A Life in Exile

We have enough heavy topics to discuss as cross-cultural workers, so I have decided to use the next few posts for lighter fare—recipes. Now I know that most of you rely on your phones to pull up an untold number of recipes using ingredients found where you live and serve. I’m old, so I arrived on the field with a box of index cards where I had copied many of my mother’s recipes, only to discover that she used a can of this or a box of that in many of the dishes I grew up with. Not to mention I married an Egyptian-American man who didn’t like casseroles! What’s a girl to do?

Tell me how you made that!

From my single days as a two-year worker in the Ivory Coast to my years in the Middle East and North Africa, I have eaten at the table of women who were much better cooks than I was. When I liked a specific dish or dessert, I never hesitated to ask, “Can you give me the recipe?” Now, forty years later, my recipe box is full of stained cards with the names of special women who not only made disciples but fed them as well.

Some of those women were my age, and today’s recipe is now celebrating 40 years in my box. Jeanette Hicks, the girl I would replace in Ivory Coast, West Africa, was finishing up her two-year term as I arrived. We had a short time for her to train me and also leave me with this great recipe that I enjoyed first by her hand. As a 23-year-old, I was thrilled to have something I could make. It has been my go-to recipe for cookies, first for guests, and then later for my growing boys. I’m sure they cannot tell you how many of these cookies they’ve eaten, along with the Ziplock bags of them they took with them as they headed back to college. I like this recipe because I always have all the ingredients (except maybe for the chocolate chips) in my kitchen. If you can’t find the chocolate where you live, you can substitute raisins. They’re also good just plain, but I love having a bit of chocolate!

I never saw Jeanette again after my time in Ivory Coast, but I have always remembered her, as I saw her name each time I made these cookies.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Here’s the recipe, which makes probably around 60 cookies.

Mix these items together:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar (1 cup brown; 1 cup white)
• 2 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla

Sift together the following and add to the above ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. salt
• 1 t. cinnamon
• ½ t. nutmeg
• ¼ t. cloves
• ¼ t. ginger

Finally, add:

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup chocolate chips (or raisins)

Drop by teaspoonful onto baking tray. Bake in a 350⁰ oven for 13-15 minutes.

Use a spatula to put cookies on a rack to cool and enjoy! But don’t forget to share!!

Grace and Peace

If you missed the last Mission Monday post, click HERE, or check out these other posts on food and cooking: Food Finds and Failures, My Go-To Cake, Pots and Pans, Cooking in Ministry, It’s Too Hot to Cook, and More with Less.