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Food Memoir--Chocolate Chip Cookies

Grandma’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

If the well-known ‘you are what you eat’ phrase really is true, then I guess I’d be considered quite boring. I am not—and have never been—an adventurous eater, I stick to the basics: macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, burgers, pizza, etc. I like it simple, bland, safe, and definitely familiar.

Familiar. Family. As Foster says in How To Read Literature Like a Professor, “The act of taking food into our bodies is so personal that we really only want to do it with people we’re very comfortable with” (Foster). After almost 18 years of living with them, I think it is safe to say that I’m comfortable with my family.

Every year my family drives eight hours to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents. We have a family Christmas party where Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and siblings all on my Mother’s side of the family gather for the annual exchange.

I should probably explain that I am not the only one in my family who’s boring when it comes to food. We eat three meals per day like everybody else, but extensive time and preparation is not something that typically goes into a dish. I’m sure it would sicken some of the ‘foodies’ out there to know that I am more than content with my Kraft Mac’n Cheese from the box and some good old Tyson Chicken Nuggets.

Based on this information, it’s not surprising that much of the food at the Christmas party is pretty simple. Depending on the weather, the menu is either hamburgers and hot dogs, or sandwiches with assorted deli meats.

The Meaning of Food website points out that “There is no closer relationship than kin, and food plays a large part in defining family roles, rules, and traditions” (The Meaning of Food). While my family certainly doesn’t worship food, it has subconsciously defined family traditions. Every single year, without fail, every person brings some sort of snack or dessert, we say grace before getting our food, and the oldest family members get to go first in the food line; this Christmas party tradition has been going on for as long as I can remember.

The most worthy dessert is always Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies, passed down through four generations until finally reaching me:

2 ¼ c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Combine 1 c butter or shortening

¾ c granulated sugar

¾ c brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp water

Beat in 2 eggs. Add flour mixture. Mix well. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop from tsp to greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 10-12 min.

By the time all of the Aunts, Uncles, and cousins leave my grandparent’s house, the cookies have been demolished. The sadness, however, is short-lived; inevitably my Grandmother pulls a gallon bag of the savory cookies out of the freezer, and the munching begins once again.

These chocolate chip cookies are the one thing I actually remember being taught how to make. We would stand in my Grandma’s kitchen, ‘accidentally’ dropping brown sugar on the counter so that we had to eat it, and popping chocolate chips into our mouths as if they were a health food. Mervyn Claxton says that “The techniques utilized to prepare and process foods and the ways of serving and consuming it, [...] can have an important influence on social and familial relationships.” (Culture, Food, and Identity, Sixth in a Series on Culture and Development, Mervyn Claxton). I think making cookies has certainly strengthened my relationship with someone who I see only once in a while.

I get most of my non-existent cooking skills from my Mom, and to this day she still cannot make the cookies; they just don’t taste the same. Luckily, I did not inherit the cookie gene.

My brothers and I have taken it upon ourselves to make sure that these cookies don’t die in our household. Every couple of months we spend some time making Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies. Mother’s Day is most common (since she can’t make them herself), but the occasional birthday is celebrated with cookies as well. We blast some music to get in the spirit, and have fun making a mess of the kitchen.

Chocolate chip cookies are familiar to me. They are simple (although much simpler to eat than to make), and they may be safe, but they are comfortable, and I wouldn’t want my family to be any other way.