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Butch Furse
The Betterhalf’s shout from the kitchen got my attention as I was reading my morning newspaper and all stretched out in the family room recliner. She asked: “What do you want me to bake – chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies?”
Sometimes a guy just has to make tough decisions because chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and sugar cookies are my top three choices. After I opted for chocolate chip, I began thinking about why those cookies were my favorites. While the taste was part of it, I realized they brought back lots of memories that have spanned three generations.
My grandma made the best sugar cookies when I was a kid. My cousins and I would annually get to spend a week at her house where she would almost daily serve our afternoon snack consisting of her homemade sugar cookies along with a dish of canned peaches. Funny I don’t remember the canned peaches as well as those cookies and grandma.
As for my other favorites, the chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, my taste buds were established by my mom. She usually had a cookie jar full in her kitchen that was ready for my snacking when I got home from school. Again, it was the memories of mom and her cookies.
I recall over our married years the Betterhalf trying to duplicate the recipes of our moms and grandmoms. She would become a little frustrated just because those recipes didn’t taste just like her mother’s or grandmother’s. The Betterhalf blamed it on the realization her grandma’s or mom’s unquantified “dashes, sprinkles or just a handful of this or that” weren’t the same amount as hers.
In reality I think it was her memories of being in the kitchen with either her mom or grandma that had added the additional flavor that she felt was the lacking ingredient in her present cooking.
But take heart, Betterhalf! Additional spice in your recipes is being established for our children and grandchildren because they will also have the memories of being in the kitchen with you.
And don’t worry about me. I’m staying out of the kitchen. I have no complaints about your chocolate chip, oatmeal and raisin, or sugar cookies. They are just fine with me, plus I have lots of kitchen memories..
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When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces, or retire. Women just keep right on cooking.
RL Furse is publisher emeritus of the News-Register
