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Chef Edna Lewis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 23, 2023| 3 Comments »

Photo: Kinfolk.
Edna Lewis, sometimes called the “Grande Dame of Southern cooking.”

A long time ago, I made an Edna Lewis cake recipe that had been featured in the New York Times. Apart from its being delicious, the thing I remember most were curious little tips on cooking that she added. For example, she said to stir the batter only in one direction. To me that meant that I shouldn’t beat up on a cake while beating it.

Lewis died in 2006, a monumental figure in the world of cooking. At the Washington Post, Aaron Hutcherson wrote about taking a tour of Edna Lewis country.

“It was late afternoon when I checked into my hotel perched on the top of a hill in Virginia’s Piedmont region. The front-desk attendant mentioned the lovely view from my room as he handed me the keys. … With time to kill before my dinner reservation, I decided to rest. As I lay on the bed gazing out the window at the sun setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was struck by the beauty of this majestic setting — and I began to understand why Edna Lewis loved her birthplace so much.

“ ‘I grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a community of farming people,’ Lewis wrote in her 1976 memoir/cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking. ‘It wasn’t really a town. The name was adopted because the first residents had all been freed from chattel slavery and they wanted to be known as a town of Free People.’

“Throughout her career, Lewis’s work served as a means of preserving the memory of Freetown and its people, and to share that with the world through cooking. About 10 miles from the town of Orange, there isn’t much of Freetown still standing save for the remnants of a couple of buildings, but through the creation of the Edna Lewis Menu Trail, its legacy in this region lives on.

“Organized by the Orange County Office of Tourism, the menu trail launched on Thanksgiving in 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Edna Lewis Cookbook, and it runs through Memorial Day. It includes seven restaurants within 33 miles of one another, whose menus are featuring recipes from Lewis’s cookbooks or dishes inspired by her.

“Often described as the ‘grande dame of Southern cooking,’ Lewis was an accomplished chef and cookbook author who helped increase America’s understanding of the breadth and elegance of Southern cuisine. ‘It’s not all fried chicken and greasy greens,’ she said in a 1990 Washington Post interview. Beyond that, Lewis inspired the now-ubiquitous farm-to-table movement by championing the virtues of growing one’s own food and cooking with local, seasonal ingredients. When she died in 2006, she had been honored by just about every American culinary group, including the Southern Foodways Alliance and the James Beard Foundation, and now her impact is resonating again.

“The menu trail was created to celebrate the place that shaped Lewis’s culinary philosophy and educate visitors and locals alike about what she stood for. ‘She always insisted this is the area where it all started,’ said her son Afeworki Paulos from his home in Georgia, and I was ready to explore this nurturing ground.

” ‘My first stop was ClearWater Fire Grill in Locust Grove, where the whipped sweet potatoes with brandy, brown sugar and freshly grated nutmeg were a lovely match for the simply seasoned pork chops draped with a pan sauce. My server’s bubbly warmth put me at ease after the 90-minute drive from D.C. And with every interaction along the trail, I began to realize I was on the receiving end of the Southern hospitality Lewis embodied.

“ ‘The memories of that community that she grew up in and the care they took of each other and the hope they had for their future left an indelible mark on her,’ Lewis’s niece Nina Williams-Mbengue said over the phone from her home in Colorado.

“Lewis was born in 1916, one of eight children, and she learned to cook from the people in Freetown, who lived an agrarian lifestyle. After her father died, she moved North at age 16, first to Washington and then New York, where she found work as a seamstress. In 1949, she partnered with a friend who knew of her cooking prowess to open Cafe Nicholson, a French-inspired restaurant frequented by artists and celebrities, and served as its head chef. The Edna Lewis Cookbook, her first book, was published in 1972 and explored a variety of cuisines while tying recipes to her focus on seasonality.

“Chef Andrew Eppley was drawn to that tendency when skimming through Lewis’s work to find a dish for his menu at Vintage Restaurant at The Inn at Willow Grove in Orange — the site of that evening’s dinner.

