Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

 

Allen’s Fortune Cookies

 

Here’s how to make Fortune Cookies:

1). write out a couple of dozen, or more, fortunes on thin strips of paper.  Fold the strips in half and then once again.  Set the fortunes aside.

2). grease and flour two cookie sheets.  Then, take a dull pointed knife and draw 3-inch circles (1/2 inch apart) on the cookie sheets.  Set the sheets aside.  Lightly grease two muffin pans and set them aside.  Turn the oven on to preheat at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

3). mix the dough as follows:

Combine 1/4 cup plus 2 table­spoons butter or margarine, ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ teaspoon almond extract and 2 egg whites; beat at medium speed of mixer until blended. Stir in 2/3 cup of all-purpose flour; beat well.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoons into the circles on prepared cookie sheets, and spread to fill each circle.  Bake at 400 degrees for 4 minutes or until edges are beginning to brown.

Remove from oven and quickly loosen each cookie with a spatula but do not remove the cookie from the sheet.  Place a fortune slip in the center of the cookie; fold cookie in half.  Bend folded edges of cookie downward and ease it into the muffin pan to harden.  Repeat with each cookie.

If the cookies cool and become too brittle to fold, return to warm oven to soften.  The yield should be about 2½ dozen.

 

My long-legged, handsome, brilliant, fun-loving, thirteen-year-old grandson, Allen, brought me this recipe this past summer soon after he returned from a short-course at a university in Eastern Kentucky.  It is, he explained, one of the many recipes he obtained as he and other youngsters pre­pared foreign dishes during their study of foods around the world.

But Allen declined to suggest what to write on the slips of paper.  He said that part is all up to each cookie baker.  So, what kinds of fortunes you concoct for the guests who get to eat your little oriental cakes is all up to you.

No doubt a lot will depend on your way of looking at life and on whether or not you put much stock in the idea of luck and fortune, destiny and fate.

‘Tis said that luck is a lady. And we do speak glibly of Lady Luck.

In ancient times, mythology had it that man’s destiny was in the hands of three ladies -- the Fates. The Fates were unrelent­ing, unmerciful sisters who were the spinners in charge of the thread of human life.

The first one was supposed to spin the thread, the second to determine its length, and the third to cut it.  But even their names, Colotho, Atropos and Lachesis, are long since forgot­ten.

Now, when we talk of good fortune or of being lucky or unlucky, it is not serious talk.  Take, for example, the spirited “gloom, despair, ... excessive misery” song used again and again on the Hee-Haw TV show. It has a delightful tune which pokes fun at luck.  “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”

I don’t believe in luck -- good or bad. I do believe in divine Providence.

As for telling fortunes, it can’t be done.  No one can see and foretell the future.  What is going to happen to a person is not to be found in the cards, in tea leaves, in the stars, in the palm of the hand, in the crystal ball, or anywhere else.  Not even in a fortune cookie.

 

But, just for fun, I’m going to try out grandson Allen’s recipe.  The first proverbs or maxims for the folded paper slips will read something like this:

1. Keep a merry bell ready, for there is much in life to make one glad.

2. Strive for a true tongue; it is as choice silver. Keep a pure heart; it is as gold.

3. Wearing a smile on your face will do more for you than sitting around glum and dejected, waiting for Dame Fortune to smile on you.

 

Published September 1963.  Click your browser’s “Back” button to return.