Wordsmith Challenge 5

What’s one family tradition you’d like to carry on in the future?

Peppernuts. The look like dog food, and taste like heaven. Mom would start making batches right after Thanksgiving ended and continue until two weeks from Christmas, that gave the cookies time to age. Big containers filled up with these tiny treats, and we would clear them out quickly.

They were our trading wizard for an entire month. If we wanted a hostess cupcake or twinkie, a bag of peppernuts would get us them. It was the one time in which our homemade, mainly organic, and no added sugar household was heralded as remarkable.

We do make them, but not as clockwork as mom did. Usually there is one double batch a year with thoughts to do another, but Christmas comes quickly, and then it is too late. At Aunt Linda’s, we painted sugar cookies, at Grandma’s, we had Clam Chowder, and at our house, we had Peppernuts.