Filed under: Kitchen | Tags: cookie table, new york times, pittsburgh, wedding
“Cookies are comforting in the time of cholera.” S. Lynch
When Pittsburgh hits the national media, the email forwards from resident family and friends start rolling. And since the city has been under the country’s watchful eye since the G20, as well as a curious object of wonder across the States over our perceived immunity to the current recession, it seems only natural to examine such weird-ass Steel City customs as the wedding cookie table in today’s New York Times article.
The drawback of living in one place for most of your life is that you sometimes don’t know what is native and what is not. I thought every wedding in the country had a freaking cookie table. I knew it was a bit tacky to take home a doggie-bagful of cookies and stash it in my purse, but what the hell? The bags are usually provided for you by the wedding hosts; it gives guests the go-ahead to put etiquette aside and take home a souvenir that is much tastier than pastel mints nestled in plastic martini glasses.
When Jeff and I got married, my Italian grandmother, who is 80 this year, was too fragile to bake dozens of cookies. My sister had just gone back to work full-time and I don’t bake. That left my mother, who is a gifted baker, but hasn’t really touched an oven since 1984. But bake she did, 4 dozen wedding knots coated in orange and white frosting for our Halloween wedding.
I am sad because Carrie Pierson and I had talked about researching the history of the Pittsburgh cookie table for a future article in Table, but the NYT and Gourmet beat us to it. Maybe now the cookie table will catch on at out-of-state weddings I attend because a reception isn’t complete without lady locks, thumbprints and pizzelles crumbling at the bottom of my purse.
photograph by Stephanie Foley
