Tan Moriarty

Category: “Whatever is good…”

  • Get Baked!

    Get Baked!

    Tray of chocolate chip cookies beside a cup of tea on a wooden table
    Baking cookies makes me feel saner.

     by Tan 9/28/26

    I could pull the covers up over my head thinking about what’s going on in our country, in the world. My hands could bleed from constant wringing about what may happen next, or how long we have left as a race with or without artificial intelligence interfering. I could ruin my day dwelling on the fact that I continue to be ostracized by my limited and hurtful siblings.

    So, what can I do besides meditating, journaling and praying to be OK in this moment? When in doubt or I’m feeling down often the panacea to peace, however temporary for me is to bake cookies!

    Chocolate chip, mostly. 

    Often when I feel jangled, I finding it calming and satisfying to make a batch. The process is meditative, though precise. I feel like I have some control. I measure accurately, often using a food scale, and follow a tried-and-true recipe, with extra egg yolks.  I deftly wield a metal, spring-loaded Pampered Chef cookie scoop (right tool for the job) and position the dough in neat rows on parchment. Bake for 12 minutes at 325, turning the trays halfway. I set them out to cool, then transfer them to racks. Depending on their destination or purpose, I load the alligator (more on this below), plate and wrap them, or put them in the freezer.

    I’ve probably made thousands.  I don’t have actual stats, but it’s safe to say I’ve made cookies on the average of at least once or twice a month, for most of my life. At first, helping my mom at a very early age. By ten or so, I’d be making them solo. I’d make them for my boyfriend turned husband. Then more often when my kids were growing up, as a lunch box or after school snacks.

    Making them has become an extension of who I am for outside of our home, too. I bake cookies for church coffee hour, fairs, our open mic/coffee house, for my book club. I bake them in appreciation of neighbors who’ve helped us tackle some mechanical issue on our travel trailer, lent us tool, or those who’ve watched our cat.

    I bake them for plumbers, dirt diggers, painters. Even though they get paid (handsomely) for their job, a plate of fresh cookies for the crew is an extra thank you. 

    People seem to appreciate homemade cookies to nibble on. Some coo and make yummy sounds. “You make the best cookies,” they say.  It is nice to hear.

    My late father used to quip, “Nothing is better than a home baked goodie.”

    I, of course, am a cookie snob. I can’t imagine buying store cookies except maybe Oreos or Milano’s. They’d be hard to replicate. I also blanche at the cost of singular cookies I often see for sale. Recently, I saw a solitary chocolate chip cookie (homemade or bakery made?) at the Big E, priced at $5.50. My batches could make bank if I chose to go into business. But no. 

    Years ago, my late mother-in-law gifted us with a fantastic cookie jar that my husband and I still enjoy today. It is loud, as in it is a bright green and yellow alligator holding a red sign that says, “Cookies”. But it’s also audibly loud. There’s no sneaking a cookie with this cookie jar. When you lift its head back by the snout, it says in a deep, loud Louie Armstrong-type twang, “Yummy, these cookies suuurrrre taste good!” 

    It in no way matches our kitchen décor, but we will probably never part with it. Over the years of love and wear, the hinge on its mouth broke. Now we must lift the top half of its head off to reach in for a cookie.  We laugh because sometimes the voice studders, “Ya-ya-yummy, (like a rapper). These cookies sure taste good!” 

    Green alligator cookie jar holding a red sign that says Cookies
    Green alligator cookie jar holding a red sign that says Cookies, When you lift his head, he says loudly, “Yummy, these cookies sure taste good!” A wonderful gift from my late mother-in-law back in the 1990s.

    My adult kids and their partners meander their way to the alligator when they come to visit, so I try to keep it filled for their arrival. When my husband finds it empty, he’ll say, “There’s a distinct lack of cookies in this house.”

    I get the hint. Even if it’s not for therapeutic relief, I might make a batch just to fill the alligator.

  • Sonja (my mom) Unsung…Until Now!

    Sonja (my mom) Unsung…Until Now!

    Written in 2023.

    My mom, Sonja, with her customized walking stick, 2017.

