Christmas volunteers: Kyabram’s Debbie Parry dubbed Shortbread Machine

Every Christmas, Debbie Parry gets busy. She’s a reminder of what goes into this special day.

THIS Christmas, I wanted to write a nice, sweet column about a woman who bakes for the festive season

She told me she’s made nine steamed puddings to date. She’s lost count of the number of Brazil and date cakes (expensive with all those Brazil nuts that make it so dense and delicious), and with nine days to The Big Day she’d made about 1000 shortbreads.

Even then, her oven was on standby. Low temp. Butter softened but not melted. Six ounces of plain flour, two of rice flour, 20 of caster sugar, a quarter of a teaspoon of baking powder, a quarter of a pound of butter and there you have it. Grandma Graham’s recipe, lively as it ever was before 1966 when measures went metric.

It’s what I do, Kyabram’s Debbie Parry tells me.

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She’s like those of us who assume a special Christmas job that no one else in families claims unless the title is bestowed on them, handed down, mostly after the legacy keeper has approved the handing over of the mantle.

In our family, Prue does the Christmas music, Phil makes the Caesar salad, Katie does the rumballs and lemon slices and Jeanette, love her, does the Turkish delight slice. The steamed puddings are usually Lib’s since Mum passed her the boiler, but the title’s up for grabs and the Sues (times-two) are tops at pudding too.

Debbie Parry does shortbread. Her husband, Jeff, calls her The Shortbread Machine.

“I’ve always made shortbreads, definitely not before I was married. It’s funny because my sister, Pam, used to make the almond bread and Mum used to make mince tarts,” Debbie says.

“Every one of us had our speciality, but Pam died in 2016 and Mum’s gone into care. I have tried to teach my other sister how to make shortbread, but she said she can’t do that because that’s my job. She just orders it from me.”

Tradition: Alyssa Christou and her grandmother, Debbie Parry from Kyabram. Debbie makes a mountain of shortbread every Christmas for family, friends and charity. Now she is teaching her granddaughter.

Shortbread making is year-round, but the Christmas baking kicks off in early December for her brother-in-law, Al, who shares her early December birth date. He lives in Sydney and each year gets shortbread, a Christmas pudding and a Brazil and date cake. Lucky chap.

A girlfriend in Perth, fellow volunteers at Vinnie’s and the Kyabram Fauna Park, and family and other friends get some too.

Then there’s the 250 pieces Debbie bakes, 10 for each of the 25 boxes of Christmas goodies delivered by the Goulburn Valley Hospice Care Service to people in palliation at home.

It gives carers some good old home cooking to serve up to those visiting to pay their final respects.

Fellow volunteer cook Dawn Tricarico, from Shepparton, gets a bunch of people like Debbie to cook for people in palliation every six weeks. But Christmas is special.

Dawn herself will be out at the local showgrounds tomorrow, one of 70 volunteers dishing up to the 280 who turn out for a community Christmas lunch.

But back to Debbie. She’s been a trained retirement centre cook and electrician’s receptionist, but the one job that’s always stayed with her is being The Christmas Shortbread Machine.

Everyone expects it and, well, Debbie just does it. She likes doing it — loves it in fact.

Her niece’s son loves her shortbread. As do her sister and daughters. And the fact that the recipe came via a more circuitous route through the family tree — Debbie’s brother-in-law’s grandmother, to be exact — makes it an even better story to tell.

Debbie’s got her eye on the next-generation Shortbread Machine.

“I’m teaching my granddaughter Alyssa. She’s 11 and she does like to cook. She has all the family recipes.”

It’s nice to hear of such things and to see some things stay the same.

But sometimes the job of making Christmas jolly falls on the shoulders of one or two people, usually mums.

Women (usually), working to create a lovely day and feeling for everyone, whether they are aware of this or not. Some aren’t even aware of this or how much they do to achieve it, and in some cases it means they can claim their “place” in the family — their role as cook gets acknowledged.

In her family, as I said, Debbie loves making shortbread for Christmas and keeping that tradition alive. Good for her.

But this Christmas, it might just be worth observing and noting how much our Mums have done to make things nice. And offering to do some of those things next year.

Happy Christmas.