Nana's Recipe for Chewy Crisps

No, I didn't mix up the posts for my blogs.  Although this might seem to have been intended for  Kitchen Keepers, my cooking and recipe blog, it is posted here intentionally.  Today, just like most other people, I print out recipes from websites, or save them to my documents file for use at a later date.  I do still prop up a cookbook (I have many more than I have shelves to store them) or lay a printed recipe nearby when I am cooking.  I like being able to use my mini Ipad to bring up a recipe I know I have already posted.  That is very convenient, and portable!  But my most cherished recipe collection is handwritten, like the one above.  Chewy Crisps were peanut butter treats my mother, Opal Terrell Teal, made in our kitchen on Sunset Street in Jacksonville, Texas when I was growing up. I could enter it in my computer and print it out (and may very well do that for other reasons) but I thrill at being able to hold it in my hand, trace Mother's lovely, even, measured handwriting, and cook from her "book."  This recipe has a checkered ribbon threaded at the top since I use it, along with a few others, every year on a small kitchen Christmas tree where it hangs along with Mother's cookie cutters, the first ones I ever used.  I cherish other recipes written down by my Grandmother, or my mother's best friend Gertrude, our neighbor Mrs. Adams, even one from Mrs. Fay Martin who was mother's friend when they lived in New Orleans over 70 years ago. Recipes on the back of my 4th grade spelling test, an  envelop, a paper napkin.   I have some in my own handwriting, a collection of family recipes made as a third grade art project, complete with a fabric cover edged in blanket stitiches.

Next time you are asked for a recipe, why not write it down with your own pen?  Someday, there may be someone else who collects more than cookbooks and cooks with a heart beyond the cooking channels on TV!