This week I received a couple of disgruntled emails.

These two readers have been following my blogging baking adventures as of late and feel deprived and left out of the baking loop, so to speak.

It seems I have forgotten college boys cannot live on Physics and Chemical Engineering classes alone and need chocolate chip cookies sent from home.

These cookies are my grandmother’s recipe. She made them. My mother made them. I make them. They are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. I have never tasted or seen any other that even come close to resembling them. Based on looks alone, I sometimes wonder if they are the only ones in the world. This is such a lonely thought to me.

When they’ve cooled on the rack I stack them like my mom did. I remember being eye level with them on the pull-out bread board.

It reminds me that I was once a daughter. Something that I miss. Even more so during the holidays.

I wonder if one day they’ll mean anything more to my boys as they do to me but I suspect they already might. It’s the one thing they ask for when they haven’t been home for awhile.

I can’t give out the recipe because I’m afraid of being tarred and feathered. My mom gave the recipe to someone once and they accused her of purposely leaving something out of the recipe since they didn’t turn out like hers. You see, the cookies rarely come out the same from one batch to the next or even on the same baking sheet. They are an enigma and we haven’t been able to figure out why.

My two cookie deprived children will be filtering in a day apart just before Thanksgiving. One arriving by plane, the other by train or doing the college transportation norm – grabbing a ride down with a friend coming this way. It will be a short visit consisting of Thai take-out one night, Thanksgiving dinner and then just a couple of leftover meals but I’m grateful they’re both able to come home at the same time.

Son2 has always said this is his favorite holiday at home. He loves waking up in the morning to the familiar holiday aromas wafting upstairs from the kitchen. I’ve already been asked “what’s for dinner” and specific pie requests have been made and noted. The menu has remained the same from one November to the next but there’s comfort in knowing what’s at home hasn’t changed. Kind of like the chocolate chip cookies – these sweet, creviced, addictive rounds of our collective generational childhoods that are going postal. Today.

I’d love to know what says ‘home’ to your family.

Have a wonderful weekend.