Let's go back in history to circa 1950s style elementary school lunch days at Clinton Blvd. Elementary School, before it was pulled out of the county school system into the Jackson Public School System and immediately renamed as Mary Ida Raines Elementary.
Did you like school lunches when you were a kid? For the most part, I actually did (just not the cut-the-grass-spinach with a slice of green egg on top). In those days I was just a 1950s style kid and thought fish sticks on Friday was really good eating. Of course, back then they did not mix potato flakes into fish sticks like they do now, and they were pretty good. I think we got three or four of them with our Friday lunch, but I could be wrong.
Thanks to the no meat on Friday policy the Pope decreed for the Catholic Church, we always had fish sticks on Fridays. Heck, back then, my dad was the Maintenance Superintendent at the old Baptist Hospital in Jackson,
and the Baptist Hospital even accommodated their Catholic friends every Friday by serving a much higher quality of fried fish fillet than the public school system in Hinds County could afford to serve us kids. I think that was my dad's choice for every Friday Lunch for the 48 years he worked at the Baptist Hospital in their old and new facilities. Not that it is important, but the cooks at Baptist made the best Dinner Rolls any bakery ever put out. A culinary treasure, gone forever (sigh).
I
understand why the Pope signed Fish Fridays into existence,
since they probably had not yet invented those little rectangular shaped sausage pizzas, we all liked so much for school lunch when Jesus was a school kid. If Andrew, Peter, James, and John managed to catch any Tilapia from the sea of Galilee, I bet Jesus would have happily had fish and kosher hushpuppies with them every Friday. Understanding this, it made perfect sense for the Pope to strongly suggest his congregations also eat fish on Friday.
Another ZeroBear Fact - Did you know Tilapia was the common fish pulled out of the Sea of Galilee back then? In fact, some folks call Tilapia the “Jesus Fish”, or the “St, Peter Fish”. IMO, good enough for Jesus means Tilapia is also good enough for me. I like mine, baked with Cajun seasoning and a little creamy shrimp sauce on top. We'll do that recipe some other week.
Of course, the highlight of any school lunch meal back in the 1950s was when they decided to bake a few hundred Snickerdoodle Cookies so we could have one as dessert. I loved them back then and I still do today.
They are a nice cinnamon and sugar dusted, easy to make treat. Why would anyone not like them?
You may know my wife was Director of Technical Services for the State Department of Education's School Lunch Program in Mississippi at one point in her career. One benefit of the many hours she and her people spent assuring school lunches served in Mississippi met USDA requirements (and lots of other regulatory stuff) was that she knew the official USDA recipe for Snickerdoodle Cookies. Yes, there really was one and I am prepared to share a modified version of it with you guys. Now you will be able to make 100% (+-) authentic school lunch Snickerdoodle cookies. If you spent your childhood days at Milam Elementary in Tupelo, or South Delta Elementary in Issaquena County, they may have modified their recipe to better fit their cooking equipment and USDA commodity food supplies, but this is the “Official” ZeroBear PolyBear version."
Snickerdoodle Cookies
Ingredients:
(Multiply this recipe by 2 or 3 or 500 as desired)
1 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs, whipped
2 teaspoons
vanilla
2 3/4 cups AP flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1
teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons white
sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
The formed cookie balls will be rolled in a sugar and cinnamon blend of 2 Tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. What you see here is 2X that amount. Mix together in a bowl and set aside.
Melt butter and mix with vanilla. Set aside.
Mix Flour, sugar, salt, Cream of Tartar, and baking soda in a suitably sized mixing bowl.
Mix the dry ingredients well and add the melted butter and vanilla mixture.
Cover and chill in the refrigerator for an hour.
The cookies are easier to bake on a nonstick surface, or a lightly oiled cookie sheet.
Shape dough by rounded spoonful into balls. I like golf ball sized balls, or a tad smaller.
Roll balls of dough
in the sugar and cinnamon mixture.
.
Flatten the ball slightly and place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. I like to do a one cookie test bake, so I will have something to eat right away.
Bake
8 to 12 minutes, or until set but not too hard. My test bake looked and tasted pretty good, so I went to work doing the rest. Baking them 12 at a time works well at our house.
Remove the cookies immediately from the baking sheets and cool on an open rack or towel.
Baking all of a double batch is hard work and you may need to eat a couple as they come out to keep your strength up.
Kids, grandkids, grannies, and Old Farts like these a lot. The recipe is easy and makes you look like a cookie baking pro right away.
Thanks for looking at my post.
God Bless you.
5 comments:
Baptist used to make the best vegetable soup. When I worked downtown in the 1990s, I'd sometimes go there for lunch just to get the soup.
I attended public school in Raymond in the 1960s. We had fish sticks and spaghetti on Fridays which I've always suspected was the source of Walker's Restaurant's unusual pairing of the two dishes. The dietician at Raymond made excellent yeast rolls every day but I don't fondly recall the lunches of mystery meat, beef stew that smelled like canned dog food, and the really sad days when we got 3 Vienna sausages plopped on our plates.
I liked the peanut butter cookies also. They were chewy and had fork marks in the top. And the yeast rolls, lawd! "Those were the days, my friend....
I was born in the old Baptist Hospital in 1981. It is gone now and I have never seen a picture of it. I honestly never made much effort to find one. Thanks for posting one.
I attented public school in Rankin County in the 80s and 90s and we were offered a McDonald’s Filet-o-fish style sandwich as a fish dish. I do not recal ever being fed fish sticks at school. I miss the mexican pizza and yeast rolls.
JPS in the 1960's gave great rolls, great cinnamon rolls, rice krispie treats with chocolate chips, veggie soup, etc. In fact, the only bad food was the wretched spinach with chopped boil eggs.
Oh yeah, JPS gave a great education too.
In the Kirby Walker days, JPS was great. Now JPS is a baby sitter.
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