“He settled on a rabbit dish from Lewis’s second book, The Taste of Country Cooking, then put his own creative spin on it. … ‘Some people come down and they don’t know who Edna Lewis is,’ Eppley said. ‘It creates a really great talking point and experience for our guests, giving them a little bit of history of culinary arts in the region, and everything she did not just for Southern cooking but cooking in general.’ …

“Eppley said what most stood out about Lewis’s cooking was the love. ‘It wasn’t like, “I’m trying to be the best in the world,” ‘ he said. ‘She was trying to cook food that she loves for the people and the community she loves.’ …

“Lewis ‘was very driven to let people know the contributions of African Americans to cooking,’ her niece Williams-Mbengue said. …

“Next to the [Bethel Baptist Church in Unionville] under a canopy of trees, there’s a group of picnic tables where I imagine Edna Lewis may have sat when she made her annual pilgrimage for the church’s summer revival.

“ ‘Her and my mother would serve food outside the church for revival,’ said family friend Mary Freeman, whose father farmed with Lewis’s brother. ‘She wasn’t a Southern cook who had all the awards when I was a kid. She was just Miss Edna.’ On top of the delicious pies, cakes and tarts Lewis prepared, Freeman remembers her as ‘a very quiet-spirited lady’ who was ‘very self-assured, very confident.’ ” More at the Post, here. Mouth-watering pictures.

A nice Kinfolk article — with no firewall — delves deeper into Lewis’s biography. Read it here.

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At Night, She Feeds the Hungry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: AP/Marta Lavandier.
Doramise Moreau is a part-time janitor at a technical school. She spends most of her time shopping for ingredients and helping to cook meals for 1,000 to 1,500 people a week that show up for food at Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami.

Last week, I finally felt safe enough to go get my hair trimmed and was glad to catch up on Tracie’s year. It was difficult at times, as it was for us all. Her teenage daughter had had a painfully lonely time at home, and her mother was relieved to see her back at in-person school, at least part time.

Tracie really lit up when she talked about giving free haircuts to residents of a nursing home. As she described the grateful things the seniors said to her, it was clear just how happy the volunteering made her.

Today’s story is about another volunteer who lights up when she can help people.

As reporter Cathy Free noted at the Washington Post earlier this month, “Miami Beach has declared a state of emergency because spring break partyers have overwhelmed the city, but across the causeway in Miami’s Little Haiti, a very different scene unfolds: Each Friday night, a school custodian finishes her day job, then spends 12 hours quietly cooking for the hungry.

“Doramise Moreau arrives at the Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church each Friday, where she stays on her feet deep into Saturday morning, pausing briefly for a nap. …

“Less than 10 miles from South Beach, Moreau, 60, lovingly turns bulk-size bags of rice and beans and hundreds of chicken and turkey drumsticks into about 1,500 meals for people in her Little Haiti neighborhood who might not have enough to eat. …

“ ‘I don’t need a lot of sleep. I would rather be here making food for the people. I ask every day for more strength to keep doing what I’m doing.’

“She first volunteered to buy groceries with church donations and prepare a feast once a week, she said, when her pastor, Reginald Jean-Marie, mentioned that he was concerned about hunger in the community.

“ ‘I told him, “Don’t worry, I can do this — I have the time,” ‘ Moreau said. ‘When people are hungry, it is our responsibility to help. I know how hard it can be out there.’

“Moreau grew up with nine siblings in Haiti and often took food from her family’s pantry to give to those who had less than her family did, she said. In 1980, she immigrated to the United States at age 19 and lived with her brother in Miami until she fell in love and started a family of her own.

“When the relationship didn’t work out and she became a single mother, Moreau said, she took two hotel jobs to pay the bills and keep her four kids fed. …

“For her first batch of meals last spring, Moreau made several enormous pots of rice and beans seasoned with her special blend of green and red peppers, onions, cilantro, bay leaves and garlic. She has never used a recipe, relying instead on instinct and what she remembers from watching her aunt and sister cook in Haiti, she said.

“ ‘Who has time to measure? I just chop everything up and toss it in,’ she said. …

“Although rice and beans are a mainstay, Moreau’s fried chicken, roast turkey, baked fish and fried plantains are also popular with the 1,000 to 1,500 people she feeds each week.

“The meals are loaded into two delivery trucks and distributed on Saturday afternoons by volunteers who cruise slowly through the neighborhood in Little Haiti and hand them out to people as they come out of their apartments.

