My Friday Friend Cookbook Countdown #205
(#willreallyfinishthissomeday)
Betty's Pumpkin Cookies
and you know all the whys and wherefores of this countdown, right? Homemade cookbook, friends contributed, Handyman said I couldn't/wouldn't do it, I'll show him, yadda yadda yadda....
...and the rest is cookbook history!
It is the perfect time of year for some pumpkin cookies.
Pumpkin anything, right?
I can't resist a good old fashioned 'soft' cookie -- with frosting!
These are wonderfully soft and spicy, melt-in-your-mouth cookies.
This is Betty's 3rd appearance in the Friday Friend Cookbook.
Well, it's her 3rd recipe (you can see them all here-just click) She appears in a couple of my mother's stories--which now leaves me scrambling for another Betty story.
Funny, how you can know someone your whole life and when crunch time comes, you can't think of a thing.
But I can certainly remember this---they had a dog named Fang.
Fang was just a mutt, a cowdog, black and white--used to roam around town. All the dogs roamed around town back then. There were no leash laws or dog licenses...and the town that Fang roamed in was very small.
It would be common place that when we visited our grandparents in the small town of Enterprise, Oregon (population 1001) during the 1960's, my brother and I would also often be seen roaming around the town with Betty's boys, Bret and Scot. Fang was not far behind.
There was the wonderful penny candy store where we would look for hours at the glass cases and have to make the awful decision where our 10cents would go.
Then, we would all stop the little grocery market where my grandfather worked and say hi---and eat grapes and pea pods without paying for them. They were almost as good as the penny candy.
Fang would wait patiently right outside the door, watching people and cars on main street.
Next came the Range Rider bar--it was the mid 1960's and we felt perfectly comfortable being, 8, 9, 10 years old walking in to say hello (in the middle of the afternoon) to a relative or friend.
Fang felt comfortable himself walking into the Range Rider. It was dark and smoky, even in the middle of a summer afternoon. People knew Fang. He would get a couple pats on the head, maybe a pretzel or two. He was a popular community dog back in the day when dogs roamed free.
We might end our trip around town with a visit to the Community Congregational Church, if my grandmother was cleaning it. We'd probably trudge down the aisle with dirty shoes and Fang right behind us--we'd plop down in a pew and if we stayed too long, we were handed a dusting/oiling cloth and made to get to work.
Fang knew when the time was right to skedaddle on out of there.
(I've always wanted to write skedaddle!)
Then we'd head back to Betty's house for popsicles and sit on the front porch with Fang.
Those were great summer afternoons!
The funny thing is tho, that Fang never came in Betty's house, except for the back porch area and the front entry area. They had a cool old-fashioned house where those areas were closed off from the rest of the house by a door--they were part of the house, but not part of the house.
Poor old Fang.
They had a cat named Claws too. But that's a story for another time.
I don't think that Betty and Jim ever had another dog after Fang was gone. How could you duplicate that?
Betty and Jim and their best friends (my parents).
And my mom and Betty at our cabin in Wallowa Lake, Oregon
This is recipe #205 only 162 left to go!
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