"Benne wafers?" Annette asked, eyes wide as she peered into my container. "Yes. How did you know the name of these cookies?" I asked. I'd brought about a dozen to a weekend basketry retreat. "I'm from the south. We ate them all the time, mostly for special holidays." "Maybe I should find a better recipe if they are that popular. They caused me no end of trouble." Flattened with a knife on left, only dented on right. Cookies spread out the same, regardless of knife technique. I told Annette, a fellow basket weaver and retreat attendee, about my project. These cookies were published in my birth year. I suppose some people, when confronted with a year by year compendium of cookies, would skip directly to their own birth year and imagine that cookie the best of the bunch. Others would contemplate how representative it is of the era. I did no such thing. In fact, the recipe of 1954 crept up on me. Like each passing year seems to...
I began this blog when my mother was ill and needed enough of my attention that I could not concentrate on longer-form works I wanted to write. I set those aside to distract myself with cookie-making and this blog. Please find my new blog (2020) entitled "Time NOT Lost" at karenbrattesani.blogspot.com, where I explore the behavior I see around me -- both my own and that of others -- and what it says about our changing culture during the coronavirus pandemic. And, I hope, beyond.