So, what do you do when the guys are haying and they request homemade cookies, but you are out of chocolate chips, nuts, cocoa, and several other cookie making staples?
Hot Summer Day
One hot summer day sometime around 1976 or 1977, Dad, his brother Dewey, and Dewey’s son-in-law Dennis were putting up hay. At some point, Dad said that they would need some cookies for a snack later in the afternoon and if we didn’t have any, we should make some.
The Cupboard Is Bare
Since we didn’t have any cookies in the house, we looked for ingredients to make cookies. We didn’t have any chocolate chips, nuts, or oatmeal. In addition, we had very little or none of several staples needed to make cookies.
The Store Is Bare
We didn’t have time to run to Ft. Scott to get a bunch of ingredients. So, we decided to go to the little store in Hiattville. It didn’t have a large inventory in those years, but we thought that we might find some packaged cookies that were acceptable or find the ingredients we needed to make some type of cookie.
Well, that was a bust. I am not sure if they had any cookies at all, but they definitely didn’t have any that Dad liked. And, they didn’t have the most needed ingredients. We did pick up an item or two that we thought we might be able to use.
The Recipe Search
When we got home, we started scouring cookbooks and recipes that mom had clipped from the newspaper and other sources. We reviewed the recipes to see if there was one where we had all the ingredients or if it could be modified to work with the ingredients we had. Most recipes could be quickly dismissed. Finally, we happened upon a recipe from the Ft. Scott Tribune that had been submitted by Mrs. Harry Stites for Brown Sugar Cookies.
Making Hay Day DDDs
The recipe had one key difference from others. It contained cornflakes and that was something we had in the cupboard. It contained oatmeal, but we figured that we could cut the recipe in half and leave it out as the recipe made 9 ½ dozen cookies. Although we knew they would need some energy, we figured that many cookies would be a tad too many.
I don’t remember all the modifications we made to the recipe other than leaving out the oats, one of the sugars, and the nuts. And, by cutting the recipe in half, it required only a cup of flour and a small amount of other items. Thus, we finally had a recipe for the ingredients on hand.
A Hit
The cookies were hot out of the oven when the guys were ready for a break. And, we didn’t have a single complaint about our newly concocted recipe.
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