Mickey Pierce Silverstein

When I read Jenni Dart’s wonderful story of Nonna’s sauce on storied-stuff (4/26/21), my grandmother’s cookie recipe came to mind. And then a realization: my story on this site about Henrici’s (12/4/20), this cookie story, and one about making chopped liver in my early 20s that’s not written yet, aren’t separate stories but all about my Grandma Dorothy. When taken together, they paint a portrait of her. Patrician, sometimes stern, willing to seem ridiculous while lying to gain control of her young, ill-behaved grandkids yet also fostering thievery in us while always loving and protective. Such dichotomies! This story is about the thievery.

In her Lakeview apartment from 1950 through 1970, when she moved out as a widow, she kept her cookie tin in the kitchen. But where? Where her grandkids could access and enjoy them easily? Obviously, you never met Dorothy.

She put them inside a top kitchen cabinet. Inside the cabinet, they were on the middle, not bottom shelf. So being little kids, we’d have to climb onto her kitchen counter and stand up to reach that middle cabinet shelf. We all just KNEW climbing on her counter was taboo and too scary to even consider. She never came into the kitchen when we were there. The tin was always full. No words about this were EVER spoken.

In a sudden flash, at an age too old to admit, I realized she had done this not to keep the cookies away from us, but to let us enjoy the thievery of getting them secretly! If she was trying to impart a certain character in us, be it courage or problem solving, it will remain a mystery. My guess is it was just about having extra fun with her cookies. Thanks, Grams!

If anyone makes these cookies, thank-yous are unnecessary. You’ll have smiles on your faces. And that would please Dorothy and me!