The cooking lesson

Granddaughter Katie Adelaide Gilmer, age 10 in 2001, learns to make cookies - from scratch. Katie is the middle of three girls and the one that loves to cook. When she comes to visit us from S. C. every summer, she wants me to teach her how to cook. Her favorite is making chocolate chip cookies (she likes to lick the bowl and nibble on the chocolate chips). Katie is now 16 and this summer she had a job working at "Wally World", an amusement park where she lives. I wasn't surprised when I heard that she was spending some time making pizzas there. Most of the time she sold tickets for the rides and attractions, etc. She still works there, but limited hours during school. Katie's mother died when she was only 5, so her Aunt Alice (my sister) who lives about 1 1/2 hrs away in Fayetteville helps her with cooking lessons also. Plus her dad is a good cook.

One Christmas when all 3 girls were visiting us at the farm, we made a large gingerbread house. The gingerbread was so good that we could hardly wait until Christmas Day to start eating the house. They had so much fun decorating it. We got the decorations off the internet and made a pattern for the gingerbread pieces. After baking, the pieces were larger than the pattern and the house was much larger than we anticipated.