I have a serious question, friends. Really. I need someone to explain something to me. What in the name of Pete happens to our taste buds as we age?
Friends, I chose pumpkin pie over chocolate cake on Thanksgiving. This has never happened. Yesterday at the store, I chose grandma cookies over holiday Oreos. What are grandma cookies, you ask? It’s a broad category that includes nilla wafers, fig newtons and oatmeal raisin cookies. Well, not the oatmeal raisin. They are one of life’s cruelest jokes and something I would never eat voluntarily.
This weekend at Aldi, I walked right past all the fun Christmas candy to buy a bag of little German butter cookies. They come in various shapes, are not too sweet, and some have little bits of dried fruit pressed into them.
Remember when you were a kid and you wanted everything to be nice and sweet? What happened to those good old days anyway? Welp, sign me up for the crusty butter cookies.
At least I still don’t eat oatmeal raisin!
When I was a kid in the eighties, this blue tin of little butter cookies was a staple in my paternal grandparents’ home.
My grandma was an amazing cook. She was an old fashioned Appalachian cook who was always prepared to throw together a great meal with homemade noodles, potatoes and fried meat of some kind. She made delicious pies and cakes including a Mandarin Orange Cake that I attempt to recreate every Easter.
For all her amazing qualities in the kitchen, cookies weren’t her thing. She tried but they were just never that good. Isn’t that funny? She could can a garden full of vegetables and make homemade pie crust with her eyes closed but couldn’t pull off a decent sugar cookie.
She mostly filled the cookie jar on her vinyl tablecloth clad table with store bought cookies and there was frequently a tin of these little butter cookies on hand too.
I hadn’t thought about them in years but was recently transported back to that old kitchen with the African violets in the window and a jar full of bacon grease on the stove. That’s because I found small tins of these cookies at the Dollar Tree. This package is about a fourth the size that she always bought but it was the perfect amount of cookies to make me smile.
Honestly, they aren’t that good but I enjoyed dunking them in a mug of hot chocolate. My grandpa always dunked his cookies in cup of coffee and now I understand that they taste a little better with the extra punch of flavor.
I feel no need to run out and buy more but, golly, I did enjoy this batch. And now I have the tin to remind me of those happy days!