Everyday Food

My husband and I have a great system. I plan our menus, picking out 5 or 6 dishes for the week, then he goes grocery shopping and usually cooks the meals. We each take our roles very seriously and I think we eat very well indeed. And we are frugal. Particularly if he does the shopping. I get carried away and buy more than two people can reasonably consume.

One great source of practical but very tasty recipes is Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. I purchased a stack of these little magazines at a garage sale in the neighborhood and have since taken out a subscription. A favorite feature is "Grocery Bag: Five Nights, Five Meals," a simple plan whereby you can shop once for five meals, incorporating leftovers from one meal into the next. Tonight we are having the last meal of a favorite series published in the October 2005 issue—Bolognese Pie with Biscuit Topping. Fortunately Everyday Food is on line. October '05 Grocery Bag.

Good Dunkers

When I was a young girl, people (well, really they were all women) shared their recipes, written out in their perfect Palmer method cursive, on 3 x 5 cards that were decorated with old-fashioned cookstoves, frying pans, cookie jars, spoons, flowers or homey sayings. Sometimes my mom would ask for the recipe right on the spot—after one of our huge family dinners or a quiet supper with neighbors—copying it on the back of an envelope or any scrap of paper she had in her purse. I have a lot of these in the green metal recipe file that was hers and now is mine. I also have a collection of those 3x5 cards, written by the hands of people who are no longer here. Of course, some of these women had special recipes that they were famous for in the community and never shared. I know some of them took these recipes to their graves.

Now, it's so much easier to share recipes and, believe me, I am not taking any of mine to the grave. I hope you won't, either. Hence this blog, Snickerdoodles, created to be the digital green metal recipe file, crammed with scraps and cards, notes and stories.

I hope you will join in, sharing old favorites and new discoveries. Please include stories, too.

I'll get things started with the recipe for Snickerdoodles—crunchy, crinkly-topped and cinnamon-flavored. Good dunkers.

There are snickerdoodle recipes everywhere, but this is the one I used when I was little, and I'm nostalgic about it. It comes from Betty Crocker's Cookie Carnival pamphlet cookbook that came inside a bag of Gold Medal Flour. Our pantry in the farmhouse had big flour and sugar bins under the built-in counter. Because my mother had to bake a lot each week for a family that often included a hired man or two, she bought flour in a 25-pound bag and dumped the whole thing into the bin. (I loved to open the bin and just smell the clean, promising aroma of the flour inside.) The Cookie Carnival cookbook came tumbling out of the flour sack one day and I latched onto it and started baking cookies.

Snickerdoodles

Mix thoroughly:

1 cup soft shortening (part butter)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs

Sift together and stir in:

2 3/4 cups sifted flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Roll the dough into balls about the size of walnuts. Roll them in a mixture of 2 tbsp. sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 8 - 10 minutes or until lightly browned, but still soft. (The cookies will puff up and then flatten out as they bake.) This recipe makes about 5 dozen cookies if you don't eat too much of the dough.

Nutrition Information:

1 Serving: Calories 90 (Calories from Fat 35 ); Total Fat 4 g (Saturated Fat 2 g); Cholesterol 15 mg; Sodium 55 mg; Total Carbohydrate 13 g (Dietary Fiber 0g); Protein 1 g Percent Daily Value*: Vitamin A 0%; Vitamin C 2 %; Calcium 0%; Iron 2 % Exchanges: 1 Starch
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.