Traditions

When studying literature, my classes get a chance to read stories that have been orally circulated for generations before someone took the notion to write them on paper before they were lost. Zora Neale Hurston is a great black author who has captured some rich stories, and better yet, they are written in the dialect of the people and the time.

I think, too, of Homer and his epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey. If you've ever had to read these two volumes, can you imagine making you living traveling around and telling these tales, let alone memorizing it! (and the students today moan and groan when you ask them to memorize "Jabberwocky"!

One family tradition that has been passed on to me is the making of waffle cookies. I don't know if that's the orginal name, but that's the name I grew up learning. Back in my great-grandmother and grandfather's time (on my dad's side), it was a Christmas tradition to make these cookies. I was told it was probably done just once a year because the ingredients, although basic to us today, where ingredients that weren't meant to be used on "frivolous" cooking. It calls for a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tsp. of vanilla, and close to 5 pounds of flour. Personally, I don't think it was so much the ingredients that couldn't be spared; it was the time!

Using these old-fashioned irons, flipping the cookies after a certain amount of minutes, takes 4, count them, 4 hours! I recently received a modified version; my aunt found a recipe in a Paula Deen (I think that's how to spell her last name) cookbook. It's basically the same except the ingredients are halved and almond paste is used. Well, half a recipe, half the time. It still took 2 hours!

But it is a tradition that I have accepted, and although I moan and groan when asked, "Have you made the cookies," I also like knowing that I'm the one who makes them.

I just wish they were sweeter!