Recipes from Ollie J -- Applesauce Cookies

It was interesting to find this one in Grandma Ollie J’s recipe box. She must have gotten it on a trip to Logan, Utah to visit one of her sisters and/or Grandmary.

When I was a little girl, we lived in Utah in the house pictured here (shown as of Aug. 2010 and NOT how it looked when I was little).

I call the eight years in Utah, B.C. -- Before Connecticut. I actually don’t have too many memories of B.C. I’ve mentioned Audrey before, my best friend, but I do remember some other things, like names or landmarks. I occasionally have B.C. dreams where I’m literally flying up and down the Canyon (ala Peter Pan), but that’s a whole other set of blog posts.

In the B.C. year, Sister* Hobbs and her family lived down the street a block or two. I used to play with one of her middle daughters, Tammy. She, along with Audrey, Jerry Don, and few other kids comprised my year group. Because this was Utah, we did everything together; we were in the same church and school classes. There are pictures of birthday parties where we are all together in a horde of cuteness and innocence. We used to run in and out of each others' houses, and were a mass unit. It’s conceivable that had we not moved from Utah, I would have grown up and had most of my life milestones with that same group of people. For better or worse, our paths diverged when my father got a job at UCONN and we moved East the summer of 1980.

Fast forward to late summer 2010.

Grandmary, GrumpaMax, and I paid a visit to the Hobbs’ during our River Trip stopover in Logan in August. While Tammy is married and lives with her family somewhere else in the state, Jeannette and her husband still live in the same house. Many of their children and grandchildren were in and out while we were there. Grandmary and Sis. Hobbs picked up the conversational thread as if it hadn’t been 30 years since we lived down the street. (I’m assuming the menfolk also started talking as if it hadn’t been three decades, but men are different, and they were off in another room comparing notes about other things.)

Just thinking about the passage of all that time is weird. I hadn’t seen this woman in 30 years, since I was younger than some of her grandchildren that were also visiting. I was a cute kid, but it must have been as weird for her to look at me as an adult, the fat and flustered-after-traveling/rafting me, as it was for me to be there.

You hang out with your family and/or parents long enough, and you revert to childhood patterns of behavior. If you don’t travel with your offspring/partner/spouse, and it’s even easier for them to treat you like a child, not as a functioning adult -- and worse -- for you to let them. You know that phrase; children should be seen and not heard? You end up doing that when you are tagging along with your parents and visiting your “older” relatives – esp. if the aunties call you “Little Mary.” If you are visiting your parents’ old friends, and you are awkward in social settings anyway ... well, you get the picture. Maybe in another 30 years I’ll make a better impression.

*Honorific used by Mormons, when referring to females. Males are “brothers” or “elders” if missionaries, or in other leadership positions can be called President. Women are always "sisters;" that's just the way things are.

Anyway, here is a recipe that was preserved in time/space, thanks to my Grandma Ollie J.

Applesauce Cookies (Jeanette Hobbs)

1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar (white)
2 eggs
2 cups applesauce
1 cup nuts, chopped
1 ½ cups raisins (boiled for a minute and then ground)*
4 cups flour
2 teaspoon soda (baking)
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg

350 degrees for 15 minutes

*Skipped this step