Mexico.
Ay, chihuahua![^o)]
Actually Becky, your Oreo comment yesterday got me a bit disturbed, so in the supermarket this afternoon I went to the cookie section for a little research.
Found the Oreo section and (Holy jeez, where’d all those varieties come from!) looked at a pack of plain ol’ Oreos. Quite a bit of Spanish on the backside, but no country of origin listed, which there has to be if it’s an import.
Then I read your “Mexico” comment. OK, onto the 'Net for som research. True enough, Oreos are made in Mexico, but also in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey. Whew!
In fact, I drive by the Virginia location every so often but the place always smells like Nilla Wafers, which I can’t stand. The New Jersey location is very familiar to me, it’s on Route 208 in Fair Lawn, but that place always smells like chocolate chip cookies, which is kinda cool!
As I said, I never really cared for Oreos anyway. I like full-blooded cookies like Archway molasses cookies or Pepperidge Farm snickerdoodles, and waving a pack of Nutterbutters in front of me is like waving a bottle of Type “O” in front of Dracula!
But NOBODY beats Lady Firestorm’s chocolate chip cookies!
Wayne
I’ll take Walker Shortbread and the Quaker Oats recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies. [dinner]
Walker’s shortbread? Not bad, but for the REAL DEAL this is my Scottish grandmother’s recipe for Scottish shortbread…
Ready to copy? Good, here goes…
One half-pound of butter.
One half-cup of sugar.
Two-and-a-half cups of flour.
Cream sugar and butter together until fluffy, add the flour, work it together HARD, (should resemble pie dough), then put it in a 8x8 ungreased pan and firmly press the dough into the pan. Pierce the dough with a fork all over.
Bake in a 325 degree oven for forty minutes until golden.
Slice into squares in the pan while still hot, let cool completely before removal from the pan. Size of the squares is up to you.
Lady Firestorm who now calls it her own says DON’T MESS WITH THE RECIPE! NO SUBSTITUTIONS!
Get some of this in you and you’ll never touch Walker’s again.
And if you folks are REALLY good I’ll get Lady Firestorm to pass along her chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Ah, the “Classic Toy Trains” Forum! It ain’t just toy trains!
Thanks Firelock, I’ll give that a try around Christmas time.
I have a few that are a serious pain in the butt to make but they’re sooooooo goood! [:D] They’re from the Main Street Bakeries in the Disney Parks. I recomend the chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Ooooey goooey even when frozen! [;)]
Christmas time is perfect for that shortbread! There you go, Christmas, shortbread, and toy trains, it all comes together.
And you’ll know the holidays are really over when the shortbread runs out. Trust me, one pan won’t be enough.
Becky, those Disney cookies sound great!
Gourmet Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 18 oz semisweet chocolate chunks (chips are OK)
Method
- Preheat oven 375 degrees
- Cream butter, sugars, vanilla and cocoa powder
- Stir in remaining ingredients and blend well
- Refrigerate for 30 minutes
- Drop dough by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet about 2" apart
- Bake until cookies are set (5-8 minutes)
- Cool slightly and remove from pan
- When making large cookies, press down slightly on cookie dough to help them cook more evenly. Bake slightly longer (8-10 minutes)
Just 1 more step: enjoy cookies with your favorite transformer throttle in your non-cookie hand! [:D]
Oooooh, that sounds good!
Lady Firestorm says she might just try it!
So many smells go with the Christmas holidays, from what we all cook, the smell of the tree(if you get a real one like we do) to the ozone and smoke smells from our favorite toy trains. I have and will keep my Lionel purchases to mostly late prewar and early postwar. But I do get a few things from the Kuhn era of Lionel. I met the man not long after he bought Madison Hardware. I was running my father’s 1655 at a show and it was struggling to run from years of use(studs the reduction gears spin on are heavily worn away). I mentioned that I had been looking for a low milage power chassis to swap in but most I found were just as bad or worse. We traded business cards(I fixed trains for a shop where I lived) and went our own ways. A month or two later, I have a box on the porch when I got home, just my address, nothing else. Inside was a NOS are darn near that power chassis for my 1655 with a Madison Hardware hang tag on it. If it wasnt NOS it had so little use that it looked that way. So since then, my dad’s 1655 has a new heart in it. I still have the orginal power unit, needs the studs that are part of the field rivets that both reduction gears spin on. If those were replaced, then the original drive would run again. I can only assume that the package came from my discussion with him. That was also the end of most USA production I believe. Whether we like it or now, today is global economy. But we can do more here than we do now. And we need to before another global conflect catches us off guard without the needed manufacturing to sustain ourselves with little to no outside help.
That is a great Madison Hardware story. I wonder what it must have been like, after the purchase was made, to start going through the inventory at Madison. Finding the original Congressional set, still unrun, or god-knows-what may have been in there.
The presidential cars made by Lionel in the USA did nothing for me either. I appreciate the effort, but my first thought was, “is this be best we can do?” Bad colors, unappealing to me, anyway.
Plus, the train car production feels like a sad bone thrown to us. I don’t see the expansion into motors and engine, which, truth be told, is what most of us would care to see made here. The USA made set they had in the works since the Calabrese era is still nowhere to be seen. Immediately would sell out if produced, in my opinion.
Funny, for all of the love and fun memories I have of old USA Lionels, I’d be hard pressed to admit that I like my 1996 Super Chief set better than the El Capitan set that came out in 05. That El Capitan was the perfect size, great box imagery, great running Fastrack and a great transformer. Light years above the set I received in the 80’s for XMAS. I wish i didn’t sell it. I flipped out one fourth of July and traded it in for my B and O F3 (MPC).
In a funny aside, I bought the F3 from Mr. Gryzboski. He said, “You wont have any problems with this one.” When I reported the near immediate problems, he yelled at me! Haha, he was fun. The best part was the grease in the gearbox looked like it came from Jurassic Park. It was fossilized.
Thor’s input on the trade war.
https://thortrains.blogspot.com/2018/07/brief-breakdown-of-hobbies-and-trade.html
Trade war? Hmmmmm…
OK, I’m really, really, really not going to go political here, but I’m reminded of something Mr. “Art Of The Deal” said years back.
Sometimes when dealing with an obstreperous business partner, or potential business partner, you have to smack them in the head HARD to get their attention. Once you’ve GOT their attention you can start working toward a deal where everyone wins. The hard-heads have to realize that everyone can’t be on top, that doesn’t work in the long run. When everyone wins, THAT works in the long run.
Art of the deal.
Just sayin’. And that’s all on that subject.
"Avoid controversial off-topic subjects like…politics…"
Unless I am mistaken, Lionel product was made off shore way before 2000.
Like I said, that’s as far as I’m going on the trade war thing. No further. No kidding.
I’ve been in enough trouble lately, trust me.
But getting back to the “American made Lionel” topic, I’ve been away the past week raiding train shops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, did pretty well, but really scored in Henning’s Trains in Lansdale PA. Picked up a Lionel 681 Pennsy Turbine in great condition and at a super price as well. Just had it on the layout a little while ago and it runs great! Henning’s did a great refurb job on it!
I wasn’t looking for a Turbine but this was too good to pass up!
Built in 1953, just like me!
Someday smart guys with laser jet printers will start making Lionel knockoffs and selling them for twenty bucks. Ok, maybe fifty bucks.
Not gonna happen anytime soon, those things cost as much as a house!
And they don’t come with a basement either.
The small 3d printers are down to $300. If prices continue to drop on the better printers, lots of people will be doing it.
I could not design trains for a 3d printer, but some of the folks who participate in this forum might be able to use the CAD software.