Granny's Sugar Cookies

Granny’s Sugar Cookies

The holidays are full of memories for many and I am one of those with a polaroid camera full of memories.  You do remember those cameras.  The ones where the picture came out of the bottom of the camera. 

Every year, my girls and I set out on a mission to make Granny’s sugar cookies.  These are the cookies that my grandmother made for us each year to eat after the Christmas program at church.  The cookies are sugary, thick and buttery little masterpieces!  Out from the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinet comes the wooden rolling pin, next comes the slightly tattered original recipe that my grandmother used when she made the cookies. Next, let the combining of ingredients begin. 

·      2 cups of flour

·      2 tsp. baking powder

·      ½ tsp. salt

·      ½ tsp. nutmeg

·      2 eggs

·      2/3 cup vegetable oil

·      1/tsp. vanilla

·      ¾ cups sugar (One year I mistakenly used salt)

o   Sift together flour baking powder salt and nutmeg.  Beat eggs in large bowl, stir in oil and vanilla.  Blend in sugar and add flour mixture.  Drop on ungreased cookie sheet and flatten cookies with an oiled glassed, dipped in sugar. 

The recipe seems simple enough, but let’s add a few twists and turns to this delightful experience.  This Christmas, we added Farm Fresh eggs.  “Can you get the eggs from the refrigerator Keiana?”  Let me get it; let me get them, screams came from both Kelaina and Keiana.  Both girls were so excited to be able to retrieve the eggs from the big black box that sits majestically in the corner of our kitchen.  No, the girls didn’t travel down the road less traveled to a red painted barn an bypass Wilbur to uncover the eggs.  But, they did have farm fresh, never been to a grocery store eggs.  After retrieving the eggs, they began to examine the eggs.  “Why mom, why do these eggs have dirt on them, what is that?”  Why, it’s bird poop!  These are farm fresh eggs!  You must wash them before each using them and wash your hands after using them?  “What are you kidding?”  You mean these came from the chicken’s butt?  OMG mom, why?  “What is wrong with you mom?  I  have never truly reviewed in detail a chicken’s private parts.  Nor, have I had the urge to do so.  And, we didn’t decide why the chicken crossed the road or which came first, the chicken or the egg.  However, we got past the chicken butt dilemma and moved into the sticky dough rollout and all of the sugar sprinkles.  You see, I have every color of sprinkle that a bakery would have and my girls want to use every drop.  The dough is rolled out on the cold marble surface and just the right cookie cutter is selected, an angel, a star, not so well formed Christmas tree.  Then, the sprinkles, red, green, yellow, U.K. blue, you take your pick; we have to add the sprinkles.  The problem comes about, when too many sprinkles are placed on a cookie and the sugar begins resembling a stained glass window. 

Did I mention that the older daughter volunteered me to make 300 cookies so that all of her friends could have some of the cookies before she went to break?  Three Hundred, 300, how many other ways can I say that?  A lot of cookies!  So, with that, we made chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, fudge and even a few brownies!  We placed the cookies in baggies and boxes and tied them with ribbons and bows.  After placing the last cookie into the baggie, the youngest daughter made her request!  “Mom, can you make Puppy Chow for my class for tomorrow! “  For a minute, I thought I as on a new reality show, Extreme Baking challenge.  I tell you what, we had three straight nights of baking, and I wouldn’t change a thing. After all of the baking, the best part of all, is we made more memories, more stories to tell! 

When the girls and I first started baking, they couldn’t reach the counter.  They stood on chairs and stools to help me stir and mix the dough.  As the years have gone by, the girls have grown taller, one in particular, is taller than I.  However, the cookie recipe is the same, the rolling pin and our tradition is untouched.  The same cookie cutter still exists.  We have now switched from store bought to organic free range chicken eggs and I have a new story to tell! 

Friends ...

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

Henri Nouwen

The Good Earth

The Good Earth.

"Thank God for the good earth.

Season by season she proves her faithfulness,

She offers of her firstborn,

So generous in her fruitfulness.

Thank God for the good earth.

She nurtures with such care

The small seed entrusted by the farmer,

Surrendering her progeny, matured, to the ploughshare.

Thank God for the good earth.

She clothes the fields with grass and flower,

Supports and sustains the giant oak,

And graciously receives each summer shower.

Thank God for the good earth.

She, humble, modest, is aware of man’s abuse,

Yet unconcerned, with a good grace labours on,

Her patient, quiet benevolence continues.

Thank God for the good earth.

Unfailing towards us she yields her annual harvest,

While we who reap her bounty without thought,

Take as our right each year’s bequest.

Thank God for the good earth.

She our expectations oft exceeds, and from her flows

A liberal blessing, which she generously bestows.

