Favorite Meal Memory

Inspiration

My family asks us to write a post a week for Storyworth to share a bit our history to pass on to family. I am behind and need to catch up. Today’s question is:
“What is one of your favorite holiday meals?”

The Story

Of course I loved Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with all the cousins to play with. I loved the turkey, cranberry sauce, my mom’s cinnamon rolls, and pumpkin pie.

But when I was very young, my mom made the rosette fritter cookies. Her mother was Norwegian, and I’m thinking she learned to make them from her.

They are not difficult to make, but there’s hot oil and a mess. The cookies are made with an iron dipped in batter and then dipped into the hot oil where they usually fall off to be plucked out and cooled on a wire rack. Just before serving, they are dusted with powered sugar. 

The cookies are light and fluffy and sweet and I loved them. Mom used to make them at Christmas.

I imagine myself standing by the kitchen sink, keeping well out of mom’s way because of the hot oil. I’d watch mom at the stove, dipping the iron into the batter in a bowl at her right, then slipping the battered iron into the hot oil in the pan on the gas burner. She’d expertly know when to pull the iron out and drop the cookies onto the wire rack, or she’d pull the dropped cookie out of the oil with a fork.

I could hardly wait until that wire rack was raised and placed on the embroidered flour-sack dish towel [I still have one mom made with a cat in cross stitch] spread out on the kitchen table. With a sifter, mom would sprinkle a few with powdered sugar while I waited patiently (?) until she handed me one. Or two. 

So warm and delicious.

Mom stopped making them after a while though. Her cinnamon rolls were everyone’s favorite, so she made a lot of those. I loved them too, but I remember the rosette cookies because of what happened in Girl Scouts.

For one of our badges, we attended an afternoon tea to learn about table settings and etiquette for such lady-like events. And to my delight, the cookies accompanying the tea were those rosette cookies delicately placed on a platter that one of us began passing around. We each placed a cookie on our dessert plate. I was so excited to taste the sweet things— but just as I raised the cookie to take a bite, I was suddenly overtaken by a sneeze! And all my powdered sugar flew off my cookie and all over the table and everyone else. It was so embarrassing for me, but everyone else, after a short and surprised pause, bust out laughing. It was truly funny.

And the cookie was still delicious, and still a favorite, though I am a bit careful while enjoying them.

#warmup4art #cldoodle24 #storyworth #rememberthemoments #sliceoflife #rosettefritters