Every Recipe Contains a Memory

In an earlier post I wrote about Mom’s brown recipe box. It got misplaced during her move into Palmer and she fretted for all the years she lived there and right up until her death about that recipe box. We looked high and low in her new house, but never found it.

We used to kid her about how attached she was to that old recipe box. She’d just smile. A few weeks or a month later, she’d ask one of us to look again.

It wasn’t until after she died that we found it packed in a box marked “Slide Projector and Slides.”

Oh, we’d all looked in that stupid box numerous times, you know, opened it and looked inside. But the recipe box was all the way on the bottom, hidden under 50 years’ worth of slides and a big old honkin’ carousel slide projector. The writing on the box was in the hand of our dear Unkie Roland (Fall). One last “Unkie” joke on us.

I couldn’t bear to look inside for a long, long time, but when I did, I realized why that box was so precious to Mom. It contained recipes she gathered from her sisters, her mom, and from friends. Each and every recipe contained a memory and losing them was like losing a piece of whomever had given it to her.

I get it now.

This one is from her sister Florence Edinger. Our beautiful aunt who taught Mom how to bake.

Grannies Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies

½ C shortening

¾ C brown sugar

¾ C white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 C peanut butter

1 ¼ C flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 ¾ C oatmeal

Cream together shortening & sugars. Mix the eggs, vanilla & peanut butter and add to the shortening/sugar mix. Add flour, baking soda & oatmeal. Mix well & drop by spoonful (your choice of size ~ Mom made big cookies), and bake for 15 – 18 minutes at 350 degrees.

Remember to add a pinch of love, and enjoy!