    Although my mom almost never wears makeup or even lipstick, I think she’s one of the classiest women I’ve ever known. Class doesn’t necessarily come with cosmetics, money, fancy clothes or other adornments. It also comes with what you do with what you’ve got for the greater good, and especially for your children.

    Born in 1942 and raised in a rural Higganum, Connecticut, Sonja Deloris Granat grew up in a small farmstead with her parents, four siblings, and Swedish, immigrant grandparents. They weren’t dirt poor, but I remember mom saying each child received just one gift at Christmas. On the farm, they grew and sometimes sold their own produce, meats, and homemade cheese.

    At an early age, mom loved nature and influenced by her grandmother, she learned about God. She prayed once as a five year old to see a turtle. When she stepped outside there was one right by her feet! Mom recalls loving to go to elementary school, though she was a bit of a wallflower throughout her high school years. After graduation, she and one of her sisters commuted to Central Connecticut State College where mom pursued her bachelor’s in elementary education. Her college girlfriend introduced mom to her brother, whom she married in 1963.

    While mom worked several years after my sister and I were born to earn her master’s degree in elementary education, twists and turns in life prevented her from teaching in a public-school setting. She did, though, use her skills and passion to lead girls and boys through scouts and 4-H. She taught Sunday School and was superintendent of Sunday School for many years at her Methodist church. 

    As I look back, I see how mom did an exemplary job raising four kids in the lean years before and after my parent’s divorce in 1977. We always had enough food. Though we often wore hand-me-downs until we were old enough to work to buy more trendier clothes, mom kept what we had clean and mended. But she gave us so much more than this.

    Mom always read to us. As toddlers, she read Greek and Roman literature as she balanced quality time with us and studying for her Master’s. More age-appropriate reading matter included “Peter Rabbit” by Beatrix Potter, “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne, and Johnny Gruelle’s, “Raggedy Ann Stories” and “Raggedy Andy Stories.” She turned us on to Aesop’s Fables, Bible stories, and Walt Disney stories in books and record sets. On Saturdays, she drove us to (Middletown) Junior Matinee’s to see live productions of Peter and the Wolf and other children’s plays.

    Working as a library assistant, she’d come home with the latest children’s books. She introduced us to Judy Blume. I devoured “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?”, “Blubber” and especially, “Deenie,” a girl I longed to befriend. 

    Mom co-led a wonderful Girl Scout day camp in our town in the summers. We’d learn crafts like sand candle making, macrame, ice cream making. We’d have haunted houses in the cabin!

    Mom found affordable fun. We camped at state parks—-Hammonassett Beach on Long Island Sound, and Wells State Park in Massachusetts. We’d stop by Sturbridge Village, an 1830s living museum, and visit Aunt Edna and Uncle Ward on their working dairy farm.  

    She inspired us with the Teddy Bear’s Picnic (melody by American composer John Walter Bratton in 1907, and lyrics by Irish song writer Jimmy Kennedy in 1932).  We often picnicked at roadside parks like Seven Falls, or at Haddam Meadows on the Connecticut River. 

    Some of the best times of times was going to the local drive-in! She would pop tons of popcorn and mix up a jug of off-brand Kool-aid. We’d pile in the back of the old blue station wagon and catch the latest kid movies—-Escape to Witch Mountain, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Herby Rides Again!

    Through all her many trials, mom always kept her faith and keeps her faith. She took us to Sunday School every Sunday while we lived under her roof. Sometimes, to my chagrin, it meant having to leave early on weekend camp trips with the Parents Without Partners Group and our teen friends. Growing up, mom would read Luke 2 every Christmas morning before we opened our presents. 

    Mom also could not and does not stand for swearing or even saying the word “fart.” It’s kind of amazing Mom was/is this way with her own father, the king of “Pull my finger” as a lifelong influence. Trying to instill class in us, she’d instruct, “Say excuse me, when you blow a poop.” As we got older, we’d laugh at this substitute for the common expression, but something stuck with me later with my own kids. They were raised to say, “pass gas”, not “fart.”

    Mom loved her crafts and was quite the seamstress. She made Brenda and I matching skirts, vests and jumpers. Mom made my senior prom gown in 1983 and later wedding gown in 1988. As I look at wedding pictures, I am still so in awe of the wonderful job she did on this elaborate and gorgeous garment.  I believe it was the best item she had ever sewn. 