‘Sometimes I go with them to deliver the meals, and it’s rewarding when you see how it helps,” Moreau said. “For some people, this might be the only meal they get for a while.’ …

” ‘American, Spanish, Haitian — I don’t want anyone to go hungry,’ Moreau said. ‘People are suffering during the pandemic. There’s no work, the rent is high, they might not have money to go to the store. This is just one meal, [but] it’s something I can do.’ …

“Jean-Marie, the pastor, urges Moreau to occasionally take off her apron and rest. ‘I ask myself all the time how she does it,’ he said. ‘Not once do I ever hear her complain. We have to beg Doramise to take a rest, but she keeps showing up, day after day. She gives everything she has.’ ”

More here.

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A Foraging Teen Learns to Cook

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 8, 2020| 4 Comments »

Douglas Fir needles. If you know what you’re looking for, you can use fir needles in Fettuccine Alfredo.

Did you ever picture yourself running away from home as a kid? I did. I liked the book The Boxcar Children because it suggested that kids could manage on their own. Even as a young adult, I was still puzzling about it in my imagination but was never able to invent a scenario that didn’t involve some helpful adult.

When I read today’s story, I was reminded of that conundrum because the author, Sabra Boyd, notes the impossibility of getting any landlord to rent to a 14-girl-old with two younger siblings. Her article at the Washington Post also discusses how foraging for food influenced her cooking style.

“Desperate times call for comfort food,” Boyd writes. “And whenever I have time, making fresh pasta helps me embrace being home. … Rolling out fettuccine noodles is the only kind of meditation I have patience for these days. I press my hands firmly into the dough, feeling grateful to have a kitchen. I coat the rolling pin in extra flour and think about how, as a homeless teenager 20 years ago, I cooked using only a backpacking stove. Surviving teen homelessness prepared me for a pandemic in ways I never could have imagined.

“My mother first kicked me out when I was 14. … I didn’t know anyone to crash with, so I trudged uphill to the dark high school because I could not think of anywhere better to go other than the place I needed to be in the morning. I climbed the roof of the auditorium and took a clumsy parkour leap from the eave of my English classroom’s window. Tracing constellations with my finger, I pulled my hoodie tight against the cold. The glare of a neon crucifix, perched on a hill above the school, flooded the football field with light. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.

“The following night, I sneaked into my mom’s house through a window and packed my camping gear. I set up my new home in a cave above the Elwha River. Sometimes I slept in an abandoned house in Eden Valley. When it grew too cold, I stayed at a hippie commune, in the goat stable, but I left when the commune became too dangerous. I returned periodically to check on my younger siblings, but Mom would fly into an alcoholic rage, so I spent most of high school homeless. …

“I kept my favorite nonperishables in a bear canister: instant noodles, dehydrated miso soup, granola bars and halvah. In the spring, I sauteed fiddleheads and horsetails in olive oil with my compact camp stove. In summer, I gorged on blackberries, delicately picked bright red thimbleberries and, when their pink blossoms fell, hunted for the electric hue of salmonberries. In the fall I gathered apples from wild orchards and scanned the sepia leaves on the forest floor, training my eye for a pop of yellow chanterelle.

“In winter I relied more on eating lunch at school and at work, or restocking my canister with trips to the co-op near my many after-school jobs. I worked as a barista, landscaper, maid, caregiver, caterer and pastry chef. I also volunteered for Olympic National Park’s revegetation crew and as a tour guide at the local aquarium. Volunteering and working all the time distracted me from everything going wrong in my life — plus, I hoped it would help me get into a good college far away. Volunteering also meant I could spend a few extra hours indoors if it was raining or cold outside.

Despite working seven days a week, I could never save enough money to persuade a landlord to rent an apartment to a 14-year-old girl and her two siblings.

“Striving to make fewer trips to the grocery store during the coronavirus pandemic has pushed me to become more creative and less precious about my culinary endeavors. … I am making Douglas-fir fettuccine Alfredo, or fettuccine al burro, named for its rich butter sauce, because the weather has turned cold and there is not much else to forage. The bright citrus tang of Doug fir is welcome when the days turn dreary, and I use it as a wild alternative to rosemary. …

“The leaves are most tender in the spring when they are neon, but they can be harvested year round, making this literally an evergreen recipe. The first rule of foraging is to be certain that you know what you are eating, because otherwise it can be dangerous.”

