Our Story

She signed every card the same way.

Every birthday, every Christmas, every grandkid, every year — the card came, and it was signed "Love Grandma." Even in 2009, when she wasn't doing well, she made sure every one of us got our birthday card. Mine from that year is shakier. I still have it.

Her signature — from one of those cards — is tattooed on my arm. Now it's the name of a cookie company.

Brooklyn to Nebraska.

She met my grandfather on a subway, both of them on their way to Irish dance. They married in Texas while he was in the military, raised five kids in Park Slope, and then took a vacation to North Platte, Nebraska and decided that's where the kids should grow up.

Out there she did whatever needed doing. She made sandwiches at her brother's espresso shop, then started baking for it — scones once a week, soda bread, the whole case. Eventually she learned the espresso machine too, because I'd learned it, and if her grandson could figure it out so could she.

I spent every summer with her. She was my caregiver as much as anyone was.

The Christmas trays.

Every year she spent months on it. Rainbow cookies with the right almond paste, hunted down specially. Buckeyes. Salted nut roll. Sugar cookies. Ten different kinds, made in batches, stored in containers in the garage because November in Nebraska is its own refrigerator.

Then she'd deliver them — a flat tray under saran wrap, with her Christmas card, to neighbors up and down the street.

She died at 69, the year after I moved to New York.

What this is.

These aren't her recipes. The peanut butter cookie is mine, made my way, refined over years until people started asking for it.

But the name is hers, and so is the idea: make something with your hands that makes a person stop for a second and feel looked after. That's what the tray on the porch was. That's what this is trying to be.

Her recipes are coming, one at a time. The rainbow cookies. The buckeyes. The scones from the coffee shop.

And honestly, this is for every grandma — the one who took you to the mall, the one who made popcorn balls, the one who made French toast with peanut butter like it was nothing. Mine that's gone, and mine that's still here, still baking, still sending cards.

— Andrew