    My beautiful mom and me on my wedding day in the gorgeous gown she made.

    Mom was front and center the whole time Sean was in Desert Storm and when our babies were born. She was gleeful, blowing bubbles and was such source of support and encouragement. Mom and second husband Ernie were always so happy to babysit and even took our kids on a cross country trip. She instilled her love of nature and fun in her grandchildren. She introduced them all to the joys of swimming. As toddlers she’d encourage them to, “kick-kick-kick!” and “reach-reach-reach!” as she played with them in her above ground pool.

    Mom with grandson, Chris, 1993.
    Mom, in retirement at her place in Maine, 2016. She fished and picked tons of wild blueberries, keeping track of how many fish were caught or cups of berries picked.

    Today, at nearly eighty, I still see so much class in my mom. She is less ambulatory than her early days, but I still see her classiness in motion.

    She starts her day with one of her daily devotional readings. She moves on to her daily crossword and jumble in the Hartford Courant.  Then she moves on to her novel reading.  Mom often has two or more books going at once, in totally different genres from her extensive book collection. Kate Douglas Wiggin’s, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” and Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” were two titles she recently bounced back and forth reading. She’s on John Steinbeck’s “The Pastures of Heaven,” right now.

    Mom still plays a mean game of Florida Rummy and is a formidable Scrabble opponent. She crochets Afghans and can whip up a new dishcloth in a half hour. Mom looks forward to celebrating Christmas Eve with an authentic Swedish smorgasbord and glogg at her house. Mom keeps up with the goings-on of her grown grandchildren. She and I still have meaningful discussions about faith and life. She treasures when family visit, especially when all four of her unique children are there together.

    Sonja and her children. On left, Tanja, behind her are Brenda and Ed.
    Andy is to her right.

  • Sometimes, All I Need is My DQ: What is it that You Need?

    Sometimes, All I Need is My DQ: What is it that You Need?

    As a rule, I am not a brand maven preferring names like Campbell’s over store brand labels for soups, or Birds Eye over Stop & Shop brand for string beans. I am, however, an absolute snob when it comes to soft serve chocolate-dipped-in-chocolate cones. There is positively NO substitute for Dairy Queen. I should know. I had my fill working at a DQ in my late teens and have sampled hundreds of poor substitutes elsewhere in my life ever since. Though the menu of treats at today’s DQ has ballooned since the early 80s, I find myself going back to my tried and true treat.

    There is just no better food (except perhaps peanut M&Ms) than a DQ chocolate-dipped-in-chocolate. It’s perfect hard shell is unmatched in taste, texture, and chippity-crunch. I may be giving away a trade secret, but if memory serves, there is just a hint of wax—yes, wax in the dip. I’ve read the back of the can and though may have been a little startled at first, it never kept me away from my devotion to DQ dip.

    Since I’ve not found its equal, I won’t bother make any comparison with far trailing runners up here. Beneath the signature DQ curl, which only true DQ employees can make because of specific, franchise ingredients and top-secret training, is the softest, perfectly blended cool chocolaty, creamy sweetness. So what if it’s not actually ice cream? Who cares if it comes from a mysterious plastic bag and flows through a Wonka-esque machine with a huge shaft thingy, gears and oh-rings? Whatever is in it and however it gets from liquid to lusciousness in my wafer cone is absolutely no-never-mind to me.

    I admit I can get a little moony when I settle in to nibbling deftly to avoid dripping and to make sure I get every lick. Cool, silky smoothness floods my every taste bud with unrelenting creamy chocolate, stealing my breath away. My eyes glaze over in pure ecstasy and I’ve been known to coo softly.

    On occasion, a line from The Hollie’s song overtakes me,  “Sometimes, I all I need is the air that I breathe…and my DQ.”

    What’s your treat you just can’t do without?

