"I love this cereal," my husband said as he was eating a bowl of Cheerios for a bedtime snack last night. "When I was little, I called them wheels. I'd tell my dad, 'Bring me home some wheels!'" His dad had a grocery store, so I guess it was no problem.
"I never ate them as a child," I reflected. "All we had was Post Toasties (corn flakes) or Mother's Oats." Actually, it was mostly oats, that and cornmeal mush, because corn flakes were gone in one setting with eight of us kids slurping them down.
Howard had poured the cereal from one of his new containers we had bought on our trip. We had accompanied Jamie's family on a trip to Sam's, and since there is no Sam's in our small town, we always enjoy gazing at the merchandise there. He had spotted a pack of three nice storage containers with pour-spout lids. When we got home, he purchased new cereal for them and lined them up neatly on the top shelf.
Must be our age, but more and more we find ourselves nostalgic about the past. When we saw a Mason-jar-like drinking set at Sam's, he insisted we get that, too! It was cute, with striped straws sticking out of the colored lids and a Velcro burlap strip lettered with catchy sayings around the jar. As kids, my siblings and I drank from Mason jars, which we broke regularly, then it was Mama's vegetable tin cans that didn't break! (No doubt the forerunners of the colorful aluminum tumblers popular in the fifties!)
An old saying of leaner times was, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." What with our being semi-confined with snow for several days, I find myself practicing that a bit. Making cookies would be a pleasant way to fill an afternoon, I mused, but I lacked a few ingredients, like butter. I had found a partial bag of miniature chocolate chips, left over from the chocolate chip pancakes I had made for grandchildren once.
Throwing caution to the wind, I poured the last of my biscuit mix into a bowl, worked in a little Country Crock spread, added an egg, sugar, a bit of milk, soda and the chocolate chips, then dropped spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. (I forgot vanilla, which I did have.) Amazingly, the cookies were delicious! Brown, crispy and sweet, with tiny bursts of chocolate!
"I guess we can call these 'bookies,'" I quipped to my munching husband. Then I said they reminded me of tea cakes, to which he said "tea biscuits," which is what they called tea cakes in Mississippi. Whatever we called them, they got eaten, and, thankfully, I finally did get to the store for butter and other things! Thankfully, because we got several inches of snow yesterday, which is frozen today.
Looking out the window, remarking how snowy it is, I thought of the poem by Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. In it, he talks about "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake," a scene evoking relaxation in the comfort of a cozy house with tea cakes on a plate, a Mason jar on a tray, and enough memories to keep us warm!
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