Microwunderkammer

 Parental Artifact #20–some good cookies.

It’s not a day for heavy thoughts, so I’m not going to go all Proust with these cookies setting off several volumes of memories. Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a cookie is just a cookie. And so these are. The recipe is from my mom’s mom. I lost the recipe when we moved from Kalamazoo to Sacramento: the one box that the moving company didn’t deliver had our recipe box and hanukkiah and a few other treasures. Twenty years earlier, I think my mom may have lost the recipe as well: in her papers we found a 1980 letter from her mom, my grandmother, with the recipe written on a scrap of newspaper with an article about eating insects. The scrap also had a note, “Just to keep you up to date—other culinary hints.”

My mom made these for us when my brothers and I were kids, long before she apparently lost the recipe and needed that letter from my grandma. By the time that happened, she would have been making them not for us but for her coworkers, or for a club. My mom didn’t love cooking, but had skills, and when it was required of her she could make quite a good pie or cake or other treat. She also ably assisted when I wanted to learn how to bake for my junior high school Home Ec class. I don’t remember much of my grandmother’s cooking, other than that she didn’t love cooking either, and wasn’t that great at it. But I have this recipe from her, and whether or not she was the creator of it, I think that it pretty much absolves both mom and grandma of any and all culinary sins.

(The recipe probably dates to from when my mom was a kid, as it references a highly annoying novelty pop song from 1943. It would be roughly equivalent to naming a recipe “YUMMMbop”. Link in notes; you’re welcome to the earworm.)

Mare Z Dotes

3 c quick oats [ed. note—if you use rolled oats, they’ll be more work to eat, but make a more crispy cookie. I usually go with quick oats, they hang together better]

1 c flour

1 c brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 c butter or oleo, melted

1/4 c boiling water

1 t baking soda

Mix together oats, flour, sugar, and salt. Add melted butter or oleo and mix together well. Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water and add, mixing well. Vanilla or cinnamon can be added to taste. Form the dough into a 1.5 - 2 inch roll in wax paper and place in freezer.

Preheat oven to 350-375, slice the dough thin (about 1/4” or less), and bake 5-10 minutes [it depends on how thin you slice them. Keep an eye on ‘em]. They can be baked as drop cookies but they’re not as good that way. [I freeze up several short rolls—that way I can just bake a few at a time. It’s not like there are three growing boys here.]

Really, you should make some of these, they’re good. They’re a treasured part of my inheritance that you are completely welcome to! Or share a grandparental recipe of your own in the comments. It’s a good time of year for such things.