Recipe of the Day

Sugar Cookies

2 cups white sugar
1 cup margarine or butter (pick your poison)
1 cup vegetable oil
3 egg yolks (nope, not the healthy part of the egg)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda

Cream sugar, butter, oil and egg yolks until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and dry ingredients. Roll in balls and place on cookie sheets. Press with a fork or meat hammer. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 35o degrees for 10-12 minutes.

I have a rather haphazard filing system of my favorite recipes. It's comprised of handwritten recipes on various note cards or paper, tucked into various cookbooks. When I was in high school, I typed (yes, with my "new" electric typewriter) a bunch of favorite family recipes onto recipe cards--for my mom's Christmas present. I still have some of those cards. A few years back I started compiling recipes into books for my kids; a project still in progress (maybe they'll be done this Christmas).

I think the recipes & favorite dishes that a family shares has a lot to do with family culture, tradition, and memories. My kids ask for the same things for the holidays, birthdays...and I happily oblige. It's those holiday traditions I provided them that I hope provide more lasting memories than the doll or legos they received. I hope someday they might do the same with their kids, but I'm not so sure either one of them will do much baking. Who knows, that might change some day.

But I thought I would throw a recipe on here from time to time. These are cookies I started making some 30 years ago. I found the recipe in some church cookbook. I was trying to duplicate favorite sugar cookies that I always picked as a girl at a local bakery.

I think these come pretty close to those bakery cookies. You can't really go wrong with these--there's such a high fat content, they simply melt in your mouth (right onto your hips). Like I said, I've been making them for some 30 years and they have certainly become a part of our family history.

I recently made them for our family reunion and also took some in to coworkers.
Enjoy.