    Click on this for some Hollies:

  • Glassblown Ornament Reminds Me of My Marriage

    Glassblown Ornament Reminds Me of My Marriage

    “Don’t inhale,” M laughed. If I wasn’t so afraid of burning down the place or branding somebody with the volcanic lump at the end of three foot long pipe, I would have hammed it up for our good friends M and K. They stood at a safe distance outside the half door of the little studio. M & K had invited us to spend a day at Narragansett but the overcast weather lead the four of us to nearby Newport, Rhode Island’s shopping mecca. Sean and I followed our pals down Thames St. thinking K was looking for a particular antique shop she had heard about.

    When we reached 688 Thames Street, I noticed the corner shop with the half door and the young guys inside tending to some sort of orange glowing furnace. Ah, a glassblowing shop! I quickly fast-forwarded to our pending trip to Venice where we might take a vaporetto to Murano where we’d see artisans from days of old blowing glass.

    “You two are going to blow a glass ornament now,” K said calmly. Ha, ha! Wouldn’t that be a hoot! We followed K and M into the display side of the shop expecting to politely browse the hanging eye-candy and then move on down the street. Glass globes, paperweights, glass fish, tinkling with light captivated us.

    “Go on, pick out your colors,” K said. A woman behind the counter beckoned us. “This is the couple who is celebrating their anniversary I called about,” K explained. What?! She is serious! Though our 25th was a little over a month away, I nodded and thanked the woman as she congratulated us.

    “Pick out your colors and then we’ll go in the back,” the proprietor said. Sean and I looked at each other. Believing to be craft-challenged, Sean tried to deflect this task to me. “Oh, no. You have to do this with me!”

    We both focused on the colors and options before us. Sean is a blue kinda guy and I am forever a purple passionate, Piscean. After we signed our life away that we would not hold the artisans accountable if we torched ourselves, we followed a 20 something guy into the bowels of the shop.

    We were cautioned where to handle the long pole and not touch beyond the halfway point, lest we blister our hands and run screaming. The young man started the process by sticking the metal pole into a blistering orange hole in the wall that belched dry heat into the room. There must have been some kind of container inside because as he spun the pole it picked up a gob of clear molten glass. It reminded me of a carnival vender collecting spun sugar onto a cotton candy tube. He had Sean hold the stick over some sort of anvil and had Sean to apply pressure to square the blob. He then had Sean dip each side into trays of our colored speckles of blue and violet. The opaque and speckled dradle-looking square was inserted into a slightly cooler oven. Then it was my turn. The guy told me to blow into the end with a firm and steady flow. I did as was instructed—a flash to measured Lamaze breathing—and I concentrated as the blob rounded out slightly at the end. Back into the heat it went.

    In a minute I was instructed to blow again, but lightly now, and the guy kept rotating the pole. A little awkward, but a good thing because sometimes I can’t walk and chew gum! After a few more passes from my lips to the kiln, I was instructed to lay the glowing ball into a trough and squeeze a scalpel thing to help form the neck of the ornament. In seconds the globe was sturdy glass, and no longer easily malleable. Later, the guy would add our 25th anniversary date, October 1, 2013.

    The ornament had to set and cool for three days before it could be mailed home to us.

    The whole process must have taken all of fifteen minutes. In that quarter hour, I realized this glassblowing mini-adventure could be a microcosmic comparison of my married life. On October 1, 2013, we will be married 25 years! Thanks be to God!

    When we first started out, we were that blob of colorless love at the end of the pole. An amoeba of hot, molten passion! As time, life and trials rolled on, we eventually morphed into a circle with a seemingly indefinable beginning and end. Over the years we’ve swirled and whorled, burned, and hopefully refined with life challenges—miscarriage, a war, internal and external conflicts with family, careers, raising two children a burgled home, and a recent and horrific motorcycle accident. The heat, fire, pressure, shaping and purifying, has given us a brighter and more solid sheen than if we had never blended in the first place.

    Our anniversary ornament needed three days to cool and set properly before it could be mailed to us. These days are also symbolic. Sometimes we’ve needed cooling and setting before we could move to a new place to once again reflect light and shine in our combined colors.

    Like the blown glass ornament, our marriage needs to be handled with care and every once in a while calls for a little buffing to keep its shine!

    20130905-105302.jpgHere it is!

