Peanut butter cookies in honor of a great man

Today in his memory, Ranger and I made his grandpa Jack's favorite cookies: Peanut butter cookies, made with creamy peanut butter and a touch of vanilla. When I was first learning to make these cookies, working from a recipe card, vanilla wasn't on the card. It was the "secret" ingredient that made the cookies so special. Now a days I use a recipe from a book- my little recipe card having been lost at some point. The recipe in the book calls for vanilla and some how having it printed there with the rest of the ingredients takes away the magic.

For many years of my childhood, I thought my dad had magic. He would blow towards a traffic light and it would magically turn green. He would snap and the windshield wipers would turn on. He had a terrific trick with a paper bag... he'd tell us to take an invisible ball from the bag and throw it back inside the bag. We'd know the ball ended up in the bag because you could "hear" the ball strike the bag. Surely he had magic! I continued to believe in that bag trick until I overheard him tell a friend's father how to snap his fingers to make the sound of the ball hitting the bag.

 This weekend has been about remembering the magic of my earliest hero- a celebration of the life he lived rather than mourning his loss.

And I ate plenty of cookies, too.



Ranger loves to help in the kitchen.

 

Got to have the fork pattern!

Yum.