recipes and secrets

 There is another story I want (need) to tell, but in order for it to make sense, you really need to know the beginning. And this is the beginning, or as close as I can get.

When my husband’s grandmother was passing away but still lucid, I thought to ask my mom in law for her mother’s cookie recipe, just known as grandmother’s cookies, always given nestled in plastic inside a tin, they were a delicate cookie, like the expensive ones in the specialty section of the grocery store, where it’s like $8.99 for 12 cookies and by the time you get them home half are broken from the shuffling around. She had the original copy of the recipe, and gladly gave it to me.

After she had passed away and we were planning the memorial, I decided that a sweet gesture would be to make her cookies in her honor. No one else is the family made them or ever wanted to try...I’m the baker and chef of our family. Upon reading the recipe, I had to read it 3 times and flip it over to look on the back. While ingredients and amounts are there, it ships right to putting them on the tray and into the oven. It’s handwritten so it’s no mistake. It dawned on my what a sly, smart woman she was. It was her recipe, the one she was known for and who everyone knew to expect when they saw her, and whose cookies everyone could identify in the dessert table. The cookies that would be hidden inside their tins tucked away in secret spots to prevent them from being stolen by others...everyone got their own tin and would easily go through them in a day and search for someone else’s stash.

I told my husband when I discover this that “she was sneaky. Don’t be surprised if there are some secrets that come out and her will and papers come out and we all start going through things. This was not an accident or coincidence. She purposely did not put the technique, which any baker knows for a delicate cookie like this is crucial for texture and there’s no real room for error in these cookies. You just wait.”

Well, now I’m eating my words because things did come out. But that’s another story, the one I want to tell next.

So some days before the memorial I decided to try the recipe. My mom in law was over and I though perfect she can taste test them for me and see if I can recreate these.

I looked up towed the heavens and said “ok mom-mom you got me. That was pretty good, but I’m better. I got this.”

And I figured it out based on what I knew and they came out exactly prefect.

I didn’t know what kind of forbidding I was predicting when I spoke those words to the heavens. But man.