It’s winter, I live in a condo, and I no longer shovel snow. I used to like shoveling snow, especially if no one had walked on it, tamping it down. It was exhilarating exercise in the fresh air, and useful. Sometimes, I kept going and did the older-than-me neighbor’s walks. In that case, the neighbor would open her door and yell out her thanks and say that I didn’t have to do that. I always said “It’s no bother, and now I can eat more cookies.”
That goes along with my life’s motto: “Work hard, play hard, and eat hearty”. This especially applies to cookies. I grew up eating cookies baked by Mom and both grandmas. Never did I think about how unhealthy they might be.
I only think of their welcoming comfort and deliciousness. Some examples of this in action are:
Baking a small batch, 4 to 6 cookies, from frozen little balls of dough, on a toaster oven tray. The toaster oven is gone, but the tray survives. This is great when hunger strikes or visitors stop by.
Trips home from college (and after married life) always led straightaway to the small chest freezer in the kitchen where Mom stored her cookies. I preferred them frozen at the time.
My sister- in -law, Peg, baked fresh cookies when we visited her, and Dan’s mother, Betty, in Cedar Falls, IA. It was a short visit in the afternoon made memorable.
My friend and neighbor, Nita, graciously shared her chocolate chip cookie recipe over coffee in her kitchen. I scribbled it down on a piece of paper from my purse that also told me how to send away for a free Star Wars figure.
Midwest Express flights (out of business long ago) always had hot cookies.
When our 4th child was born in 1983, my Grandma Philomena Boes Thelen from Breda, IA, came to visit. She brought along a coffee can (and it was a can, made out of aluminum or tin) filled with cookies. She wrote down the recipe for me, and personalized it with a hint on the back of the card, which makes me smile. It is our favorite cookie. A few times, I have gifted newborns’ families with these, in a recycled coffee container, just for fun and the memories.
Here is something I wrote on July 23, 2010:
There is a whole lot of energy in a freshly baked cookie, such as the power of the raw ingredients: the grains in the flour and oatmeal, the egg, and the butter.
There is the human energy to mix it up by hand into a batter, and electrical energy to bake it.
Then, the steam inside escapes while it is cooling, which is really noticeable if you try to cover or package the cookies too soon. The lid becomes covered with escaped steam.
And lastly, the caloric energy that is transferred back to the human who eats the cookie and also uses energy in chewing, digesting, moving, working, playing, and possibly baking more cookies!
Shirley
On Writing, On Life 