May I have this job please?

Can you imagine if your were the person opening the letters sent with applications for a job with your company and you received this?

"At school he is a student of advertising, on the streets of Chicago he is a student of culture and memes. This is Advertising, finding that elusive why. Charles understands the nuances of culture, the relativity of trends, the impact of memes. He is all of us, he is the Cultural Chameleon."

I looked up "memes" and I'm going to let you look it up because I have a hard time understanding exactly what that is. Great thing to put in a cover letter for a job application, isn't it? This was an actual cover letter sent by a job applicant to a Chicago advertising agency.

Recipe for Happiness

This could be a picture of me--it's not, but the look on that little girl's face and her fistful of cookies, her delight in that huge glass jar filled with delicious cookies--I can relate!

It's funny where inspiration comes from. I was reading an issue of USA Today this morning and reading The Final Word, Craig Wilson's weekly column. The title was: "The formula for happiness: Cookies and milk." I started thinking about my life-long love of cookies.

I am sure I loved cookies from the time I could dissolve them between my gums, but I don't actually remember eating cookies until I was old enough to make them. I started making them young. I used to watch a cooking segment of a local, King 5 show, paying close attention and being in awe of Bea Donovan, when I was a mere 12 years old. Bea was very organized, lining up her ingredients in tiny dishes, dumping the contents of each in a big bowl in the order called for in the recipe: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, oatmeal, chocolate chips, nuts, raisins. It all was so carefully done and it appealed to me tremendously. My Mom wasn't the greatest cook, didn't really care about baking, so I took over. I became the cookie maker and for a long time I measured out each ingredient into bowls and put them all on a cookie sheet, dumping each one into the bowl just like Bea Donovan. I began to collect recipes, then, too.

From the beginning I had opinions about cookies. I recall telling my mother that her friend Gerry's cookies weren't as good as they could be because she didn't sift the flour. I had watched her bake some cookies one day and noted her exclusion of this very important step. I also insisted on the best ingredients, the Toll House Chocolate Chips, the Quaker rolled oats, the better cinnamon, the nuts that had to be chopped, the freshest raisins. I baked cookies all the way through junior high and high school so when I married and started having children the habit was already formed. I baked cookies once a week. They never lasted longer than that, anyway. By the time I had my two daughters my recipe box was filled with a wonderful variety of cookies: Snickerdoodles, Oatmeal Raisin from the Quaker box, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Ginger Cookies, Frosted Kalua Cookies, Spritz, Sugar Cookies, Shortbread, Russian Teacakes, Frosted Nutmeg Logs, Grandma Butler's Date Bars, Grandma Ammon's Tarts, Aunt Carol's Roll and Ball Cookie Starter, Carolyn's Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies, Cocoa and Bourbon Balls, Peanut Butter Cookies. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. Somehow I managed to keep my figure in those days, even though I was probably eating six cookies a day, if not more. It must have been the energy involved with raising kids and keeping house that allowed me to munch at will without becoming a blimp.

In about 1979 I bought my husband Maida Heatter's Cooky Book, because he was interested in cooking and had started making cookies, too. This cook book put the exotic into our cookie jar. Now we were making Big Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cookies (with chocolate glaze!), Chocolate Mint Sticks, Pinwheels, Oatmeal Snickerdoodles. When we divorced I insisted that I get copies of those pages in the book before I would let him take custody of it. In 1993 I met my Greek man and with him came more cookie recipes: Melomakarona (honey macaroons), Brandy Balls, Snow Balls. I have a recipe notebook now, in addition to the recipe index box, with all the cookie recipes I've cut out of the newspaper, out of magazines, from labels on packages, been given by friends. I certainly have enough for my own cookbook.

I love the results of making cookies, but I also love the making of them. I love to cream the sugar and the butter, adding the eggs and vanilla, the taste of it at that point. Then measuring and sifting the dry ingredients into the creamy mixture in the bowl and finally chopping the nuts and adding the raisins, chocolate chips or whatever extra added yumminess is called for in the recipe. I like dropped cookies best as that allows me to lick my fingers often and I don't let a drop of the dough go to waste, using a spatula to get the very last bits from the bowl, which are mostly consumed by me. What can be said of the aroma of cookies baking, except that it is one of the top ten most wonderful smells in the world? At the end they are all lined up on the counter on paper towels, cooling, filling the kitchen with their great smell.

