While rushing through the grocery store, I tossed a bag of Oreo cookies in my shopping basket. For so many years, I’ve been stocking our pantry with store-bought cookies that I’d almost forgotten it was possible to actually bake cookies.

But then last weekend, my granddaughter asked if we could make cookies with pink sugar on top. I knew what she was talking about and hoped I could remember how to actually make sugar cookies from scratch.

When my sons were young, we always made sugar cookies for the holidays. But when they grew older, the well-worn cookie cutters were put in a bag and tossed into the back of the cabinet, forgotten until my granddaughter spotted them.

Next to the cookie cutters was my old cookbook. It’s been years since I’ve used that book; but when I opened it to the baked goods section, I saw dozens of hand-written recipes for cookies, cakes, pies and desserts.

I came across a yellow hand-written card with a recipe for butter cookies. One of my Cub Scout mom friends shared her recipe with me when my now-grown sons were young. I still remember how much we all loved her cookies, and the memory convinced me this was the way to go.

I scrounged around in the pantry for the necessary ingredients – flour, baking powder, salt and sugar and breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted a necessary cookie component in the back.

One year, the Fort Bend Herald’s family editor, Betty Humphrey, brought me a bottle of vanilla from Mexico. She said there was nothing like real vanilla, so I placed the bottle next to the eggs and milk on the counter.

My granddaughter knew how to fill the measuring cups and how to rake her hand across the top to make sure the cups were precisely filled. She’d learned how to make cookies from her mother and her maternal grandmother, and I remembered cookie making sessions with my mom.

With seven children, there were constant battles as to who would get to lick the beaters. This practice was before the scare of eating raw eggs; but despite licking the bowl with our fingers and getting every drop of cookie dough batter off the metal beaters, we never got sick.

I creamed the butter and then she cracked the egg into the bowl. Slowly but surely, my grandchildren added the dry ingredients, dipping their fingers in the bowl for a taste when they thought I wasn’t looking.

As the oven heated up, I showed them how to spread a light coat of flour on the wooden pin before we rolled out the cookies. Then we used metal cookie cutter tins to cut out stars and rocking horses.

My granddaughter carefully put the raw dough on the cookie sheet and, 30 minutes later, we had a stack of hot, delicious sugar cookies just begging for a topping. I’d come this far with from-scratch ingredients, so I hauled out the butter and 10X sugar and we made our own frosting.

While we were munching on our creations, I thought about my niece’s upcoming wedding shower. Instead of fancy dishes or silverware, I think I’ll buy her a sturdy cookie sheet, some flour, salt, sugar and real vanilla.

Her mom is the best baker in our family and making sure my niece has everything to keep Janet’s tradition going beats anything I could purchase from a wedding registry.

It might take time and effort to bake cookies at home but the benefits, ah the delicious benefits, far outweigh the trouble.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

My idea of dressing up is scrounging around in the back of my closet for the one nice dress I own, putting on the necklace and matching earrings my husband gave me and brushing my teeth.

So it’s a bit odd that I absolutely adore watching the glitzy Oscars. From the time I was a young girl, I’ve been glued to the television on Oscar night. I always sat on the couch next to my mom where she’d deliver a running commentary on the lives of all the stars.

“Oh, there’s Liz,” she’d say, spotting Elizabeth Taylor in the crowd.

I was mesmerized by this dazzling movie star who traded husbands like I trade in my sneakers. Even on our RCA black-and-white television, there was no downplaying Liz’s vibrant smile and the star quality of those bigger-than-life actors and actresses.

I distinctly remember the year “The Sound of Music” was up for Best Picture. My mom played that vinyl record constantly, and I knew the words to “My Favorite Things” and “Do-Re-Me” within a week. My mom and I were both rooting for our favorite movie to walk away with the Oscar, which it did.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a turning point for the Oscars with controversial films like “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Graduate” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” up for major awards.

My mom didn’t care about the controversy, and neither did I. We were simply hoping for a glimpse of one of our favorite stars, Paul Newman, because he was up for Best Actor for his role in “Cool Hand Luke.”

Between wondering if Liz was happy, if Paul’s eyes were really that blue and if Cary Grant was as debonair in real life as he was on the screen, my mom and I critiqued the writers, the musicians, the costumes and the make-up artists.

One of the last years I watched the Academy Awards with my mom was my senior year in high school. When 1972 rolled around, quite a few things had changed – the country was in an uproar over the Viet Nam War and my friends were burning their bras.

I was anxious to start my own life and, like many teens, I wanted to get out of the house and pretend to be an independent nomad.

But on that last Oscar night we spent together on our plaid couch, Mom and I went right back to my childhood, keeping our fingers crossed under the afghan, hoping Topol would win the award for Best Actor for his role as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

That movie reflected so many events that were happening in our family, and, to this day, “Fiddler on the Roof” remains an Hebert family classic. My mom made sure all of her children received a cassette tape of “Fiddler on the Roof” to listen to in our cars and we all own a copy of the movie.

When we moved to Texas, Mom and I couldn’t be physically together for the Oscars, but we always discussed the categories in depth prior to the show, and this year’s Oscar was no exception.

Every year, when I sit down on our couch and cover up with an afghan my mom crocheted, I know that without our traditions – as simple as watching the Oscars and dreaming about Paul Newman – our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I was waiting in line at the grocery store, and I spotted a familiar package of blue and red playing cards. For the past few years, I’ve picked up decks of cards wherever I found them because my eldest son is pretty good at card tricks.

