THE COOKIE JAR FAN CLUB

 As the stereotyped Good Grandma, I have a cookie jar, poorly disguised as a basket of apples. It's the “first stop” when my three grandsons (9, 11, 13) come in the front door after school, dump their stuff (coats, school bags, empty lunch boxes) on the couch, then head for the Treat Corner. There they pause, silly grins on their faces that beg, “Please, please”--and hear my answer, “Just one.” Right away, three granola bars exit the jar and the boys are waiting at the table for their glasses of milk for snack time.

They're not shy about treats in Grandma's Kitchen. The oldest (entering his teen growth chapter) often also ends up in front of the kitchen sink, above which I store the package of ice cream cones. The kid who used to have to get a grandma “boost” up, now just reaches up and grabs the box, then goes to the freezer to pull out the carton of ice cream. He carefully inspects how tightly I mash in the ice cream, wanting the cone as full and tall as possible.

I'm glad they get excited about treats when they visit. Sometimes I tease them, “Who wants liver and onions?” Oh, Grandma, ugh, no! Oh, the stories I could tell them about my being forced to eat (gag) liver and onions. I was a wimpy child, the offspring of Depression-era folks who didn't have the Golden Arches for fast food. Instead, they butchered and ate as much of the cow or chicken as possible. That included iron-rich beef liver. Oh, it tasted awful. (I still have that prejudice!) But because I was a sickly child, my mom would do anything to build up my health. Her upbringing meant she believed strongly in the healthy benefits of (gag) liver. The only way I could choke it down was having each piece (about half an inch square) topped with a chocolate chip and washed down with copious amounts of milk.

I wish I could say that being forced in childhood to eat liver helped me achieve the title of Strongest Child of the Decade. Well, it wasn't true. And one thing I did NOT do when I became a mother was to try to convert my offspring to the nutritional delights of liver. I don't think my grandsons (who since toddler-hood knew that “Golden Arches” meant sack lunches with toys in them) have ever eaten liver. If they have, I'm sure they had the same reaction as their grandma in her childhood. Ugh.

Not so, God's Word. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart; for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts” (Jeremiah 15:16). And to think that this was Jeremiah's declaration long before the scriptures included the stories and teachings about and from Jesus. What Jesus taught was ultimately cause for joy and rejoicing for those called by HIS name: “Christian.”

Yes, my grand-boys crave the “sweets” of this planet (like those granola bars or, even better, those little black round cookies with cream filling). But my prayer as they mature (and learn more about Jesus at Sunday school and from their parents) is that they will crave knowing more and more about Jesus, the One who called Himself the Bread of Life, able to satisfy our deepest spiritual hunger.

Hooray for Vitamin C-olate

The genetic code my dad passed onto me includes chocolate as a diet staple. He was basically a conservative guy—went to church, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t swear,  and endured a  ballroom dancing lesson sometime in the mid-1960s only because my mom answered the phone to a caller who announced a contest and asked her, “When did Columbus discover America?”  Without thinking, she said, “1492.” To which the caller said, “Congratulations! You are today’s winner of a night of free ballroom dance lessons at our Tacoma studio!”  Neither of my parents grew up with dancing in their value system, but somehow my mother convinced my dad to give it a try. I think he obliged her the lesson and that was the end of that.

Otherwise, Dad was content to just come home and put up his feet after a long day in a mill that produced corrugated cardboard boxes.  As a “technical director” in charge of quality control, he walked and walked all day in that stinky environment.  At one point, his flat feet got so painful that he invested in “corrugated” shoes.  That’s right, soles like the edge of a large-tooth saw.

But I digress from one of his best known traits, and that was an affection for chocolate.  If I tied an apron on my skinny little teenage body and broke out the mixing bowl to make him chocolate chip cookies, I could have asked him for the moon.  A significant part of the “results” would be missing before I washed up.  Another notable fact of Dad’s chocolate-love was his not-so-secret stash of chocolate chips.  We had the regular “bag” in the cupboard with flour and sugar.  But he hid another—to make sure there was always available snacking stock—in a reach-around corner of the cupboard that held pots and pans.  We knew it was there, but also that it was verboten to his offspring.  Sometime during the evening, maybe during a television commercial, if Dad got up from his red tapestry rocker with its telltale squeaks, and headed for the kitchen, we knew he was after his Vitamin Chocolate.  Just a little handful kept him going.

 Thus the other day, when cleaning off my desk, I came across a “glory be!” article whose headline proclaimed, “Chocolate is brain food. Who knew?”  Published originally last March in The Washington Post, it cited a long-range study of cognitive abilities of 1,000 people in New York State.  Goal of the study: the relationship between blood pressure and brain performance.  Among the variables they traced as possible risk factors were participants’ eating habits.  This research stretched over forty years as the participants aged.  Behold, the study found “significant positive associations” between chocolate intake and cognitive performance.  This translated to better  abilities for everyday tasks, like remembering a phone number or shopping list, or doing two things at once (like talking while driving).

The researchers were quick to add that their results aren’t conclusive.  They also failed to include variables such as how much chocolate and how often.

But it was enough for me to honor my dad and carry on the tradition.  And I hereby reveal my weakness: a modest bowl of chocolate chips with those little round oats we feed children (unsweetened, by the way). I figure the “O’s” cancel out the negatives of the brown nugget. 

Don’t tell my son and wife, but I’ve been known to sneak a bit of the family “concoction” into a snack bowl for my grandboys when they come to play.  Heavy on the "oats," of course.

Fun aside, I'm reminded of the best thing to crave: knowing God. Psalm 34:8 has long been a favorite: "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."