Friday, April 19, 2013

Grandma Cooney's Recipe Box

    I baked cookies today, and thought of my Grandma Cooney.  In my memory there isn't anyone  who made  better tasting cookies than Grandma ! I'm fortunate to have many of her recipes. That's because one year for Christmas, when I was 13 years old, one of Grandma's gifts to me was a  small metal recipe box , so reminiscent  from the early  1960's, filled with a variety of  recipe's  - Biscuits, Bread, Cakes, Cookies,  Pastry/Pies, Meats, Vegetables, Sauces  and Salad Dressings, each one  carefully handwritten on a
 3"  x 5"   card.   On top of the box it says,  "Favorite Recipes From My Grandma Cooney".  



   That box still sits on my kitchen counter, and Grandma's favorite recipes have become my favorite recipes, especially Thumb Print cookies.   This morning while I was adding  1/2 cup  brown sugar to 1/2 pound butter, and rolling the dough into the shape of a wagon wheel, I couldn't help but smile feeling Grandma's presence very near, and the hope she  was smiling too.

 

   
    But perhaps the most important recipe Grandma put in the box is this one, the  recipe  for living  life:

"Remember, petite, to find some way to be happy. For when you are sad you grow plain - when you are plain, you grow bitter, when you are bitter, then you are very disagreeable and a disagreeable woman has nothing, neither friends, nor love nor contentment"

   Thank you , Grandma,  for your long reaching guidance, and everlasting love.



   

1 comment:

  1. Hi, Kathy,

    I, too have recipes, copied out by hand by my mother. She wrote them out for me in the mid 70s when I moved out to my own apartment.

    Her mind wasn't lucid for many years, so we haven't communicated in as many. And she passed from this life on April 2 of this month. I preached at her funeral mass on the 10th.

    I don't know if you remember her at all. When we were in high school and college she was president of the St. Rose Women's club.

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