The Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies

For me, Christmas is the season of wistful nostalgia.  This time of year I find myself starting most sentences with "When I was a kid..." or "Back in the day..."   I dont know- jingle bells and holiday cheer turn me into a depression-era grandmother for some reason!   

I know I'm lucky to have warm memories of Christmas past, but I cant help missing it and wishing for it now.   My wonderfully food-centric mother made Christmas (and the days leading up to it) sweet, cinnamon-y, spicy and delicious.  I miss that.  I've been trying to follow in her kitchen footsteps for some time now, but I always fall short on baking.  

"When I was a kid..." each year my mother, with the help of my big sister Denise, would bake ALL the treats.  Spritz cookies, chocolate chips, honey balls, "Greek" cookies, thumb prints, sugar cookies and these, peanut butter cookies were baked in our kitchen.  I call these the "The Easiest" because they are the only cookie that I could master.  The cookie that I, as a kid, could bake, unsupervised.   The same is true today.  I made these all by myself!  - thanks to Denise.

Last week, I asked her for mom's cookie recipes and she sent me lots of pics that look like this:

A page out of my sister's very old steno pad with our family recipes.

Naturally, Denise was the smart one who wrote down mom's creations.   I just ate them with a tall glass of milk.   

Depression-era grandma alert:  When my sister sent me this, I cried.  Look at the stained pages and Denise's cute swirly handwriting!  I remember looking at this page and baking these cookies in my mom's kitchen.   (Its this kind of thing that keeps me writing this blog.)

So, there in that swirly handwriting is the recipe for The Easiest Peanut Butter Cookies ever.   The only thing I'd add is use softened butter and in my opinion, crunchy peanut butter takes these cookies to a new level of greatness (and nostalgia).

Merry Christmas!

xo & a pinch,
Kelly