Tickled

So I sent some cookies home for my dad because well, you know, I inherited my taste for baked goods from somewhere, and of course because Mom deserved to share the fruits of our labor too. I figured he'd love the peanut butter cookies because they were soft (he can't eat hard or crispy stuff because his teeth are bad), like the sugar cookies' flavor (and they weren't too hard either), and then he probably wouldn't like the peppermint cookies because he tends to like things more conventionally flavored.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

My grandfather was an incredible cook. Family lore says he could fry chicken in such a way that left the chicken juicy, tender, and yet slightly crispy all at once. He made amazing biscuits and his cookies were the best. His kids and even my mother tried to learn his secrets but his methods made it difficult at best. He didn't use recipes, instead using the "little bits'a this, little bits'a that", by-taste method. There really wasn't any way to convert handfuls and pinches to standard measurements, and my mom's hands weren't the same size as his. When he died, his "recipes" went with him. And for years my aunt and my dad have searched for recipes that mimicked the tastes and textures they grew up with.

Apparently, in my searches for recipes over the last few weeks, I found and settled upon not just one, but TWO recipes that are very close to cookies my grandfather used to make.

The first is the sugar cookie. My dad said that my grandfather made a cookie that was basically that sugar cookie without the extra granulated sugar on the outside.

The second was the peppermint cookie. He said that my grandfather made one like that, only without the peppermint flavorings. I think the particular form I send those ones in was part of the memory for my dad: the dough was difficult to work so when Mom and I got down to the last little bit, I took some of the green and some of the white and made a sort of rolled log out of it, and then sliced it into little cookies with a swirl design in them. My dad seemed to like the consistency of the cookies.

He said that Grandpa used to make maybe a hundred of each variety every Sunday. I don't know if the number is accurate or an exaggeration, or if the cookies are even really like Grandpa's or if it's all just the product of decades-old memories. The recipes aren't even mine--I just got lucky and found a couple good ones online.

But they made my dad happy. And making my dad happy always made me happy. Now, if I could just figure out how Grandpa did his chicken. I mean, I KNOW how he did it--it's just a matter of mastering his technique.

And, you know, getting over my fear of frying foods.

I know, I know... What good and decent Southern girl doesn't have some kind of tasty fried food in her repertoire? I think I might work on that this coming week and try to surprise him.