Sunny Side Up Nov. 22, 2006 �2006, Kathleen Gibson Find it on your knees When I become a grandmother, I've said for years, I'm going to bake cookies again. So when our family extended itself by a generation, and my grandbeans began to visit regularly, I got reacquainted with our kitchen. And my favorite recipes. I've since realized afresh what has made Nabisco the world's largest cookie manufacturer: Most women don't do much baking anymore because all that mucking about with utensils and ingredients takes time. Big time. Not only that. Producing a passable batch of almost anything requires removing and replacing half the contents of our kitchen cupboards. It's infinitely faster and easier to buy our families' flab and waist rolls ready-to-insert than it is to assemble them ourselves. But I want my grandkids to remember what a homemade cookie tastes like, so I'm baking them myself occasionally. I made peanut butter cookies the other day. The people at Kraft often print a marvelous recipe on their peanut butter jar that's fast, simple, and only takes three ingredients. Those cookies are better than store-bought, honest. (No, Kraft didn't sponsor this column!) Since I know you're wondering: Mix 1 C. peanut butter, � C. sugar, and 1 egg. Roll little balls, flatten with a fork, and bake at 325 for about 12-14 minutes. Forty minutes later, God willing (He always does - in my Bible his gender is still male) your house will smell like June Cleaver's, and two dozen cookies will sit cooling on your counter. If you can find your cooling racks, that is. I couldn't find mine at first. While the cookies were baking, I bent over the bottom shelf of my lowest kitchen cupboard to retrieve them. They seemed to have vanished. "Have you seen our cookie racks?" I hollered at the Preacher, who sometimes takes them to the church to cook men's breakfasts. "No," he hollered back. I didn't believe him, really. He'd just had a men's breakfast, after all, and he's forgotten one or two things there before. But I checked other cupboards, just in case. No racks. Neither were they jammed between the stove and the fridge, nor between the stove and the cupboard. Finally I did the only thing I hadn't. Got right down on my knees on the floor, at eye level with the cupboard that usually stores them. Perhaps they'd gotten hung up in the back. They had. I pulled them out just as the Preacher walked in. "Found 'em!" I said. The Preacher rarely preaches at home. But I suppose a ripe opportunity like that, even he couldn't resist. And so, for the first time since I've been writing these little stories, I'm going to give him the last word: As I pulled the cookie sheets out the man six feet up grinned down at me, kneeling at his feet. Then he said this wise thing: "Just like life, isn't it? The quickest way find what's missing is to get down on your knees." Respond Home |
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