The important thing is this: at any time, to be willing to give up what we are for what we could become.
I am on a quest. I’m big on quests of all kinds, going beyond the familiar, going beyond the safe boundaries of what we know to (responsibly) learn more. I’m probably even bigger on the responsibility piece: taking risks without a sense of moral and ethical responsibility for what those choices entail, not only for ourselves, but also for others, is ill-advised and foolish.
Preaching (forgive me!) aside, I’m noticing that as I get older, my quests are becoming more limited in scope, and lighter in nature, most likely because I am increasingly aware of a physical vulnerability I didn’t have to consider at an earlier stage in my life. So my latest quest is somewhat trivial in nature — or maybe not! — whoever really knows in the grand scheme of things . . .
I am in search of the ultimate ginger/molasses/spice cookie. The richly “thick” and sticky atmosphere of my kitchen is reminiscent of the numerous combination of spices and the different types of molasses with which I’ve experimented. Tongues of friends and family tingle with the quantities of ginger that they’ve had to sample, and more and more I’m hearing, “No thanks, I’ve just brushed my teeth.”
My mother was a big cookie baker, but her cookies were always the same, remarkably tasteless, considering the myriad of ingredients that I would see her putting in them. (Come to think of it, maybe they all canceled each other out.). I can smell them now as I write! — tasteless maybe, but fully appreciated by her daughters. I was in the second grade before I realized that homemade cookies could be different, when I encountered with amazed incredulity and delight the numinous “peanut blossom,” that infamous peanut butter cookie with a Hershey’s kiss on top that shouts Christmas.
All of which is to say I come rightly by a cookie-quest that has to do with “taste.” However, during my young married life living in the swamps of southeast Loisisana, I encountered my mother’s cookie again! Imagine my astonishment when my across-the-bayou neighbor, Grandma Mrs. Toups, presented me with a plate of the identical cookies, only a lot bigger, I was delighted, since my mother had never written a recipe down.
So just in case a quest of yours is for a tasteless, but amazing cookie made with love, here is the absolutely best one you’ll ever get:
Mrs. Toups of Bayou Lafourche Cajun Tea Cakes
1 cup butter, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, 3 and 1/2 cups flour, 2 eggs, pinch of salt, 1 tsp. soda, 1 tsp. vanilla. Cream butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla. Mix soda, salt flour. Slowly add to butter mixture. Flour and roll dough. Cut 2 and 1/2 inch round cakes. Bake in 400 degree oven for 7-8 minutes.
And I’ll keep looking for that elusive ginger cookie. . .