I don't make cookies as often anymore because now there are no longer any kids to chase to keep me svelte--all those cookies go directly to my hips as they pass so deliciously over my taste buds. I make cookies to take to potlucks or to family gatherings or to send to my kids at Christmas and I make them once a month for my husband because he likes to have a "little something" after dinner. I am glad he requests them because if he didn't I don't know how I would come up with excuses to bake them.

There is a new baker in the family now. I was so thrilled the last time my granddaughter, Alison, came to visit me. She was drawing at the table and suddenly looked up at me and said, "Grandma, can we bake something?" Who am I to say no? I immediately got out the old recipe file and looked for one that would appeal to her. She required "cimmanon and vanilla" and since her Grandma likes oatmeal and chocolate chips and nuts, we made Oatmeal Chippers. I measured, she dumped ingredients into the bowl. Together we whipped up cookies made with love. We waited impatiently for them to bake and then we ate a whole bunch of them.

Panties Up the Flagpole

John Sleasman and Wayne Swenson

Chris Eddy Dosa and Blue Frosting Affect

Fred Just, Sandy Harkins, Terrie Baughman , Janet Dore' in the kitchen

Wayne with Captain Jack's Dark Ale

Randy Flowers

Jack Archer, our host

Sandy Harkins and Randy

Is there a better way to spend a couple of hours on a blustery, wet Fall day than with old classmates? I don't think so. Jack Archer and is wife were willing to host us this time, even though they thought they'd be grilling outside on their deck. The weather surprised all of us and we ended up inside, but they had lit candles and the lamps were glowing and I think they might even have had a fire going and the mood was cozy. We were all introduced to Mia, The Begging Dog, who we were not to feed. We are getting spoiled with these convivial home lunches--will we ever be satisfied with a restaurant again?

The topic of conversation that got most people's attention this time was "Who put the panties on the flagpole?" This came up after we'd been discussing some pranks that had been pulled in our senior year--the stink bomb in the hallway outside Mr. King's German classroom, among others. Jack piped up with, "There's just one mystery I want solved--who put those panties on the flag pole?" We thought John Sleasman would probably know--he was known to be a part of some shenanigans when we were in school, but he was clueless. Randy, who was a student leader back then, didn't know either. And even Dean, who said Mr. Huey would single him out to talk to when anything against school rules took place, because even if he didn't have anything to do with it himself, he would know who did--even Dean didn't know who'd done the flagpole trick. Legend has it that whoever did, greased the pole on the way down so nobody could get up there and take the panties down. I'm hoping somebody will read this who talked to somebody else, who knew somebody that was involved in this, because 47 years later it's time for these kinds of mysteries to be solved. Or is it more fun to guess?

Speaking of Randy, it was the first time in a long time many of us had seen him. He came down from the Bellingham area to be with us and I hope he'll consider coming again. He told us he is retired from teaching but volunteers at a grade school several times a week and is putting a daughter through college. Ralph, the Mail Guy, was with us via the phone, but he was resting in his Port Townsend house, getting ready for a trip to Israel and Jordan--incidentally, he had a pacemaker inserted on Monday of this week. Yes, folks, we all have our occasional age-related surprises.

The above pictures mention Jack's beer. We were talking about beer and wine and I mentioned that I love beer. Jack literally leaped up and asked if I wanted to taste his freshly brewed Dark Ale. He brought me a glass of a yummy, smooth beer with a taste that reminded me of apples. Soon I found out that this was Jack's private label, Captain Jack's Dark Ale, which he'd brewed over at Gallagher's in Edmonds. He had his own classy label and he gave us bottles to take home. I have heard that Gary Parker owns a brewery in Eastern Washington and that his beer can be bought at Central Market in Poulsbo. I will try to get more solid facts and share it here another time. It never fails to amaze me what we find out about each other when we attend these lunches.

Don't know when the next one will be, but I hope I see you there. Maybe you'll know who put those panties on the flag pole.