One of the people we missed when we moved from our old neighborhood years ago, was a friend, Martina Muir. Martina was a good neighbor through the years. When I think about it, we have had some great neighbors and have great ones where we live now.
One of the big things I miss each Christmas is the peppernut cookies that Martina use to make every year. She loved them herself and the spices in them were terrific. They smelled great! She always kept some dough in her freezer so when my daughter Penny or son Barry would walk down to her home to visit her, she would pop them in her oven and send them home with peppernuts.
You couldnt' visit Martina without being fed. You could not tell her no, it just didn't work. If Bob would walk down to visit her before a meal, it would certainly appease his appetite as she would always have pie, cake of some sort or the favorite, peppernuts.
I've never tried to make them myself, I am sure it isn't rocket science, but it just wouldn't seem right to make them, they were Martina's cookies. It just wouldn't be right. I remember the Christmas we had been to my parents and got home later in the evening Christmas day. There was snow on the ground over a bed of ice. Martina, being quite elderly at that time, walked down the block to our house knocking on the side, basement door. It was a shock to see her out in the cold. We had taken a basket of fruit to her earlier that week and she was reciprocating. She had baked some peppernuts and had been watching to see when we would be home.
There she stood in the cold darkness, wrapped to the hilt with scarves and a big warm hat and coat. Bob walked her back home, two houses down where she lived, but she told him he didn't have to, she was fine.
Martina has been gone for a number of years now, and I can't think of her without thinking of her always keeping us supplied with peppernuts and at that Christmas when she walked to our house in the ice and snow just so we could have peppernuts on Christmas day.
Mary Welch, Broker/Owner Preferred Choice Realty, Harper, Ks.