Vanished Like Smoke

This happened long ago, when your Auntie was but a child herself, back in the days of the kind of cocktail parties you see on TV.

Auntie’s aunt, a woman who was never an “Auntie”, used to make a very nice hors d'oeuvre. It was a salmon ball rolled in nuts, which was spread on crackers.

Auntie’s father liked it very much, so Auntie’s mother asked for, and got, the recipe.

That’s really where this story began.

No matter how many times Auntie’s mother made the recipe, it never came out right. She finally gave up.

Years and years later, a lovely friend read the recipe and said that it was missing an ingredient called Liquid Smoke. That’ll tell you how long ago this was, people used things called Liquid Smoke.

Auntie’s mother made it again, this time with Liquid Smoke and it was perfect.

(Anyone interested, I think I still have the corrected recipe, but I’d put it on baguette slices and not crackers.)

Fast forward a bit and we have Scary Cookies. I mean the cookies, not the blog. Auntie’s mother’s lovely friend created the recipe.

This time of year, I make a lot of cookies. Yesterday I was able to give a selection to @rmangaha and his sweet lady, who were here to help me through yet another computer crisis.

Today he asked for the recipes. Because of the Liquid Smoke debacle, I painstakingly typed out the exact recipes, which I hadn’t followed, then added copious notes explaining what I had really done.

I didn’t want him to think I left out the Liquid Smoke on purpose.