Recipe for Chocolate Ginger Crinkle Cookies

Twas another time, the Great Depression of the 1930s. A young family prepared to celebrate Christmas on a hard-scrabble place above the Meramec River here in east-central Missouri. There were only five in the family now, a mother recently widowed and four children. Money was scarce.

Determined to make the holiday festive, the mother went into the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, a possum haw already decorated with fat cherry-red berries. Late on Christmas Eve, the family crossed the creek to attend midnight mass. “Take the little ones,” the mother instructed the older two. “I forgot something at the house, I’ll catch up.”

After mass, ‘Santa’ had come and gone, leaving an orange for each one, homemade flour-sack shirts for the boys and small gifts for the girls. The kids had pooled their pennies to buy their mother a big peppermint stick. They exchanged gifts with one another too, the subject of much whispering and plotting beforehand, usually handmade, some times purchased with a few coins.

Looking back, the now-grown children, the oldest and the youngest with children and grandchildren of their own, remember feeling wonder and abundance. By all rights, that Christmas should have been hard but thanks to their mother, it wasn’t.

Twas another time then, for sure. Last month, a news reader cited evidence of our current financial troubles. “Revenue is down 10 percent at Saks Fifth Avenue,” he read rather breathlessly. Ten percent, I thought, only ten percent? At the ilk of Saks, there is nothing, NO THING, we need, plenty to want, of course, but nothing to need.

So what is the 2009 equivalent of possum haw Christmas trees, one orange per person, peppermint sticks and flour-sack shirts? How do we feel rich, even without riches? When surrounded by riches, how do we appreciate the beauty of a single orange? Tis mine to ponder, this holiday season.

Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. In 2009, Kitchen Parade celebrates its 50th anniversary with a special collection of my mother's recipes. Do you have a favorite cookie recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. Become a Kitchen Parade fan on Facebook!