My Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies

I never knew my paternal grandmother, Pearl Burnett McCormick.  She died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma less than a month before my father's 14th birthday.  Her sister Jewell once told me that I am a lot like her because I love to read and cook, but that's about all I knew about her until recently.

As it turns out, my cousin Evelyn has our grandmother's handwritten cookbook.  She took care to record her favorite recipes and bind them with a ribbon.  That tells me she treasured those.  

It's also something I would do, have done in a way.  I have many of my favorite recipes printed out and saved neatly in a folder.  Some of them have handwritten notes made in the margins, things such as additions or substitutions.  I also save recipes on Pinterest.  Some of them are favorites and others are dishes I'd like to try, although it's going to take me awhile to try them all since I have nearly 1,400 saved there.  

Now I'm saving another recipe, my grandmother's oatmeal cookies.  I'm going to bake them in the morning, and I feel that may be another link to a woman I wasn't blessed to know.

Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup shortening
• 1 cup raisins, chopped
• 4 Tbl buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cloves

Directions:

Stir all together, adding oatmeal last.  Drop 1 teaspoonful in place and bake until brown.




Here's how they turned out for me.