Gladys Salter’s Brown Sugar Cookies

According to my sister Patsy, my mother would have enjoyed coffee and cookies or whatever else was available when she visited Gladys Salter at her home a short distance east of Hayward off Highway B. According to my sister Barbara, “Gladys was a tiny lady, didn’t like social events and lots of people around, but she loved Mom and got along well with Patsy” who would take her to the Winter Greenhouse every spring where she bought plants for her garden.

My mother must have enjoyed these cookies, since she copied out the recipe. Patsy remembers that they were drop cookies made with a sticky batter.

The recipe is written on a two-by-four-inch scrap of paper cut from an office form. The yellowed paper is almost brown, which seems appropriate for a brown sugar cookie recipe. The scrap contains only part of the original form. All that remains of “WHILE YOU WERE OUT” is the “OUT,” but the spaces to record the important information are still there: “FROM,” “TO,” an address and phone number.

The complete form must have been designed to make it simple for telephone receptionists to assist the sales staff, since there are several boxes below the names, among them “REPORT AS BUSINESS OF,” “RECEIVED” and “REORDER” and “PASSED.” If a customer were calling to reorder a product, the slip could be forwarded to a shipping clerk who would presumably fill the order and pass the form to the sales representative.

Gladys’s recipe survives because people still used scratch paper when my mother wrote it down. Today, with automated office telephone systems, there are no note pads or even receptionists. Recipes are exchanged via email, but I wonder if, fifty years from now, you will be able to find an email sent today.

Like many recipes that my mother and her friends exchanged, there are no instructions on how to actually make the cookies beyond the phrase about dissolving the soda in hot water. That note may have been added because dry ingredients are more commonly sifted into the liquids. Homemakers like my mother knew how to make cookies so instructions were not really needed, but maybe there simply wasn’t room to include them on the little scrap of paper.

If you follow what I did and don’t overbake them, you will end up with a nice chewy snack or dessert.

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup lardBrown Sugar Cookies
3 large eggs or 4 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda dissolved in 1 T boiling water
3 – 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup walnuts
1 cup raisins plus 1 tsp. flour

PROCEDURE:

Cream the sugar with the butter and lard until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs or egg yolks one at a time until they are thoroughly combined, then beat in the vanilla and dissolved soda.

Preheat the oven to 350º and grease two baking sheets.

Put two cups of flour into a sifter with the flour, baking powder and salt and sift the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture by thirds. Stir thoroughly after each addition. Sift additional flour into the batter until you have a firm but not dry batter.

Mix the walnuts and raisins together with a teaspoon of flour and fold them into the batter.

Using two teaspoons, drop heaping teaspoonfuls (about a tablespoon) of batter two inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake ten to twelve minutes until the cookies are browned on the edges. Let the cookies cool two or three minutes on the cookie sheets before transferring them to wax paper to finish cooling.

NOTES: Quite a few of my mother’s recipes give the option of using egg yolks instead of whole eggs. Recipes for seven minute frosting and meringues, for instance, use lots of egg whites, so egg yolks were often available. If you are using only egg yolks, you may need less flour. Be careful to add it in smaller quantities as the batter begins to get stiff.

Vegetarian Pasta Sauce for One

For the last few years, while the rest of our family is devouring the turkey at Thanksgiving or a leg of lamb at Easter, our vegetarian grandson has been treated to a main dish of macaroni and cheese. He likes mac and cheese, but I thought the time had come to make something a little more fancy for his plate at our holiday table.

I first thought about making vegetarian meatballs. There are dozens of recipes on line. However, since we buy the turkey and leg of lamb, I decided that I should not feel bad about buying the meatballs. The problem is finding them at the supermarket. I hated to do it, but I finally asked a clerk if the store had any.

I found out that I had been looking in the wrong frozen food section. Vegetarian meatballs are not shelved with the other vegetables where they belong. Instead, they are craftily concealed next to real meatballs made with honest-to-goodness beef and pork in packages disguised to look like packages of the real thing.

When I got home with the “Meatless Meatballs,” I read the cooking instructions on the package. The preferred method was to simmer the balls in sauce, which was just fine with me. All I had to do was to make a vegetarian sauce and cook some pasta to give Number One Grandson his special entrée for the dinner.

Of course I checked the web for vegetarian pasta sauce recipes and found dozens of them. Most called for adding vegetables. Adventurous cooks used squash, mushrooms, peppers, spinach, arugula, olives, celery, carrots and more esoteric ingredients to add different flavors.

Some of them looked quite interesting, but I was looking for something simple that I could make for one hungry teenager. There were simple recipes, but most called for puréeing the tomatoes and other ingredients to make a smooth sauce. I thought that a sauce with texture might be a better choice, so I decided to work up a vegetarian version of our regular spaghetti sauce sized for one or two servings.

Here is what I did.

INGREDIENTS:

1 T olive oil
1/4 cup onion
2 cloves garlic
3 or 4 Roma tomatoes
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1/4 – 1/3 tsp. fennel
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. basil
1/16 tsp. red chili flakes
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/4 – 1/2 cup green bell pepper
Parmesan cheese

PROCEDURE:

Clean and chop a fourth cup of onion into a quarter-inch dice. Remove the paper and stem ends from the garlic cloves and mince them. Coat the bottom of a saucepan with a tablespoon of olive oil and set the pan over low heat. Put the onion and garlic into the pan and stir the vegetables every minute or so.

Wash and remove the stem ends from the tomatoes and chop them into a quarter to half-inch dice. Add the tomatoes to the pan onion once the onion is translucent. Raise the heat slightly and cook the tomatoes for two or three minutes, then add the can of tomato sauce.

Put the fennel, oregano, basil, chili flakes, black pepper and salt into a mortar and grind them to medium. Stir the spices into the sauce along with a half teaspoon of sugar. Simmer the sauce for about ten minutes.

Wash the pepper, remove the stem and white membrane and chop the pepper into a quarter-inch dice. Stir it into the sauce, bring it to a simmer and cook for four to six minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with meatballs (real or meatless) if you like or as is over ravioli, tortellini or any pasta cooked to al dente. Offer Parmesan cheese at the table.

NOTES: Obviously you can easily double or triple this recipe and also adjust the seasoning to your taste. Don’t succumb to the temptation to omit the chili flakes, as they give the sauce a little zip to contrast with the blandness of the pasta. If you don’t have chili flakes, you can use hot sauce or ground cayenne pepper. You can substitute any kind of sweet pepper if you don’t have a green bell pepper on hand.