Holiday cookies connect generations

Food and family are inextricably intertwined at my holiday get-togethers. Both my grandmother's were excellent cooks and both created holiday meals and goodies that still linger in my memory.

Just like Grandmother Mauer, I'm big on making food-related holiday gifts. Here's my story.

After Thanksgiving, Grandmother Mauer made a wide array of holiday cookies and candies. A week before gift-giving, she arranged her weeks of work on large trays. The season wouldn't have been the same without her colorful rows of holiday sweets.

For years after Grandmother passed away, my wife and I continued to make her cookies and candy. At more than a dozen years, all that baking got to be too much but I wanted the family traditions to live on. So I gathered up my batter-spattered holiday recipes, typed them out exactly as she (and we) made them for decades, bound them and gave them as our holiday gift.

A few years ago, I scanned all those pages, turned them into computer files and saved them on compact discs. At that year's holiday gathering I gave each family member a disc to every family member.

There's still time left for you to do something similar. Perhaps you have a grandmother or other family member who is famous in the family for their cookies, roasts or salads. Here's how to save those recipes for years, as well as put together a unique gift for loved ones. First, collect all the great family recipes you can and talk to each of the cooks about their recipes. Find out the story behind the recipe, or just to clarify something vague in their recipe. Ask for product brand names, or if there's a unique source (Grandmother Mauer got the nuts she used from a Chicago wholesale nut company).

Take good notes.

Next, use your computer to put the recipes together. If some of your recipes come from typed-out recipe cards, use a scanner to turn them into documents.

Got kids who liked to draw? Enlist their help with some of your recipe book's pages. A scanner can turn artwork into picture files that can be dropped into documents. Or take pictures of each contributor to fill the pages.

Look through some favorite cookbooks to see how they're laid out. Use those recipe formats as a template for your recipes. Then, break the recipes into categories, such as breakfast, sandwiches, soups, appetizers, desserts or even get-together food.

Use your notes to tell a short story at the beginning of each recipe. Finally, number the pages, put together an index, and print out enough copies for everyone (plus one for yourself). Slipping those finished pages into clear vinyl sleeves will help keep them clean.

I like using vinyl-covered three-ring notebooks that lay flat and can easily be wiped clean. Also, consider copying your cookbook computer files to a CD and sliding that into the cookbook too, so recipes can be printed to share with others.

It'll take time to put them together, sure, but those cookbooks will become family treasures and have the potential for making this one the best holiday seasons ever.

The following recipe is based on the best oatmeal cookie I ever tasted: Grandmother Mauer's. She began making them more than 60 years ago and used butter and ground pecans in hers. I've reduced the butter to half and eliminated the pecans. Warning: It's very difficult to eat just one.

• Write Don Mauer at don@theleanwizard.com

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Recipe</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=256878">Mauer Family Frosted Oatmeal Raisin Cookies </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>