This Sunday Passage is dedicated to cooking. No, not Martha Stewart cooking..or anyone else with a cookbook for that matter. No, this is for just plain cooks all across the country. That would be me, and probably you.

I don't cook as much as I used to now. One or two cooked meals can last me a whole week..it's different when I have company, but most of the time I don't.

When the boys were little and we lived at the farm, I cooked all of the time.
In fact, our family meetings were about cooking, you could say. I would
bring up issues such as keeping their muddy boots outside on the porch, not throwing the football around in the house or throwing each other around for that matter! Their issues with me? Not enough pies were baked. It didn't matter how many pies I baked, there weren't enough. Pie baking was my specialty, even with the wood burning stove. There was quite an art to it. One year I earned all my Christmas money by baking pumpkin pies. I advertised them as Aunt Lou's Pumpkin Pies. They sold for $3.00 a piece and I couldn't keep up with the orders until the Health Department found me out. What was I thinking? First I had to grow the pumpkins, water, hoe them (and all of that)!, pick them, scrub them up, cut them into little pieces (saving all the seeds for the next year's patch), cook them, puree them and make the pie filing. All the crusts were made by scratch as well with our lard from the farm. I think those same pies today could sell for, say $20.00???

I remember the first time I cooked a turkey, I was newly married and very incapable in the kitchen. I was living in Pennsylvania any my sister, Jo, with her new husband and baby came for Thanksgiving. We cooked this turkey together. We were both mortified when a small cooked bag of something was removed from the inside of the turkey at the dinner table. We both blamed each other for putting it in the turkey. We didn't know that all store bought turkeys had such inside treasures. We have both learned a lot since then. She has turned out to be the better cook of the two of us. She keeps our Mom's recipes here in Indiana since my parents moved to Texas. She makes the famous corn saylor and date nut pudding every year. I wish I knew the cooking habits of my other sisters, but we all live so far apart that we don't often cook together. I do get to cook with my three daughter-in-laws though, and love every minute of that!

I had two grandmothers, Luella and Goldie, who made the best sugar cookies in the world. As I remember the cookies were round with scalloped edges and decorated with just a hint of white sugar on the top. They were large and soft and the prized possessions of their kitchens.

Today I am cooking Christmas dinner for Aaron and Karen and the boys. I decided to make my Grandmother's traditional sugar cookies for after dinner. I always frost my cookies, but today just as they were coming out of the oven, I sprinkled white sugar on the top just as Louella and Goldie once did. I have to admit that they are so beautiful and simple. I think I will take up their tradition. Maybe it will become Matthew and Jonah's favorite! I am also roasting a turkey, but removed all bags and other treasures found in my modern day Butterball.

Tonight at dinner with candles and music, I will tell Aaron about his Great-grandmothers who made sugar cookies just the way that I did today. One story will lead to others and it will be a good way to spend a cold, snowy evening in northern Indiana.

Let's toast the cooks in our lives...the ones who have taught us and those we have yet to teach!

Love to all,
Lou Ann

Recipe for my Grandmother's sugar cookies:

3/4 cup butter-soft
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
2 and 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1 t. salt

Put butter into mixing bowl. Add sugar, blend with fork. Add eggs and vanilla, blend with fork. Add the flour with the baking powder and salt (mix it up well)! Chill dough for at least one hour. Sprinkle cloth with flour. Roll dough about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put cookies on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 6-8 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately sprinkle on white sugar. Cool. Remove from cookie sheet.