judi Wax, executive vice president at Luquire George Andrews, says she and her husband, Saul, a retired chef, look forward to Simmons' pumpkin bread each year. “In two days, it's gone,” Wax says.

Despite her list of recipients that grows each year, Simmons says she can't scale back. “Now they look forward to getting it. I don't want to disappoint them.”

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