Magic Cookie Bars

Things my grandson learned today while we made Magic Cookie Bars:

To read all of the directions first

That tablespoons are marked on the butter wrapper

That you can cut right through the paper

How to set the timer on the microwave (to melt the butter)

That you can use you hands to pat the crust in the bottom of the pan

That if you pour the coconut, nuts, or chips into the palm of your hand, it's easier to sprinkle them evenly

That if you hold your hand over the pan while you are sprinkling, the things you drop still end up in the cookie bars and not in the dogs' stomachs

How to set the timer

How to wait TWO HOURS for them to cool

Julie and R.J. - quit reading now

That if you eat all your dinner, Grandma will let you have 3 cookie bars and then Grandpa will cut you one more!

The Gravy Boat.

I never thought it strange as a child. Whenever we had family holiday dinners, we would eat in the dining room and we would use the good china. The furniture would be polished (the legs were my responsibility) and the china, freshly removed from the hutch, would be hand washed and dried before we set the table.

The menu for these dinners rarely varied. We always had both turkey and ham since I dislike turkey and my sister does not care for ham. If it was one of the winter holidays, we had sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top and the green bean casserole. If it was Easter, we had glorified rice. It was my mom’s recipe, with cooked rice and pineapple and whipped cream and coconut. It always did, and still does, taste like spring to me.

We were not rich. We were not poor. We were comfortably well off; at least we were when I was young. I was a late-in-life baby and my parents had much more when I was growing up than they did when my sisters and my brother were young.

Anyway, my mother makes wonderful gravy. I do not have the knack but my mother could make gravy out of anything. So, on holidays we would get out the special pickle dish and the divided cut glass dish for carrot and celery sticks and the cut glass cranberry dish. The table would be set and it would all look just lovely. Then dinner would be served and the gravy, in it’s Pyrex measuring cup (the big one, the 2 cup one), would take its place on my mom’s table.

None of us thought it odd. It was just one of those things. Then my oldest sister got married and I guess her husband said something. Next thing I knew, Mom and I were at St. Vinnie’s (the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store) buying a gravy boat. It was beautiful. It didn’t match the dishes but it was beautiful. I’m not sure the gravy ever tasted as good or stayed as hot in the gravy boat but it was beautiful.

Last week, I was in our local senior citizen’s thrift store looking for some Mason jars.

I bought the gravy boat.