What children need most are the essentials that grandparents offer in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, life lessons. And most importantly, the cookies.
— Rudy Giuliani
Life is a box of cookies. You know those tin boxes with assorted cookies? There are always those you like and those you don't. When you start taking all the good ones right away, then only the ones you don't like remain. That's what I always think in moments of crisis. I better get these bad guys out of the way, then everything will be fine. So life is a box of cookies.
— Haruki Murakami
I think baking cookies is equal to Queen Victoria running an empire. There's no difference in how seriously you take the job, how seriously you approach your whole life.
— Martha Stewart
Once upon a time there was a rather clueless young mother. Her daughter was in junior kindergarten and Valentine’s Day was fast approaching. Naturally, the daughter expected to hand out Valentines to her classmates. There was only one problem – the mother had no idea what the names of those classmates were.
Now, a smart mother would have just had her child sign the Valentines and leave the envelopes blank, making sure there were enough for every child in the class. But as I said, this mother was a little clueless.
She remembered that one day, while watching a children’s show on television with her daughter, the host of the show made cookies on a stick for a treat. What a great idea! At least she thought it was a great idea. Little did she know what it would lead to.
The school was all about healthy snacks, so the mother decided to use her mother’s oatmeal cookie recipe. And then she remembered how her mother would fill her cookies with raspberry jam, and how good they were. The result was enough jam filled, oatmeal, cookies on a stick for each child in her daughter’s class, with a few extra for the teachers.
I think it should go without saying that the cookies were a big hit. So much so that the daughter asked if they could do them again the following year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And so on, all through the primary grades.
When the daughter transitioned into the middle grades, the mother thought she was finally off the hook for those cookies. She was no longer expected to make them for an entire class, but she was still expected to make them. *sigh*
By the time the daughter reached high school, the oatmeal cookies had been replaced by sugar cookies, and the sticks were optional. Red dye was added to the dough to make the cookies pink.
When the daughter went off to university, the mother thought she was finally going to be able to retire her rolling pin. After all, the daughter was no longer living at home. But no, there was a phone call wanting to know where the cookies were.
The daughter graduated, and still expected her cookies. She got married, and still expected her cookies. Had a daughter of her own and had absolutely zero interest in learning to make the cookies herself.
This year, she didn’t even have to remind me herself. The granddaughter did. So yesterday, the granddaughter came over to help make cookies in the same way her mother used to – I do all the work, and she eats them. LOL
But the granddaughter had a couple of her own ideas for improvements to the traditional cookie. I vetoed her idea of turning a skewer into an arrow to pierce each cookie, but I did agree to make icing for them – she thought they weren’t pink enough.
So here is the granddaughter’s version of the traditional Valentine’s day cookies:
I’m going to be making these cookies until the day I die!
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