  • I’ll Be Dipped In Chocolate: Thinking About My All-Time Favorite Job

    I’ll Be Dipped In Chocolate: Thinking About My All-Time Favorite Job

    I am grateful for my flexible and part time job as a grant writer at St. Vincent De Paul Middletown, but if were to take an honest assessment of my work resume, I couldn’t say it’s been my favorite job. Whether I am just being nostalgic or the place I am about to mention truly was the best place to pull a paycheck, I would have to put a gold star next to my run as a Dairy Queen counter girl, 1981 to 1983.
    Of course, I was sixteen years old when I started, and back then I only needed money for my car insurance (and repairs), gas under a buck a gallon, concert tickets, and white Nike leathers with the black swoosh. I had scoped out working at the DQ even before I got my license on April 4th 1981.

    Before the plastic was even dry, I raced over to the Middletown DQ and applied. Sure, I’d had other jobs babysitting since I was a kid, and I was employed to do office work at age 15 through a program called C.E.T.A. (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act that provided jobs to kids in low income families), but this was my first “real” and exciting job that I could drive to myself! No more begging rides to the excruciatingly boring UConn Extension Center (C.E.T.A. job) where I filed papers or recorded data from various state surveys! No more dollar-per-hour babysitting stints! I’d be making three and change at the DQ! The big time, baby!

    I reported to work wearing chocolate fudge brown chinos and the red, white and yellow waffle-plaid DQ blouse with the hallowed DQ patch over my heart. I was a nervous and conscientious worker and asked tons of questions so I would do things right. I kept in constant motion filling lids and cup dispensers, swiping down the counters and topping off the sundae topping wells.

    This impressed my bosses—all four of them. Ralphie and Madge* were the owners and had to be in their fifties. They may have been older, but who can tell when you are sixteen? They were old and to be feared. Their son Ralphie Jr. and his wife Sharon were also my bosses. Sharon was serious and hard-working, but friendly. She said I reminded her of how she started, when she married into the family. Ralphie Jr., was more of a laid back, being a son of a DQ dynasty. He seemed to operate at a slower speed as he flipped burgers at the brazier. Because we were closer in age, we talked about the Moody Blues and Led Zeppelin, groups not quite qualified as vintage rock, just yet.
    I drew my first tube of DQ soft serve into a waiting, wafer cone, carefully turning it to create the iconic, signature curl. I did a fairly good job with a lot of praise from Sharon. Whew! There was a scale on the counter for newbies. Our first cones were subject to a weigh in. A small cone was supposed to be no more than three ounces, a medium five ounces, and a large seven. If a cone was grossly overweight, the bosses (except for Ralphie, Jr.) had us scrape the top half of the cone into a large cup and bring the base back to the machine to try for a more slender, business-savy size. The aborted top half of a cone would never be wasted, but made into a salable product for the next shake-ordering customer.

    I learned fairly quickly how to make model cones. I prided myself on the DQ curl and would silently affirm myself with praise! Yes! Imagine my sheer elation when I could dip the entire enterprise upside down in the dip well! I developed expert timing and a deft flick of my wrist, and mystifying myself and customers, was able to right the Holy Grail of all DQ treats into its standing and upright position. I confess, there were times even in my later days of my DQ career when approaching the dip well with a virginal cone to coat that some freak fault of physics (a drop in the dew point or extra gravitational pull) caused the cold content to slide out with a perverse plop into the dip well!
    Shoot! Before it all melted into a contaminated swirl, I’d use the stir paddle on the dip cover to quickly ladle the mess into a future shake cup. Often, especially when the bosses were out, we’d happily eat our mistakes. Thank God I had a sixteen year old metabolism or I’d have blown out the seams of my DQ pants and pop buttons off my blouse from the thousands of calories I ingest each shift.

    I enjoyed working with kids my own age and encouraged my close high school friends to apply. They were coming in the nights I was working, anyway. We tended to do that as teenagers—flock to the places where friends worked on our days off, as we aimlessly drove around. Soon there was a small entourage of my Haddam-Killingworth high school friends working alongside Middletown co-workers-turned-friends. We had a blast especially on shifts when the bosses didn’t come in. We’d invent new sundaes to eat in the back and flirt with each other in-between rushes of customers.

