When I was a child, I formed ideas that I can remember as an adult, but I don’t know where they came from. I can remember believing that store-bought cookies were inferior to those that were made at home. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me this. It was just something that I accepted as being the truth with no memory of how I learned it or came to that conclusion. We often had home-made cookies at our house, but we also sometimes had store bought cookies.

I have a very clear memory of boxes of Nabisco Vanilla Wafers. They came in a yellow box with the red Nabisco seal in the upper left-hand corner and the big printed “NILLA” in the center of the box. There were pictures of the cookies dancing around the box. There was a recipe for banana pudding on the box, though I don’t think we ever had banana pudding at our house when I was a kid. Proper pudding, we believed, was chocolate and it was to be made to Aunt Teddy’s recipe. We got chocolate pudding after someone got an angel food cake for their birthday. The angel food cake took a bunch of egg whites and left a bowl of egg yolks in the refrigerator. Chocolate pudding was something that was made from egg yolks. What I do remember about vanilla wafers is making sandwiches with them. You take two vanilla wafers and put a slice of banana between them.

I also remember being told, though I’m not sure by whom, that you didn’t criticize the food that you were served in someone else’s house. Complaining about food wasn’t tolerated in any form in our house. We ate the food we were served and we were served good food. I don’t remember it being a problem. My siblings had a few quirks. One of my brothers claimed that he didn’t like peanut butter and refused to eat it. I couldn’t understand him. What is not to like about peanut butter? One day we held him down and forced him to eat some peanut butter after which he declared that he did like peanut butter. I think he enjoys it as an adult. When I was a baby I had some kind of gluten intolerance. I remember thinking that I could eat Cheerios but not Wheat Chex and I was served oatmeal even if the rest of the family was eating hot wheat cereal for breakfast. Whatever allergy I had, I seemed to grow out of and by the time I was a teen, I was eating wheat cereal with the rest of the family and I don’t remember ever suffering any discomfort because of it.

When it came to store-bought cookies, I have a distinct memory of eating ginger snaps at our great Uncle Ted’s house. I don’t have any memory of anyone telling me this, but I remember somehow thinking that it was just fine that Uncle Ted had store-bought cookies because Aunt Florence had died and he lived alone and had to make all of his own meals except for the times when he came to our house for Sunday dinner and for dinner on birthdays and holidays. Uncle Ted was a machinist by trade and he approached cooking as if it were an engineering problem. If he could find a shortcut, he would pursue it. He made his own “instant” coffee before we knew anything about the kind they sell in the store. He invented kitchen tools and had home-made spoons and spatulas. I don’t remember seeing any other beverages in his home except coffee and water. If we were over at his home doing chores such as raking leaves, mowing the lawn or shoveling snow, he would invite us into the house at 10 am and at 3 pm for coffee break. As kids we didn’t drink coffee, so we were given water in a coffee mug and he would put out a plate of ginger snaps.

I remember the box of Nabisco ginger snaps. I think it has looked the same for a very long time. On the front it says, made with real ginger and molasses. I don’t know what other kind of ginger and molasses there are. Does someone make imitation ginger? Can you buy imitation molasses? At any rate, Uncle Ted didn’t serve us ginger snaps from a Nabisco box. The ones he served us came from a bag. I don’t know what brand they were. On rare occasions we might get a home-baked cookie that had been sent home with Uncle Ted after a meal at our house, but that didn’t happen very often. Mostly it was a cup of water and a small plate of ginger snaps.

I have no family recipe for ginger snaps, and I don’t know what kind of ginger snaps Uncle Ted served. So, being retired, I’ve made a couple of attempts at baking ginger snaps. I’m getting the recipe refined. They are mostly butter, sugar and molasses, with a bit of baking soda and flour and, of course, ginger and cinnamon. The best ones aren’t too big - about the size of the bottom of a water glass. In my mind, ginger snaps are different from molasses cookies, which are soft and chewy in the middle. A good ginger snap will snap when you break it in half. And, when you get it just right, you can take a bite then take a sip of water, or even better milk, and it will dissolve in your mouth.

I haven’t gotten them perfect, yet. I’m not saying that I will never again buy ginger snaps. But I’m hoping that my grandchildren don’t remember store-bought cookies when they remember visiting our house. So far they seem to approve of my ginger snaps. And we have glasses and milk for children and for adults.

I think my recipe for ginger snaps is a “keeper.” Now, one of these days I might try a recipe I found in a church cook book for vanilla wafers. A couple of those with a slice of banana in between might make a good memory for a grandchild.