Thank God for the god earth-

Benignest of benefactors."

                                          Then God commanded “Let the earth produce all kinds of plants, those that bear grain and those that bear fruit”-and it was done. So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw.

Genesis 1, verses 11 and 12.

Across the Pond Penny

When Grandma Says Duh

Sunday dinner after church was always a special time for us.  It meant that we got to walk across the street, from the little church and into the most wonderful little house.  The house with the three little stairs that led into a wonderful spacious living room with burnt orange carpet and a little coffee table with items we should not touch.  Oh, and in the other room, smell that delicious food.  That food had been prepared the evening before and had been slow cooking the whole time we had been at church.  The smell of pot roast and new potatoes filled the air.  Oh, look, what’s that in the corner?  See it, over there, with the damp towel draped over it.  Yes, it’s homemade yeast rolls.  Do you have any of your strawberry preserves, a voice called from the back room?  We were all there, my mom, brother, sister and I.  It was Sunday dinner and granny had prepared the meal.  We would set the table and argue over who would say the prayer.  Then, granddad after we had all stuffed ourselves silly, granddad would get out his apron and drape it over his 5’5” inch tall frame and fat little belly and stand at the sink washing dishes while one of us dried.  We dried those dishes at the sink; overlooking the backyard and the birdfeeder that granny hung over the carport.  Dinner dishes dried, we imagined what could be waiting for dessert.  Would it be the peach cobbler, the lemon squares, the Texas brownies, or the dreaded persimmon pudding.  No, not persimmon pudding.  No kids want persimmon pudding!  That brown kind of oatmeal looking, maybe it’s a fruit, but you warm it up and eat it in the Fall, oh, please not that stuff.  But just maybe, she would make her famous sugar cookies, so thick and fat and rolled in sugar.  I know, how about the peanut butter fudge?  Yes, Yes, she’s got the pan out.  It’s the old metal pan, with the bent handle and her wooden spoon.  Granny would stir and stir, that arm flapping and flapping in the air and one foot pumping, like she was going to run.  And in the end, she’d take a spoon and put a drop of that liquid perfection in a bowl of cold water and if that liquid turned into a ball, it was time to pour the fudge.  We waited, holding our breath, our eyes fixated on that little ball of liquid, like a science experiment for N.A.S.A.  When we saw that ball, we knew fudge was about to land on the plate and we could lick the pan!  Yes, Perfection.  And to end a perfect Sunday, we’d all gather in the living room and listen to the various stories my grandparents had to tell about the “old” days.  My grandmother taught me so much about life.  My first trip to the library was with my grandmother.  I walked hand in hand to church with my grandmother.  I learned how to set a table and so many other life lessons.  At the end of so many of our own little stories, my grandmother would simply say, “have mercy”.

Have Mercy, that’s what my grandmother would say.  But what happens, when Grandma says “Duh”?  Some of the grandmothers that I see today are very different than the grandmothers that I saw when I was growing up.  This has caused me to wonder, who are the teachers of the lessons of the past?  When I used to teach diversity classes, we would ask our students, who or what do you identify yourself as?  Today, I venture to guess that many grandmothers do not self identify as a grandmother.  When grandma is still in the club or living with her boyfriend, what is a child to think?  When Grandma and Mom are only separated by a few years in age, what is the image that we are displaying to our children? 

Is there room in our society for Grandma to take on the role of teacher and sharer of wisdom?  My grandmother and many women of that generation weren’t having plastic surgery at 70 and getting waxed at 75.    What, did you say your granny can drop it like it’s hot?  Lawd have Mercy! 

I am sure my grandmother and her friends had their vices, but perhaps they weren’t so public.  Oh, I do remember my grandmother singing “Once, Twice, Three times a lady,” loudly in a department store one day.  Does that count as bad behavior? 

I think that perhaps I have just seen too many children without enough role models lately.  Yes, there are some spectacular grandmothers out there and I do know many of them.  My concern is for those who are growing up removed from the nuclear family, without the grandparents of yesteryear.

It’s interesting; my generation were children that were termed the latchkey kids. Many of my friends came home to an empty home after school, the result of the duo income household.  The next generation, saw the disappearance of the nuclear family.  As jobs took families further and further away from their place of origin, no longer did grandparents and children live within close proximity of each other.  The current generation I believe is the generation of video chat.  Even conversations with grandma happen via Skype and Facebook. 

Yes, my granny had plastic fruit and a plastic rug that we turned over every Sunday afternoon and walked barefoot on the prickly part, screaming in delight.  Granny sang in the church choir and cooked Sunday dinner.  She believed that for every church program we should learn a recitation and if we didn’t know our lines, she’d simply clasp her hands together, shake her head and say, Mercy!

What would have happened if Granny would have said, Duh?