However, I couldn’t remember the last time I actually sat down and played a card game. Playing cards as a leisure activity is in danger of suffering the same fate as playing board games, I’m afraid.
When my siblings and I were young, we’d spend hours playing Monopoly. Fights started before the first roll of the dice because we all wanted to be the racing car or the statue.

Then we’d argue over who was going to be the banker because we all had a tendency to embezzle money. We never had a clear-cut winner – we stopped playing whenever we ran out of plastic houses or the bank ran out of green $20 bills.

Another board favorite was “Clue,” but with seven rowdy children, it was tough to keep track of all the little silver murder weapons and clue cards. As a result, it was always Colonel Mustard in the dining room with the rope.

But with playing cards, things were different because there were so many games to play with one deck of cards.

We started off with the simple “Go Fish” and moved up to “Spoon,” both favorites because we only needed four matching cards for every person to play the game.

“War” was another favorite because the game allowed us to fight without throwing a punch.

My grandmother finally grew tired of the shenanigans and taught us grown-up card games, from the right way to shuffle a deck of cards to the complicated and convoluted game of canasta.

At first, we were quite confused because there’s a long list of rules to the game of canasta, but she kept playing with us until we knew how to play like pros.

From there, we went on to learn how to play “Hearts” and a variety of rummy games, and family get togethers always involved decks of cards.

The adults played “Bouree,” an old-time Cajun game where everybody throws a nickel in the middle of the table for the kitty.

When the adults ran out of nickels, they’d play for matchsticks. No matter who won, there was always laughter and good-natured ribbing around the kitchen table.

Even when the cards were bent, we still had a use for them. Our uncles taught us how to carefully place cards together so we could build five- and six-story houses out of cards and, when we were finished, pretend we were Godzilla and destroy the village.

They also taught us how to make our own bike sound effects. They showed us how to pin the cards to the bike rims using our grandmother’s spring-loaded clothes pins.

When the cards flapped against the spokes, we sounded like motorcycles gangs. The faster we rode, the louder the “flap, flap, flap” noise.

Then toy manufacturers came out with bikes with built-in sound effects and we no longer needed the cards.
Board games were forgotten – it’s tough for a quiet game of checkers or chess to compete with the bells, whistles and lights on an electronic game.

It’s even tougher for complicated card games like gin rummy or canasta to compete with online poker or an electronic video game with music, lights, bells and whistles.

Then again, a kitchen table surround by loud Cajuns of all ages makes for some pretty colorful sound effects.

As I placed my groceries on the conveyor belt, I impulsively reached over and grabbed that box of playing cards.
Perhaps it’s time to teach my grandchildren how to play “Go Fish” and, when they’re older, introduce them to the fun they can have with a bike, a clothes pin and a discarded queen of hearts playing card.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

A bulky package arrived in the mail the weekend my mom and a few of my siblings were visiting. One glance at the return address revealed the package was from my cousin, Margaret.

Inside were dozens of pictures and letters that once belonged to her mom who passed away last year. Her mom, our Aunt Kathy, was a vivacious, beautiful woman who lit up life. She died much too young and suddenly from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease of the lungs that’s cruel and for which there’s currently no cure.

Margaret’s note inside the package said she was sending pictures and letters to cousins she thought would like to get their pictures and letters back.  We immediately poured the contents of the package out onto the middle of the kitchen table and eagerly rummaged through the pile.

These old letters and pictures were a roadmap through time, beginning with my parents’ wedding in 1954. Almost everybody in the photos has passed away, but I had a memory with every one of the people in those black-and-white prints.

One picture was of me next to my grandmother and her car bearing the logo of the newspaper my grandparents owned, the Bi-City Banner in Bridge City, Texas. My mom said I loved going on newspaper errands with my grandmother, but this was the first time I’d ever seen the newspaper’s car from those days.

One of my favorite pictures was of my dad and Aunt Kathy dancing. When Jimmy and Kathy were young, they’d enter dancing contests to pick up extra change. Both were outstanding dancers, especially the twist and the jitterbug, and they won every contest they entered.

For all of their lives, whenever there was a celebration, Jimmy and Kathy would invariably end up on the dance floor, dancing without a care in the world.

My youngest brother inherited my dad’s panache for the dance floor; and whenever he’s jitterbugging or waltzing, it’s like watching my father all over again.

Although most of the contents were pictures, there were a few letters, and I loved seeing my dad’s bold and distinctive handwriting again, especially on a postcard postmarked Atlantic City 1954 when my dad was on his way to the wedding.

I didn’t know he’d come through Atlantic City on his way from Louisiana to New York, and the postcard added another facet to my dad’s history.

One of the oldest letters in the stack was a letter postmarked 1958. The letter, written in faded blue ink, was to my father from one of his long-time friends, Gene.

I remember my dad talking about Gene, and it was strange to see this letter written in an old-fashioned script, describing the young family my dad and mom were raising.

There were two letters I’d written to my aunt over the years, one from 1963 and another one from 1964.  I definitely don’t remember writing those letters, and I barely recognized my own handwriting.

I was surprised to know she hung on to letters a young girl had written to her 40 years ago. I knew how important she was to me, but I underestimated how important I was to her.

That’s what this package of old, faded letters and pictures were – a reminder that family ties aren’t just sentiments we talk about at funerals or reunions. They’re important when they’re forged, fade as we weave in and out of each others’ lives and finally become priceless when one is no longer around to say the words “I love you.”

Luckily, those letters and photos say it all.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.