    At night we’d follow a militant-style list of breaking down the machines and cleaning every crevice of the joint. Madge and Ralphie, Sr. would inspect each morning and if the crew the night before didn’t do a dilly of job, there’d be hell to pay. A critical note, a DQ scarlet letter as it were, would be tacked next to the work schedule for all to see. My pals and I were seldom scolded because we feared the shame of our employers and really were hard workers. Those who didn’t care as much usually quit after a short stint.

    The fact that we ate a lot of our “mistakes” and were otherwise unskilled laborers probably contributed to the fact that in the two and a half years I worked there, I think I got one three cent raise. The fall after I graduated and began attending college, I quit DQ because I lived on Southern Connecticut State U’s campus and worked in Hamden and New Haven in Fotomat booths. During summers at home, I didn’t go back to DQ. Our old crew had dispersed and I picked up a more lucrative job driving bundles of newspapers around in my little red Ford Fiesta. I had mornings off having to report to the newspaper dock at 2:30 p.m. and get my deliveries done in less than three hours. I made over $200 bucks a week and had Sundays off.

    I’ve never found another job as fun and exciting as working at Dairy Queen though. Before the DQ was knocked down on Main Street extension, and a damned CVS was put in its place, I had the opportunity in the mid-nineties to go in behind the counter and make myself a cone…for old time’s sake. It was just like riding a bike, I tell ya! I could still form a perfect DQ curl!

    Sometimes after a long day of searching for grants for the soup kitchen and food pantry I fantasize what it would be like to go back now and work at a DQ, in my mid-forties. I certainly wouldn’t have a fast metabolism on my side, but I bet I would still find it thrilling. I’d cheerfully take orders, make fabulous cones and sundaes, run a register, make change, clean the topping wells, take apart the soft-serve machine and clean and lube its oh-rings, sweep and wash the floors—all at minimum wage— for what, maybe a week?

    20130225-141655.jpg

  • Do You Have A Recipe That Has Made Someone Immortal? Doughnuts: Beryl Lougee

    Do You Have A Recipe That Has Made Someone Immortal? Doughnuts: Beryl Lougee

    I have a handful of recipes that remind me of special people, as I am sure most of us do. The one I am thinking of on this snowy winter day, is the recipe simply called “Doughnuts.” It’s in a well-worn and stained, hand-typed, plastic-ringed recipe booklet that was put together by a few Methodist churches in the mid 1970s. “Doughnuts” was submitted by a church friend of my mother’s, Beryl Lougee. I remember Mrs. Lougee as a smiling, mild-mannered woman who on occasion invited my mom and my sister and I over to her house for visits. She’d serve my sister and I these wonderful homemade doughnuts on saucers, swimming in real maple syrup! I can still see them and taste them!

    She was an active member at the Higganum United Methodist Church, but back then as a kid, I focussed on the fact that she organized the Easter candy sales at our church: chocolate crosses along with the chocolate bunnies.

    Growing up, I remember my mom was forever trying new recipes. She adopted Beryl Lougee’s doughnut recipe. At least once a snow day off from school, my mom would whip up a batch of these wonderful wheels while my sister and I played in snow that seemed armpit deep. We’d come in, shuck our snow pants, kick off our plastic bag-lined boots, then saddle up to the table and dunk ’em one after another in our hot chocolate.

    I carried on the tradition of making Beryl Lougee’s doughnuts when Erin and Chris had snow days! I swear I’d be as excited as they were went I’d hear school was cancelled due to snow!

    Now my kiddos are in college; one in Boston, the other Vermont. It was a little bittersweet making the doughnuts today without them, but Sean and I kept a stiff upper lip as we carried out the sacramental rite. We took turns shaking the royal rings in paper bags of confectioner’s sugar and cinnamon sugar. Ceremoniously we sipped coffee and hot chocolate as we sampled a two, or maybe three.

    There is something “magical” as my daughter said about making doughnuts on a snowy day, or any favorite, traditional recipe on a special occasion. Recipes evoke pleasant thoughts/memories of the person or people who shared them with us. What special recipe evokes happy memories of someone past or present in your life or of some special event?