Kitchen Loans to help you do life. with Angela Some new cookies for your valentine

Among my cookbooks is a tattered copy of Meta Given’s 1953 Modern Family Cook Book. It once belonged to my grandmother, and that’s the only reason I keep it. I have zero interest in cooking some of these so-called modern recipes, including—I kid you not—Cold Jellied Tongue and Scrambled Brains. But what I am very much interested in is why my grandmother apparently used this book as her personal recipe-filing system.

In between two pages about “Conserving Minerals and Vitamins,” she tucked a page of recipes, now yellowed, ripped from the December 5, 1982, issue of Grit. Was it the Date Cake she was interested in making? The Chicken Noodle Casserole? Only the Lord knoweth.

And why did she hide so many recipes inside the chapter titled “Eggs”? The Market Bulletin was apparently a favorite source for clipping recipes, with Pound Cake, Oatmeal Pie, and Easy Tuna Casserole making the (literal) cut.

Like my grandmother, I gather recipes from hither and yon. Today, I obtain new recipes from two vastly different sources—old recipe boxes and the internet.

I recently came across an online recipe from the Detroit News that was attributed to a 1958 clipping from the Pittsburgh Press for valentine cookies that are made with oatmeal and cut into heart shapes. I’m always up for a new shaped cookie recipe, since you can make them for any holiday you like, and these cookies came out of the oven so tasty and crispy that I wanted to share the recipe with you. Full disclosure: I liked the plain ones best, but since it’s February, I couldn’t resist a little embellishing.