Back in the ’80s I did quite a bit of canning and baking and I just loved it. One day I decided to bake a batch of cookies that I found a recipe for in an old cookbook. It actually was a large batch and required a lot of ingredients, like butter, flour, eggs chopped walnuts and some spices and other dry ingredients.
The entire house smelled absolutely delicious as they baked in the oven. There were two large cookie sheets loaded with these mouth watering snacks and we were anxious to dive into them. However, after they cooled and I removed them from the trays, I noticed they seemed awfully hard. The truth is, I had used baking powder by mistake instead of baking soda and they were hard as rocks. You just couldn’t eat them and there was no way to soften them. I remember there were a few jokes made, like maybe we can line the driveway with them or better yet, give them to our dog who loved to chew on bones. So we did throw a couple outside for our lab to eat. He ended up burying them!
The moral of this story is always make sure you put the right ingredients into your everyday life or things can turn out to be too tough to live with.
Be kind, love one another, and make 2021 the best year ever.
—Helen Valcaniant,
Imlay City