Get both the recipe and the rest of the story at the Washington Post, here.

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Typhoid Mary

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 15, 2020| 11 Comments »

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Irish cook Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) in a hospital bed. She never had symptoms and refused to believe she was giving people typhoid.

In the pandemic, many people spending extra time at home are sorting through “stuff,” and my husband is no exception. The other day, he brought out a program from a play he saw in Minneapolis in the 1990s: Forgiving Typhoid Mary.

The contemporary relevance of Typhoid Mary was not lost on me. Mary Mallon (1869 – 1938), by all accounts a good cook, was placed in a number of homes by employment agencies, and had no clue why people where she worked kept getting typhoid.

Wikipedia describes her as “an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever, three of whom died, and the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. Because she persisted in working as a cook, by which she exposed others to the disease, she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation. … Presumably, she was born with typhoid because her mother was infected during pregnancy.”

Wikipedia explains that she worked for several affluent families where typhoid appeared mysteriously, including “a position in Oyster Bay on Long Island with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Henry Warren.” Shortly after that assignment, “in late 1906, Mallon was hired by Walter Bowen, whose family lived on Park Avenue. Their maid got sick on January 23, 1907, and soon Charles Warren’s only daughter got typhoid and died. This case helped to identify Mallon as the source of the infections.

“George Soper, an investigator hired by Warren after the outbreak in Oyster Bay, had been trying to determine the cause of typhoid outbreaks in well-to-do families, when it was known that the disease typically struck in unsanitary environments.

“He discovered that a female Irish cook, who fitted the physical description he had been given, was involved in all of the outbreaks. He was unable to locate her because she generally left after an outbreak began, without giving a forwarding address. Soper then learned of an active outbreak in a penthouse on Park Avenue and discovered Mallon was the cook. Two of the household’s servants were hospitalized, and the daughter of the family died of typhoid.

Soper first met Mallon in the kitchen of the Bowens and accused her of spreading the disease. Though Soper himself recollected his behavior as ‘as diplomatic as possible,’ he infuriated Mallon and she threatened him with a carving fork.

“When Mallon refused to give samples, Soper decided to compile a five-year history of her employment. He found that of the eight families that had hired Mallon as a cook, members of seven claimed to have contracted typhoid fever. Then Soper found out where Mallon’s boyfriend lived and arranged a new meeting there. He took Dr. Raymond Hoobler in an attempt to convince Mary to give them samples of urine and stool for analysis. Mallon again refused to cooperate, believing that typhoid was everywhere and that the outbreaks had happened because of contaminated food and water. At that time, the concept of healthy carriers was unknown even to healthcare workers.”

Hmmm. If a cook who emigrated from Ireland at 15, presumably without much education, failed to understand something that no one at the time knew about, I guess a case could be made for “forgiving” her. Not sure the same can be said for the super-spreaders of Covid-19. When I think of health-care workers exposing themselves every day and “seeing the regret” in the eyes of dying patients, it really makes my blood boil.

By the way, the relevance of Typhoid Mary was not lost on a theater in the Berkshires either. Alas, I did my online search too late and missed out on the Barrington Stage Company reading of Forgiving Typhoid Mary by a few days. If you’re as curious as I was about the “forgiving” aspect of the title, you can read the 1991 New York Times review, here, which provides a hint.

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Get Your Cookie Cutters at the Library

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 27, 2018| 8 Comments »

using-cookie-cutters_heroPhoto: Betty Crocker
Full-service libraries are starting to lend out cooking utensils as well as cookbooks.

You’ve heard of the Internet of Things, right? Using the internet to turn on the heat in your house before you arrive home from a trip, for example, or checking inside your fridge while you’re at the supermarket to see if you need milk.

Well, I just learned about something called the Library of Things. This expansion of the role of libraries is a recognition that you may not want to buy all the paraphernalia for making a gingerbread house, say, but would love to try making one if you could just borrow the equipment.

