Red Raspberries

I’m feeling a little nostalgic this evening after arriving home to find a very sweet Thanksgiving card from my grandmother. I wont be with her for this holiday but I will see her in a few weeks at Christmas time. This means I’ll miss her annual roasting of an enormous turkey in the wood cook stove and of course her “Turkey Cookies.” Before you shudder in horror let me assure you that these aren’t some sort of bizarre Atkins Diet baked good. Turkey Cookies are simply Sugar Cookies shaped like a turkey. I fondly recall making an enormous batch of these treats when I was little. We would frost each turkey with chocolate icing, then shakily draw on yellow feet, feathers, and a tiny red gobble. I feel the need to explain the cookies as I’ve received more than one odd look in the past when I’ve expressed missing “turkey cookies” at this time of year.

An additional treat that I ate an equally abundant amount of at my Grandmother’s house was a simple dish of freshly picked red raspberries with a splash of milk and a spoonful of sugar. Many years ago my grandmother had a large patch of wild raspberries that grew next to her house. Each summer we would pick heaping bowls of sweet jewel colored berries and I would eagerly fill a little tin cup over and over again while I pretended to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. Then we would go inside and I would sit at the coffee table in the living room while my grandmother would make a dainty dish of berries for me in a pretty glass dish. After we finished our treat we always let the cats, Tippy and Ginny, lick the bowls.

Raspberries are unfortunately very dear at this time of year but if you happen to have the opportunity I absolutely urge you to splurge on a purchase and bring a little of that summer sunshine back into the dark winter days.

Tagged as: cream, grandmother, milk, raspberries, red, sugar