These cookies, pictured below, are from my mother’s recipe entitled “Square Cookies.” (Next fall I’ll show you her cherry cake recipe which is made using plums.)

But maybe your brain prefers this next photograph, made from the same recipe:

Also called Brown Sugar Cookies, the only difference between these two versions is in the shape of the cookie and the size of the pecan pieces.

Before the age of electronics, when I was bored, I would sit on the floor of my mother’s kitchen with my back against the refrigerator and wait for a job. My first job, when I was probably three or four, was to grind nuts into the blue bowl. The blue bowl is the smallest of the colorful Pyrex nesting bowls, made in the 1950’s. My sister and I have a secret love affair with these bowls. We’re always on the look out for them. Recently, I purchased an entire set at a flea market! They are packaged carefully away in our garage, waiting for the time when my 13 year-old daughter has her own kitchen. I used to run the bowls in the dishwasher until I noticed that their luster had faded, so I gave those away and purchased a like-new set on e-bay. On the advice of my sister, these are hand-wash only.

Today I gave my son Joe the job of filling the blue bowl with chopped pecans for Grandpa’s favorite cookies, square cookies. Since Grandpa doesn’t like that many nuts I made him some of the round ones.