Packrats and Cookies

Note: If you have come to us from the Festival of Frugality, you might rather read this post. I accidentally sent in the wrong link to the carnival.

I've mentioned before and I will mention ago that I am descended from a long line of people of an, um, saving disposition, and quite often insanely so. This can be a bit of an adjustment to the new inlaws who get tricked married into the family. They don't know what to think of us.

One of the little endearing habits of my ancestors has been that generally when somebody passes on, whatever last project they worked on is packed up and saved, left unfinished forever. This can be charming. My mother has a framed bit of unfinished embroidery, complete with embroidery scissors, needle and thread, all used by my great-grandmother. The fact that the project was left unfinished twenty years before she died doesn't spoil effect for the rest of us at all.

This can be weird. Once one of the Great Aunts, we'll call her Aunt Hattie, passed on, and it turned out that the last thing she had made was a birthday cake for a nephew. So yes, the family did pack up the half eaten cake and store it away in a hatbox in the attic for an undetermined number of years. To make this family story truly epic, after the manner of small children, one of the small children at the time misunderstood the entire thing, and for many years she gave herself the horrors because she thought it was Aunt Hattie in that hatbox.

This saving fetish is generally a burden, but it's also an immense blessing, such as when I inherit property with woods and a creek, and when I find little gems like this Receipt for:
Mother's Butter Scotch Cookies ('Mother' in this case is, I think, my great-great-grandmother)

Two cups brown sugar
3/4 cup shortening (I use two sticks of margarine or butter)
two eggs
One teaspoon cream of tartar
One teaspoon soda
one teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup nutmeats
4 cups flour

Mix all ingredients in order named. Form into a roll the size of wrist. Wrap in floured wax paper and chill overnight.

Slice with knife about 1/2 inch thick.
Bake slowly.
Can be varied with raisins, figs, or dates.

Those are my greatgrandmother's notes. We generally do not bother with nuts, though sometimes I have added chocolate. Whole wheat flour does work. Bake slowly seems to be about 300 degrees for about 20 minutes. You do have to be careful with this. Like all brown sugar sweetened baked goods, you need to take them out just before they feel done or else they will cool into hardened bricks. You can soften them again just as you would hard brown sugar, store them with a bit of sliced apple. They taste better if you manage to pull them from the oven at just the right moment though. These make a decent man-sized cookie and they really do have a butterscotchy sort of flavor. They are delicious with milk