So I got a chance to talk with Susan Werner today. Not only was she very nice to me, but she’s probably the most intelligent musical performer I’ve ever met. Check back tomorrow for a link to the story I wrote about her, but go see her site right now!

It’s Wednesday, which means I share a recipe with you, attempt to make it, and tell you how it went. I like to call it

When I was a kid, my mom made all kinds of cookies for Christmas, mostly of some good German Lutheran variety. We had the pferfernusse (molasses with nuts), the lebkuchen (honey cookies), and springerlies. She even had a few old german rolling pins that printed scenes of Martin Luther posting theses on church doors (and generally annoying everyone in the Catholic church) on cookies when you rolled them out. She made loads of cookies, and gave them to friends, family members, took them to church luncheons and sent them with me to school.

But by far my favorite out of all the Christmas cookies was sugar cookies. Not only were they tasty (basically sugar and butter covered in frosting made of sugar), I loved rolling out the dough, cutting the cookies out, and then later, frosting and decorating each one. I loved that we made some in the shapes of cat, some in the shapes of snowmen, and even some in the shapes of angels. I liked those best, actually, because I took great pleasure in breaking off the angel’s arms and eating them, then wings, then finally breaking off and eating the angel’s head. I had an interesting childhood.

But it has brewed in me an appreciation for not only tradition and nostalgia, but eating a lot of sugar and butter at Christmas time. To make cookies, I took a recipe from an old church Ladies’ Fellowship cookbook my mother has passed on to me. We’re going to need:

1 cup sugar
1 cup margarine (I told you it was mostly sugar and butter)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons sour milk (see below)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 3/4 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
And the recipe gives instructions to make icing, but I just bought a thing of regular vanilla cake frosting. No big.

First, cream together the sugar and margarine. This led to problems right away, because I had no idea that “cream” was a verb. I assumed it meant something like mix, so I stuck two sticks of butter and a cup of sugar in a bowl and stirred real hard. Looked like chunky sugar. At this point, even my roommate started expressing doubt about this way this might end, but I forged ahead anyway.

Next, I had to make up the sour milk. My mother has written on the side of the recipe, “1/2 cup sweet milk and 1 1/2 tsp vinegar or lemon juice. Let sit for 15 min. And clean your room!” (Ok, so I made that last part up) I don’t know what sweet milk is, so I just used milk, but apparently this is how you really make artificially soured milk! I scoured the internet for the science on this, and came up empty. There must be some innate knowledge in cooks that passes through the ages without explanation, and I think I found part of it.

And, while letting the milk sour, I beat two eggs and mixed them in. My mixture was starting to look less powdery and more runny. A good thing? Not yet sure.

After the requisite 15 minutes, I threw the baking soda into the sour milk, causing a little fizzing to start. This reaction, as opposed to the sour milk setup, is well documented scientifically. In fact, later when the dough for the cookies was chilling, I mixed up a little more baking soda and vinegar just to watch the stuff blow up. As I said, I had an interesting childhood.

And while we’re at it, toss the baking soda/milk into the mix and throw in the vanilla for good measure. Mix, as they say in Canada, well.

Then I grabbed another bowl. I think this stuff made me even use more dishes than the bread last week. Put the salt in the flour, mix it up, and then add the flour into the main mix a little at a time. At this point, the narrator of the recipe gets serious, and sternly warns against adding it any more than a little at a time: “(your [sic] don’t want it to go all over the kitchen).” I conjure visions of some poor woman trying to work out the recipe, accidentally throwing in all the flour at the same time, and poof! YOUR GO IT ALL OVER THE KITCHEN!

And as I add each spoonful of flour, the dough starts to take shape. It goes from runny yellow mess to thicker yellow mess, finally to solid tan mix and then to solid tan lump. Pretty soon, I’m mixing an actual loaf of sugary dough, and I put the stuff down, and take a deep breath. It worked.

Chill in refridgerator if possible, says the recipe writer (I can see her cleaning up flour). My mother makes one more note on the page, and it’s under this instruction. It says “imp,” which I remember (she told me) means important. It’s very important that I chill this dough. Again, why this is, I’m not sure, but the sour milk worked out, and so I know better than to mess with the Knowledge of the Almighty Cooks. Don’t mess with the Knowledge, man. Just don’t.

So I throw it in the fridge and go watch “24″ for two hours.

When I come back, the next step in the book consists of two words: “Roll thin.” I would be totally confused, if I hadn’t made these as a kid. I remember lots of flour everywhere, so I clear the kitchen counter and put flour everywhere I see. Then, I pour the dough onto the couter, grab my new rolling pin ($7.95, Sur La Table) and roll to my heart’s content (thin means 1/4 in. thick, my mother told me). Once I’ve got the dough rolled out, I grab the cookie cutters I’ve nabbed from Mom’s collection.

I make a few angels just for me, and then punch out some snowmen and a few cats. There’s a heart, so I do that. Then I get creative– after watching “24″ all night I’m not thinking of much else, so I make a 24 and then reverse it to make a 42. I think about spelling out “mikeschramm.com” in sugar cookie dough, but, after measuring the effort/reward balance of it, I decide against.

I grease up a cookie sheet with butter, throw my cutout dough on there, and bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.

A few minutes later, I’m pulling warm, perfectly cooked sugar cookies out of the oven and putting them on a plate to cool. One of the first out is an angel. I last for about two more minutes, but can’t help myself. The poor guy’s head is the first to go.

“I Require Sustenance” runs every Wednesday on mikeschramm.com. If you have a recipe you’d like me to try, or would even like to guest blog it, send an email.