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This is a staple on my Christmas cookie tray, but occasionally I make them at other times of the year. They are easy to put together and don't take long to bake. Plus they are a favorite at potlucks. My friend ate 4 during the coffee hour after worship this past Sunday! NUTTY DATE SQUARES 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup sugar 1 egg 1 2/3 cups Bisquick 1 cup chopped dates 1/2 cup chopped nuts (I use pecans) Powdered sugar (optional -- I don't use this because I don't like the sugar falling on my clothing) Preheat oven to 350. Mix butter, sugar and egg thoroughly. Stir in Bisquick, dates and nuts. Spread in a greased and floured 9-by-9-inch pan or baking dish. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool. Cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Roll in powdered sugar, if desired.

Has your chili got game? Are your cookies cause for celebration? There are national contests where you can prove your culinary skills. I've had a little success and a lot of experience entering local cooking contests. I have won blue ribbons at the Buckwheat Festival and at a small pie-baking contest at the school's fall festival for Blueberry Dream Pie and my mom's butterscotch pie. Almost four years ago I entered a chili cook-off. I think I had to make 8 gallons of chili and find ways to keep it hot while driving an hour and waiting to serve it. I took at least two electric roasters and a crock-pot. So did the 20 other competitors. All those current-suckers were too much for the mall's electrical system and breakers kept blowing. It's not an experience I have rushed to repeat. The most fun I had was dressing, with my little girl, like cowgirls and ringing dinner bells to draw attention. I'm more familiar with holding or judging food contests. Being asked to j...

The cover of the Betty Crocker Christmas cookies supermarket aisle cookbook is disturbing. Why is he winking? And am I the only one who reads it as "bite me" instead of "bake me" on first glance?

I really like the oatmeal cookies I make with dried cherries and bittersweet chocolate chips. But this winter, after Christmas, I wanted to try something different. I had leftover candied orange peel so I bought some dried cranberries to pair with it, replacing the chocolate and cherries, for variation No. 1. It was yummy. I knew it would be because I had been stirring a little of each into bowls of oatmeal since I ran out of Granny Smith apple. The second variation I tried was riskier but oh so worth it. I had been craving candied ginger and bittersweet chocolate together. I finely chopped a small amount of ginger and added it to the cookie batter in place of the cherries. Very good. Please note that for the variations, I added a teaspoon of cinnamon, for which the original recipe doesn't call.

Well, I don't cheat at all cookies, but close readers will see my Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich cookies from an early post start with a boxed cake mix. And this Christmas cookie, rugelach, which I have never attempted to make from scratch, starts with a storebought pie crust. I saw it on the Rachael Ray TV show and had to try it. If I ever make it again, I'll try different jams for the filling or use Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread instead of fooling with the melted butter and cocoa. This isn't bad tasting but it's not spectacular either. But it's a good way to get a little visual variety on your cookie tray, which is what I was going for. For Rachael Ray's recipe and a video demonstration, click here .

Held the first Christmas cookie exchange with the church ladies' group Wednesday night. Only three people showed besides me. Heavy fog and prior commitments kept people away. I hope it will catch on in subsequent years. Here are three recipes (one woman didn't bring hers to copy.) REESE BALLS 1 1/2 cups graham crackers 1 1/3 cups crunchy peanut butter 1 box confectioners' sugar 1 1/2 sticks butter, melted 12-ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips 2/3 block food-grade paraffin (Gulf Wax brand) Note: Paraffin is no longer receommended for consumption. You can add a small amount of Crisco to the chocolate to make it shiny Crush graham crackers until fine. Add peanut butter, sugar and melted butter. Roll mixture into balls. Melt paraffin wax with chocolate chips. Dip balls with toothpick into melted chocolate. Place on wax paper until dry. Should make approximately 5 dozen depending on the size of the balls. HARVEST COOKIES 1 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon ba...

My husband rolled his eyes at the name of this recipe. Hey! I didn't make it up! But he changed his tune once he bit into a warm, chewy cookie. "These cookies rock!" is his totally subjective and not all that descriptive opinion. CHOC-OAT-CHIP CHERRY COOKIES (All props to the recipe writers at Quaker Oats) 2 sticks margarine or butter, softened 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 2 eggs 2 tablespoons milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 cups Quaker Oats (quick or old-fashioned, uncooked) 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup dried tart cherries Heat oven to 375 degrees. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars with electric mixer until creamed. Add eggs, milk and vanilla; beat well. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; add to the butter-sugar mixture and mix well. Stir in oats, chocolate chips and cherries; mix well. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 9 ...

Sixty-five years ago, a volunteer fire department in the county where I live in West Virginia started holding a fundraising festival celebrating the area's agriculture -- a large part of which was the buckwheat that was harvested and milled into flour. Buckwheat is no longer the "insurance crop" farmers planted back then; a handful of farmers plant it now and a lot of the flour that is milled every fall for the festival starts out as buckwheat that's trucked in from a neighboring state. But a staple of the Preston County Buckwheat Festival remains: buckwheat cakes and fresh-ground whole-hog sausage dinners. Buckwheat cakes are pancakes (but don't call them that here -- the most my fellow Prestonians have ever let me get away with is "griddle cakes"). Buckwheat flour is flour but it's not from a grain; it's actually a fruit, from the rhubarb family. Doesn't taste like it though. At festival time there are lots of fund-raising dinners (plus peo...