Deanna Fox writes at the Times Union, “When you go to visit Guilderland Public Library on Western Avenue [near Albany, New York], be sure to bring your appetite. Besides the expansive array of cookbooks in the stacks and shelves to peruse and whet the palate, the library now offers bakeware and food-related programming to make those glossy images in cookbooks a reality.

“Maria Buhl, department head for programs and services at the library, said its 2,200 cookbooks serve as the foundation for a new cake pan and cookie cutter loan program that provides patrons with a chance to use a piece of kitchen equipment that they typically could only access through purchasing it.

” ‘We choose items that are not things people want in their homes,’ said Buhl, who added that people enjoy kitchen gadgetry and trying new recipes, but purchasing the equipment needed to make the recipes is space- and money-intensive and having a lending library of novelty pans, Bundt pans, springform pans and various cookie cutters gives utility to the cookbooks the library offers.

“There are currently a few dozen cake pans and cookie cutter sets to choose from at the library, and Buhl said there are plans to add 15 to 20 more items. Some of the sets and pans are included in the ‘birthday in a backpack’ program that offers patrons a backpack filled with books, games, decorations and bakeware that all follow a theme (‘Dora the Explorer’ or dinosaurs, for example) to create a celebration with otherwise onetime use items.

“Tim Wiles, the library’s director, said the cake pan program is part of the facility’s ‘library of things,’ a growing trend among public libraries.

” ‘There is a general thought in society that because everything is on the internet, there is no need for libraries in general,’ he said, but the success of the lending of material items like bakeware or other items, like 6-foot folding tables that are often the top checked-out items in the ‘library of things,’ secures the purpose of a library in the age of digital information and media. …

” ‘Take a historical look at this. Libraries started in the mid-19th century because books were rare and expensive. It is all part of the sharing economy,’ said Wiles.

“Bakeware is no good without a recipe, however, and Guilderland Public Library’s cookbook collection is the highest circulating nonfiction collection in the library, said Buhl. …

“A new cookbook club at the library highlights one or two cookbooks per month that patrons can choose a recipe from, make a photocopy of, and take home to try. Patrons are invited to gather one night per month to share the dishes they make from the books and discuss them.

“September was the first month of the program and the chosen book was ‘Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking,’ by Linda Collister. … Because the measurements in the book were offered in metric form, conversion charts were provided for patrons. ‘It became like a STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math] program,’ said Buhl. ‘It was an opportunity for people to step outside of their comfort zone.’ ”

Now, that’s another good idea — especially in Suzanne’s kitchen, where the great recipes Erik remembers from growing up in Sweden are all in metric.

More information is available at the Times Union, here, or at guilderlandlibrary.org.

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Roma Women Work for a Better Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2016| 2 Comments »

Roma families (also called gypsies, tinkers or travelers) have a hard life in Europe. Recently, Elisabetta Povoledo wrote at the New York Times about some Roma women who are hoping to build a better life for their families by starting food businesses.

“On a muggy July evening, a handful of Italian hipsters milled around a food stand at an alternative music festival in Rome, trying to decipher some of the exotic offerings: mici, sarmale and dolma.

“These Balkan delicacies — barbecued meatballs, cabbage wraps and stuffed peppers — are the basic ingredients of an entrepreneurial scheme cooked up by a group of Roma women looking to better their lives and leave the overcrowded and insalubrious camp in Rome where they currently live.

“They call themselves the Gipsy Queens.

“ ‘Cooking? I’ve been cooking practically since I was born,’ said one of the chefs, Florentina Darmas, 33, a mother of three, who is originally from Romania. …

“Nowadays she is trying to break down some of the barriers faced by her traditionally marginalized group using the universal language of food. …

“ ‘We realized there was unexpressed potential in the community, especially on the part of women,’ said Mariangela De Blasi, a social worker with Arci Solidarietà Onlus, a Rome-based nonprofit organization that works with marginalized people and manages the burgeoning catering business. …

“If their entrepreneurial plans pan out, the Gipsy Queens hope to buy a food truck or rent a kitchen on a more permanent basis — foundations for steady work that will bring in rent money.

