Box of Stories (7): Grandma's Viola's Peanut Butter Kisses

          This recipe does not come from my grandmother, whose name was not Viola but Bertha. It comes from Casey Kwang's American grandmother.

          Korean by birth, Casey was adopted by an Oregon family when he was a child. Later, the same family adopted his brother. Casey is a poet. He is young and has gorgeous, thick, shiny, black hair. He speaks for his generation in complex images that well from the depths of the self, from the source of our individual and common humanity, where neither academic nor poetry-slam clichés dwell. Casey and I met when we were both finalists for the Oregon Book Awards. At the time of the recipe, he had moved to Seattle, and I had come to visit.

          The apartment building where Casey lived was in the oldest part of downtown Seattle, crammed between other old skyscrapers one block from a pier on the Puget Sound. I found the building, then followed Casey's directions up the elevator to his apartment. When I knocked on the door, he was just taking a batch of Grandma Viola's peanut butter kisses from the oven. The tiny apartment, with its two rooms, its closet-sized kitchen, and its fold-out bed, smelled of heavenly hot peanut butter and chocolate. As we ate lunch at a chessboard table by the window looking over the Puget Sound and the distant, snowy Olympic Mountains, I asked about his new poetry. He read me a poem he had recently finished about a canoe trip with a young woman. It was a beautiful poem. I kept thinking, "She must have fallen crazy in love with him to hear such words he wrote about her." After our lunch, we bundled into coats and hats and walked along the pier. It was a charming afternoon—too charming, perhaps. Too close to the edge of romance, out of the question with such an age difference. I was not interested in romance with Casey Kwang, but I did treasure the friendship, the writer's connection. I continued to write occasional letters, but he never responded. I thought, "Too close to romance," but it was he who orchestrated the afternoon with the fresh-from the-oven cookies, intimate lunch, and blustery walk. I soon quit writing. What I have left from that brief encounter with the fabulous poet is two books of his poetry, the recipe for Grandma Viola's peanut butter kisses, and the directions to a swimming hole he wrote on the back of the recipe.

Next week: "Identifying People by Food"

Grandma Viola's peanut-butter kisses
Ingredients

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
Chocolate kisses
Extra sugar
Preparation
Beat the egg. Preheat oven to 350º. Unwrap the kisses. (It's a good idea to have a child around for this step.)

To make
Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients except kisses and mix well. Put a chocolate kiss on a pinch of dough. Roll into a ball, completely enclosing the kiss. Roll balls in some sugar. Bake for 8 minutes.