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| Peanut butter cookies crisscrossed with Grandma's fork |
I haven’t made many cookies since my husband’s young grandsons left Tucson three years ago for Denver, so the obvious thing to do when they came for a first visit to the cabin last week was to get out the cookies sheets and bake some up. I made a huge batch of oatmeal chocolate chip, and they were wonderful, if I do say so myself. Almost like lace cookies, crisp and buttery.
I find life at the cabin inspires old-fashioned cooking. Like cookies. People stop by and it’s nice to have some small treat to offer them. We don’t snack up here for some reason -- maybe because we’re usually outside and away from the kitchen -- but we do enjoy our three square meals a day. Breakfast comes when we’re done sitting around in the morning and before heading outside to do whatever strikes our fancy, be it hammocking or lumber-jacking. When we hear the lunch gong over at the summer camp it’s Pavlovian...if we hadn’t been thinking of lunch before, we do then. Dinner comes when we’re done with our late day hike or rouse ourselves from our books, and with sunset coming after 8 PM, we sometimes end up eating later than we intended.
Lunch is almost always simple fare, sandwiches and pickles and fruit on a cutting board eaten out of hand while sitting in the Adirondack chairs on our shady front porch overlooking the valley. The binoculars usually make the trip out too as we invariable do some bird watching in between bites.
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| Eating Grandma's homemade cookies |
After we’ve eaten but before we’re ready to rejoin our other activities, we like to draw out this time by having a little something sweet -- a homemade cookie. Here on our mountainside where every little jaunt or wander is an exercise in the vertical, we can afford a cookie or two, especially if they’re really worth it.
Today I baked peanut butter cookies. A favorite from childhood, I love their subtle sweetness and faint nuttiness. Not the insipid paleness of a sugar cookie, their rich golden color is highlighted by the tire-tread markings of the crossed impressions of fork tines. I chose the fork carefully -- our silverware drawer here is a crazy collection of old partial sets of cutlery-past -- and ended up with an old fork of my Grandmother’s, the silverplate wearing thin in places. The tines are long and evenly spaced, perfect for flattening the cookies with the traditional cross-hatched pattern.
As I flattened the first sheet of cookie dough balls, careful to exert just the right amount of pressure to each so that all of the cookies would bake evenly, dipping the fork in flour if it threatened to pull away some dough, I remembered my Grandmother letting me do that task under her watchful, but trusting, eye. It felt like an important job then, the last touch before baking. The cookies would bear the mark of she who wielded the fork, and since we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths, it mattered. Then and now.
Later in the summer I’ll revisit some of the other recipes my Grandmother made for those she loved (me most of all, believe me...I know) -- fresh peach cobbler, lemon meringue pie, chocolate drop cookies joined bottom to bottom with vanilla frosting. My Grandma lived with us for the first decade of my life, and it is she who taught me about unconditional love, something I hope I managed to teach my own daughter.
Bake yourself a batch of these old favorites, and ask someone you love unconditionally to make the patterns with the perfect old fork.
Unconditional Love Peanut Butter Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Cream the butter, peanut butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients, and add, mixing well. Make one inch balls (or use a small lever-release cookie scoop), place on ungreased cookie sheet. Press twice with fork tines in cross pattern. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool on baking rack.
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