Old kookies; dear friend Pam

I baked brownies yesterday---even baked 'em from scratch. I was cleaning out a cupboard a week or so ago and found three cans of cocoa. I used the one that's been occupying the back corner for at least 15 years. Since there were no bugs inside, I figured it was still okay for baking use.

I don't know why I baked the brownies. I didn't need them for anything. There was just some inner voice that kept nagging me to do it. So, without a recipe book, I used the cocoa, some brown sugar, oil, Mexican vanilla, old eggs with a Feb. 20 cast off date, a little Imperial margarine, some flower, salt and baking powder. I also cut up some of Bill's salted peanuts and threw them into the mixture.

Amazingly, they didn't taste too bad when I took them out of the oven. Actually, I didn't take "them"; I took "it" out of the oven. "They" are not brownies until you cut that brown slab into individual pieces. It's still a slab, but I've cut out a couple of samples. One was fresh from the oven; the other served as a tasty foundation for my ice cream last night.

Those old brownies aren't too bad. A little old cocoa and some outdated eggs can still prove useful, especially when you don't have any new eggs in the house. The true test of the brownies will come if I see Bill whack one off the slab and eat it. I won't tell him about the eggs or cocoa cuz he's got this thing about outdated eggs. That's why we have about three cartons sitting in the refrigerator. He won't touch 'em if they're one day past the date.

Speaking of old ingredients and cookies, I'm still wondering if Kyle Humason will eat the cookies I baked for his graduation, which will occur in about five years. I first baked those cookies back before the house burned down in 1984 and ran across them just the other day while cleaning out a shelf in the laundry room. The reason they didn't burn with the fire is that they were at Kyle's mother's house in California at the time.

His mom Pam is one of my longtime good teaching friends. We used to tape our noses up together. She decided to give up teaching home ec at Sandpoint High School in the early '80s and move to San Francisco, where she graduated from the San Francisco Culinary Institute. Then, she went to work for Sunset Magazine as a food specialist who tested recipes, which had been sent to the magazine. She also set up culinary delights to be photographed for a few Sunset covers. While working at Sunset, Pam met her husband Alan.

Pam felt bad that our house had burned down so she felt a need to give back those cookies I'd given her when she and some friends came to visit one summer day. That was when we still lived in the old house. I didn't have anything fresh to offer my surprise guests so I went to the freezer and got out a cannister of the past year's Christmas cookies. Comments were made about their age, but the visitors happily sampled some of them anyway. In fact, they seemed to like them so much that I sent the rest home with Pam.

I recall going through San Francisco in the mid-'80s on my way to Mexico. Pam thoughtfully met me at the airport and handed me the cannister of cookies. That was when I learned that she and her friends had not taken them home to devour. Instead, they remained in the cannister, and they've remained there for at least 23 years. The cookie tin has continued to travel over the years, from Pam's home to mine and back again.

The last exchange took place in Davis, California, about four years ago on Easter Sunday when Annie and I were driving through on our way to Petaluma. After meeting us at the In and Out Burger diner along the freeway, Pam took us to her home where we enjoyed a nice visit with her, Alan and Kyle. Before we left the house, she summoned us to a back room where she found the cookies and handed them over.

I promised on that day to keep them until Kyle graduates. Maybe he can serve them at his party afterward. We've opened the tin a time or two and, as yet, have not died of asphyxiation, even though the cookies spent a couple of years in Annie's trunk.

I don't know if Kyle will ever appreciate the love, care, friendship and laughs that have gone into those vintage Christmas cookies, but I'm sure he may ponder the sanity of his mom and her "kooky" friend from Idaho.