Peanut Butter Cookie Memories--by Bryan F.

Both my parents were working by the time I was nine years old. During that year 1963/64, when I was in 4th grade they had staggered shifts so we kids had supervision.  By the time I was in 5th and 6th grade, my Mom was working the graveyard shift at a diner around the time I was 10 and 11 years old. This meant we were unsupervised during the morning hours while she slept on those workday mornings  I took that opportunity to learn to bake on my own. Just like my Mom, I loved baking and learned quickly. My Mom did very little baking after she was married, what with having four children in 37 months. My sister was a premie. After we got a little older, about 1963 she started working. She had worked some with our neighbor, Elva Moore selling water softeners door to door in Barstow, California before that in 1961/62, but part-time and when my Dad was off work. 

So there was little time for cooking, let alone baking. 

The top recipe is in my Grandma's hand and the bottom in my Mom's.

My Grandma's favorite cake

My Mom's favorite cake to make. 

She worked in a bakery while in high school to earn extra money for clothes to escape having to wear homemade clothes that my Grandma though perfectly acceptable for a high schooler in the fifties. You can take the farmer out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the farmer. 

My Mom loved baking and cooking and always thought herself a failure because she had to work and was not able to be at home and do the stay-at-home housewife thing. I, however, think she was heroic for stepping up when my Dad failed to adequately provide for the family. She always worked in the food industry until she got a bookkeeping job in 1967 at McMahon’s Furniture. In 1970 she got a job as a bookkeeper at the newspaper where my Dad worked as a typesetter. Better pay and normal hours were a great benefit to her after years of strenuous restaurant work.

I want to try this.

Anyway, because of her need to work, we were home alone a lot by the mid-sixties and I was the default leader, as the oldest. That meant if cookies were going to get made I had to do it myself. I found a recipe in my Mom’s handmade cookbook that she started creating in high school. It’s a small 6 1/4” x 4 1/4”multi-ring binder, heavily stained with years of use. It is pictured here. The first part is typed on an old manual typewriter, done in her high school typing class and some of the later additions in her beautiful cursive handwriting. I believe she created this as a cooking reference for her married life that she had all planned out.

This little recipe binder holds more of my Mom’s energy than any other artifact she left behind. It sickens me as I write, to report that the peanut butter cookie recipe page is missing. That’s the cookie I always made because we always had the necessary ingredients on hand as opposed to say Toll House cookies that required the elusive chocolate chip.

A holiday staple at our home. Usually had to make two.

There was never extra money for a luxury like chocolate chips, but there was always peanut butter. I’m thinking the page was so worn that it dropped out and was lost. I can’t tell you how sad this makes me. I was carefully leafing through the delicate pages and not seeing it where I pictured it. I wanted to take a picture of it to post here. I’ve chosen a few others though that have some significance for me, or that are just so 1950’s that it’s funny. I always remembered to use the fork to flatten the cookie dough in a criss-cross design.

Tuna casserole was a staple in our home

I was always in the kitchen, I learned to wash dishes at 5 years old standing on a kitchen chair. My Mom really needed help with so many babies to care for. When my Mom went to work for McMahon’s Furniture store in ’67, she had gained some weight, so I would make her a salad after school when we were home alone. She usually got home by 6pm. I was in my first year of Jr. high school, twelve years old and by then knew my way around the kitchen. I did a fancy layered salad with vegetables and peaches and cottage cheese. I had forgotten the Peaches and cottage cheese until I noticed I had made an entry in the recipe book for it including an illustration.

An entry I made for my Mom's after work salad dinner 

When my Mom's health began to fail in 2011 she came to live with me. Dialysis left her weak most days and she spent most of her time in bed. To pass the time she read food magazines. I bought her as many as I could find and she devoured them. She liked reading the recipes and when she found an especially good one she would call me over and share it with me. "Oh, doesn't that look yummy." or, "I could make that." or, "Could we try this, it doesn't look too difficult." 

She had burned out on TV. Once Jeopardy was over, she was done. She read her books at first but had to give up her beloved John Grisham as time progressed. I think it just seemed like too much, or maybe the book was too heavy.

She read the magazines though, up till the day before she died and marveled at the gastronomical offering. I think she would have been an excellent pastry chef had she not been overwhelmed with so much responsibility early on in her life.

The graffiti at the back of the book is also mine. It looks like a Christmas tree on one page and a nativity scene on the other.
I guess it’s only right that I ended up with this little book treasure.

The Peanut Butter Cookie Gang, Circa 1965

I have books that are old and interesting, as well as old magazines, old recipe books that were my Mom’s and Grandma’s. I also have old valentine cards, some foldout 3D, from the 20’s and thirties that were exchanged by my maternal Grandparents that I’ll be sharing with some commentary. I also have a collection of old postcards, lots of town scenes and old cars as well as a huge collection of TV guides going back to the early 50's that I have collected over the years that I'll be sharing here in the next month. I hope you’ll come back and see them. They are quite a nostalgic trip. 

A time when my Mom had a few minutes of free time to bake me a birthday cake. I'm guessing I'm about three or four years old. It was usually too dark inside to take pictures with a Brownie camera that had no flash, so they brought it out to the front lawn. I'm guessing that the wagon is a birthday gift from my Grandma. I remember it well. It served all four of us. (Notice the cars and the smog blocking the mountains that should be visible. It was August, the worst smog month).


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