Bon Appetit, Kiddies!

Over the weekend in Germany it's supposed to snow, at least a little, even here in the flatlands. Predictions of snow prompts me to make a list for me to stock up on needed supplies at the grocery store. Not the standard milk-bread-toilet paper stock up but instead I like to bake when it's lousy weather outside so I have to make sure I have all I need for baking.

Cakes are good but there's something about snow and cookie baking that goes together. Toll House cookies are my favorite cookies but I often save that for Christmas baking because chocolate chips and American style brown sugar are hard-to-the-point-of-impossible to get here. Brownies are another favorite but B is allergic to nuts and I personally think brownies without nuts are dull. The best choice for snowy day cookie baking in my home are snickerdoodles. They have no nuts, they're easy to make and they're B's favorite cookie. I introduced him to the world of snickerdoodles when I first moved to Germany and he became a fan immediately.

I have four distinct memories of Kindergarten. The first is my Kindergarten teacher, Miss Wickie, telling Andrew Campbell that he looked like a drunk in our class picture. And he seriously did! I haven't actually seen that picture in nearly twenty years but it's burned into my mind. The second is Miss Wickie telling some boys stacking up some huge wooden blocks to not stack them so high because they would fall and hurt someone. Not thirty seconds later the stack did fall and hit me on the head and it didn't hurt a bit - but I pretended that it caved in my skull because those bad boys had not been listening to Miss Wickie like they should have and I could get lots of attention if I acted like I was injured. I learned manipulation early in life. The third distinct memory I have is being outside at recess and I could see my mother down in the parking lot talking to some lady. Miss Wickie called us back into class and as I was running I ducked under a jungle gym bar like I always did except this time I didn't duck down far enough and I slammed my forehead into the bar full force. Knowing my mother was down the hill from the playground I ran back and could see my mother driving off in our Chevrolet Biscayne stationwagon and screamed after her "Mama! Mama! Come back!" and she didn't hear me. Cosmic repayment for the hit-with-the-blocks incident? You be the judge.

The fourth distinct memory I have was being selected one day to pass out the milk and cookies at snack time. The cafeteria lady had delivered the cookies and milk about ten minutes before and I could see that they were snickerdoodles. I was so excited because we almost never got snickerdoodles for snack time. One of my favorite cookies and I was going to get to pass them out to everyone! Wouldn't it be terrible if something happened to prevent me from carrying out my sacred milk and cookies duty? And not two minutes later I had to go to the nurse's office to wait for my mother because as I was getting up to pass out milk and cookies I threw up.

Give me a snowy day baking snickerdoodles and I'm five years old again - head injured and throwing up.