Of dinosaurs, buffalo, the Great Auk and a baking grandmother
-
- September
- 30
I overheard my oldest say to my youngest the other day, “OK, which do you want? Endangered species or extinct ones?”
In our house, that means that spice cookies are in the offing.
My mother-in-law had bought cookie cutters for my offspring when they were youngsters, and they have become treasures in the Thing Drawer ever since. The eventual choice was chocolate and vanilla bison cookies; they put away the dinos, the auk and the timber wolf cutters for a later day.
Unlike myself, my children have a baking grandmother. My own grandmother was a terrible cook and I don’t believe she ever baked anything.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, is not a particularly good or imaginative cook, but she’s a wonderful baker and has the energy still to turn out her legendary pies and cookies. Every holiday, we get a box of pressed cookies in traditional shapes that we wait for impatiently and eat immediately.
Both my girls know how to make these cookies now. My mother-in-law has worked with the girls in her kitchen for years and passed on her love of baking to them.
I’ve always felt that those kinds of memories are the true legacies we pass on from one generation to another: the family recipe, the special cookie cutter, the smell of spice cookies. Ah!
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:57 pm by Randi Weiner.
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