My Mom's Kitchen is Better Than Your Mom's Kitchen

Thursday, January 4, 2007

One great aspect of going back home to cook for Christmas is utilizing my mom's new kitchen she recently had remodeled. With two convection ovens, a gas range, blue quartz counter tops, folding and rotating in-cabinetry shelves, convection microwave, and island, and bar counter. How can one not go wrong?

My mom, Rob, myself, and my little brother were able to cook and prepare, the bar sat four more, and there was plenty more room to go around! *sigh* I miss it already.

I got to reconnect with my first love, my mom's old kitchen aid. She bought it from a second hand store. 10 years used. In the 60's. I luvs it. Sure it's not a shiny orbital mixer, but the bitch does the job. I learned my very first recipe on this bad boy, chocolate chip cookies. A recipe which can be altered in a basic chemical process step on whether you will get hard or soft cookies; just depends on when you add the baking soda. Crazy, no?

Plus all the notecards and recipe cards, yellowed from age and stained from use. A few of which I've shared with you the past few days. They're family history in a box.

The old and new happily merged in one space.

Someday I'll graduate from my putzy apartment kitchen, my sketchy easy-bake oven mounted in the wall, my unreliable electric range. I'll have a stylish, ultra shibby, muy chic, magazine cover kitchen. Until then, I'll just get by and work my way up. But I'll make sure to keep some of the old with me.

Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies
(aka: first recipe I ever learned!)
Makes about 3 dozen / 350 degrees

What You'll Need...
2 sticks of butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 cup of chocolate chips

What You'll Do...
1) Cream the butter. Add the eggs and the vanilla.

2) Cream in the sugars.

3) For hard cookies sift the baking soda, salt, and flour together. For soft cookies, add the baking soda separately after the sugars have been creamed in and mix well. I have no idea what the chemical process is that causes this, but there you have it.

4) Sift the dry ingredients in to the dough. Stir in chocolate chips.

5) Spoon onto cookie sheets. bake for 10-13 minutes at 350 degrees. Keep watch as ovens will vary. Let cool on a wire rack.


  1. Omigosh, it's like you snuck into MY mom's kitchen! She has almost exactly the same index recipe box, and an ancient mixer (which I also took a picture of). I'll have to post it sometime so you can see it, funny. :)

  2. Awww... sounds like you had a fabulous time!

  3. Wow--the mixer looks just like one that my grandmother had. I'm on the quest for the perfect choco chip cookie recipe so maybe I'll give both versions a try (I'm feeling so Bill Nye right now!)

  4. That recipe box is adorable! My mom only makes 4 dishes, all from memory, so we don't have anything nearly as cute around the house.

  5. My mom had that same mixer, too--until this Thanksgiving, when the handle finally croaked and the head spit a random piece of bent metal into some cake batter.

    (I think it's funny that you use "kitchen aid" as a generic noun, btw)

  6. I just sent my mom her old recipe cards that were yellowed with age too! I can't remember when but I think it was in the fall sometime. Brought back some memories!

  7. Your Mom's kitchen is better than my Mom's kitchen? Damn right it is! When I was in my Mom's kitchen at Christmas, I couldn't even find a plain old wire whisk to make sauce with, let alone any kitchen aid type things!

    (sigh) Convection oven. One day... when I have money....

  8. Wow, I never knew that baking soda bit. Very cool.



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