Baking Sugar Cookies

It’s been a few days since I’ve baked anything sweet and it’s imperative that we keep such in the house — The One I Love Best is a sweet-a-holic.  John leaves to deal with weeds — they’ve literally taken over the hosta bed in our front yard.  We’ve had so much rain we can’t keep up.  I told him just recently that we could sell snake-hunting rights.

We’ve just turned what used to be the herb garden over to Bermuda grass and he even ran the lawn mower over the row of garlic.  As I’ve told you before, I’m the third generation to own this property and my daddy would turn over in his grave if he could see all the Bermuda grass in his old garden spot.  He worked untiringly to keep that and Nut Grass off this property.  Well — he didn’t live to be as old as John and I are either.  Guess we’ll just leave it all for someone else to worry with.

We tried without success to grow peanuts and strawberries — there was no way we could keep those two crops weeded.  We had more weeds and grass than we had berries or nuts.  Another thing we tried to grow and failed — was blueberries.  I’m told that most land on this mountain is acidic — not here — ours tests 6.5 and 7.0.  Blueberries want to grow in acidic soil and we were not diligent enough to keep the soil amended — thus no blueberries and we both really enjoy them.  I have a wonderful recipe for making Blueberry Supreme.  If I can remember — I’ll share that one somewhere down the road.

Wow — did I digress — when John left to deal with weeds, I made the decision to bake cookies — I had enough leftovers that I didn’t have to do lunch.  We have our main meal in the middle of the day.  One time a great granddaughter came to stay a few days and went home telling her folks, “Mimi and Pap don’t have dinner.”  You see they call dinner what we call supper.  And digress I did again.  Anyway John came in forthwith (back hurts when weeding), found out what I was doing and he joined me.

Okay, the recipe I use is in the Geraldine Library Cookbook and put there by one of the community’s very best cooks, Virginia Johnson — now the late Virginia Johnson.

SUGAR COOKIES

l cup margarine – softened
1 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. Cream of Tartar
2 tsp. vanilla
5 cups plain flour

Combine oil, margarine and sugars — add eggs.  No need to sift — just fling the rest in the mixer and let ‘er rip.  I use parchment paper on my cookie sheets (that way I don’t have to wash them).  Roll the dough out in small balls — using flour on the hands when needed.  We had 11 dozen cookies; however, how many will depend on the size balls you make.  Using a floured fork (some recipes say to dip the fork in water — this is not for me) mash the ball down slightly in both directions.  I find a fork with thin tines works best.  We use two cookie sheets and put the balls on them 4×6,  baking two dozen at a time.  The recipe says to bake at 350 degrees; however, ovens differ and we bake at 400 — 12 to 15 minutes.  I like to take mine up and have them lean against each other on edge — going round and round.  In this case, John does the taking up and he wants to lay them out in straight rows.  What the heck — I’ll take help anyway I can get it..  Let cookies cool before putting them the cookie jar.

I just have to tell you about this cookie jar — my daddy used to auction off household goods and in 1950 he was doing such when Mother bought two jars like this and paid fifty cents each for them.  They had been in a café in Geraldine owned by Aunt Minnie and Uncle Silas Littlejohn.  This jar is a treasure in this style of country living.