Sour Cream & Lard Sugar Cookies

Another South Dakota favorite:

Aunt Helen's Cookies

3/4 lard*
2 c. sugar
2 eggs unbeaten
1 c. sour cream
6 c. flour
2 tsp soda
2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla

Cream sugar with lard (add salt & nutmeg to sugar first). Add whole eggs. Add flour & cr of tartar. Stir soda into a little water & add to sour cream, then add to flour mixture.

Chill dough for several hours. Cut them out & sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a hot oven.

(Use xtra flour to roll them.)

*When I make these one of these days, I'll use butter. But they won't taste the same . . . .

Frosted Spice Cookies

Among the many treats we enjoyed when visiting Gettysburg were the yummy cookies Great Uncle Albert's wife, Aunt Minnie, who hailed from Sweden, made:


Aunt Minnie's Cookies

1/2 c. shortening
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 c. molasses
4 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
2 t. soda
2 t. ginger
1 t. nutmeg
1 t. cloves
1 t. cinnamon
1 c. boiling water (add last)

Drop by teaspoons. 400 for 10 min.

Frosting

2 c. powdered sugar
1 T melted butter
3 T cream
1 t. vanilla

Dill Pickles

Most summers when I was growing up, we spent a week or so in Gettysburg, South Dakota, visiting Mom's relatives. We stayed with our grandparents and ate many jellies, jams, fruits, and pickles that Grandma Toomey had put up.

I'm not sure whether either of these recipes is hers:

Dill Pickles

1 c. pickling salt
2 c. vinegar
1 gal. water

Boil the above. Put pickles in jar, a garlic bud at top and bottom & dill in top and bottom. If you wish, put a little cayenne pepper in top (she didn't the ones I had). Put 1/4 tsp alum in jar. Pour boiling juice over top & seal.

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Dill Pickles

2 quarts water
1 quart vinegar (5% acidity & Heinz is good)
1 cup plain salt (not iodized)

In bottom of jar place 1 or 2 cloves of garlic. Also use 1 grape leaf if available, 1 hot pepper if desired, and either 1 T of dill seed or 2 fresh dill heads if available.

Position cucumbers in jars, then bring brine solution to a rapid boil over cucumbers, add pinch of alum, then seal immediately.

Pickles are best after a six week curing period.

6/21/81 (which would have been after my grandmother's death)

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Neither recipe specifies how many cucumbers. Did they just assume everybody knows that?