“ ‘Getting out [of the camp] is my first priority,’ said Hanifa Hokic, 31, a divorced mother of five children between 8 and 12 years old, who is originally from Bosnia. …

“Maria Miclescu, a 20-year-old mother of two, agreed that to give her children ‘a better future,’ she had to leave. Her husband is trying to establish a small-appliance repair business …

“The oldest member of the group, Mihaela Miclescu, 49, who is a grandmother, was happy to join the Gipsy Queens.

‘I wanted to show Italians that we are not bad people, that we want to work, not to beg.’

More here.

Photo: Gianni Cipriano for the New York Times
Maria Miclescu, left, and Codruca Balteanu at a food stand run by the Gipsy Queens during a music festival in Rome. 

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Places That Will Cook Your Fish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »

There are people who like to cook and people who like to fish, but if they are not in the same family like John’s in-laws, the caught fish may never get eaten.

Fortunately, there are now a growing number of services that will enable you to catch your fish and eat it, too.

Diane Bair and Pamela Wright describe a few at the Boston Globe.

“Fishing charters are wildly popular along the sunset coast of Florida. The Gulf Coast, from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater, has some of the best deep sea fishing in the country and plenty of days of sunshine and calm seas. It’s dubbed the ‘grouper fishing capital of the world,’ but mackerel, snapper, barracuda, tuna, dolphin, wahoo, hogfish, and more are also plentiful.

“Most charters guarantee that the boat will bring back fish, and they often include free fish cleaning and ice. But what do you do with your catch if you’re staying at a vacation resort or local hotel? These restaurants in the St. Pete Beach area will gladly prepare your keepers: You catch ’em, they’ll cook ’em.”

The reporters list these spots: Friendly Fisherman (150 John’s Pass Boardwalk, Madeira Beach, 727-391-6025, www.gofriendlyfisherman.com); Sea Critters Café in St. Pete Beach (2007 Pass-a-Grille Way, 727-360-3706, www.seacritterscafe.com); Conch Republic Grille (16699 Gulf Blvd., N. Redington, 727-320-0536, www.conchrepublicgrill.com); and Maritana Grille (3400 Gulf Blvd., 727-360-1882, www.loewshotels.com/don-cesar/dining). Descriptions of the delicious preparations here.

My husband and John have often brought back bluefish after going out on G Willie Make-It’s charter. G Willie (Bill) cleans the fish you want and sells the fish you don’t want to local restaurants.

Not everyone loves bluefish, but the first one of the year says summer has arrived.

Photo: Pamela Wright for the Boston Globe
Eating on the outside deck at Sea Critters Café, where you can get the fish you caught turned into a meal.

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Christmas 2011

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

On Christmas Eve we have always gone to First Parish for one of the candlelight services. Nowadays we go to the early one because we have a toddler in the family.

Today we got a big kick out of watching him take it all in: so many grownups in the house at once, so many boxes covered with paper you’re allowed to rip, so many curiosities to remove from the bottom of a tree and show people. And rather nice chicken sausages.

The kitchen cupboards were interesting, too. They have different stuff from the ones at home and everything badly needs organizing.

We cooked and ate, and cooked and ate, and cooked and ate.

For lunch, Meran made tarts suggested by Cook’s Illustrated. One was a shitake mushroom and leek tart, the other was butternut squash and spinach. Both had cheese. There also was a salad with fennel, pears, and sugared pecans.

The main course at dinner was a Lamb Tagine we always like. This one is made with prunes and cinnamon, but there are recipes with raisins and almonds or apricots and caramelized onions. Meran contributed a lovely couscous with veggies.

Suzanne and Erik made an apple crisp that we ate with ice cream. There were loads of Christmas cookies.

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Christmas Cookie Recipe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2011| 2 Comments »

Here is the Christmas cookie recipe I have used ever since John put together his little recipe book in nursery school.

(have ingredients at room temperature)

Rolled Sugar Cookies

2 cups sifted flour
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. milk

Sift together first three ingredients.
In another bowl, cream margarine, add sugar gradually. Cream until light and fluffy.
Add egg, vanilla, milk and sifted dry ingredients.
Mix dough well, chill at least one hour.

Roll approximately 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured board and use good-sized cookie cutters so children can be successful in handling shapes.
Place cut out cookies on ungreased cookie sheets and let children sprinkle sugar on them.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. (My oven prefers 350 for 6-10 minutes.) 2 doz.

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