Potato Chip Cookies

How we make it.

Cream:
1/2 pound of butter **originally margarine but I cannot**
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix in: 
3/4 cup crushed potato chips
3/4 cup chopped pecans
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons water

Make into small round balls. Flatten by hand (the thinner the crispier). Bake at 325 degrees for 30-35 minutes on ungreased tin. Watch because they will continue to brown after out of the oven.

**Note**
Dudie never says how many cookies this makes but I'm saying 24.
Dudie said cook for 8 minutes, hers must have been thinner. I'm saying 30-35 minutes.
I also added some extra finishing salt to taste at the end not in Dudie's original recipe.

Why we make it.

I've actually never made these before but I am in an old fashioned mood. Too many things changing lately has me back in the family cookbook looking for my Nana. This recipe was my great aunt Dudie's, also known as Nana to her grandchildren. Real name Mary, though I never once heard anyone call her that. Dudie was the youngest of my grandmother's five sisters. If they all lived in the second quarter of the 20th century, she lived in the third. I remember her for her coffee mugs. They were glazed brown and ceramic, full of hot milky liquid. She always had one because she was always seeing to things. The last to age, she was driving a car and managing check books long after her sisters had bells by their bedsides. The University of Louisville's first Homecoming Queen, she went to college because her sisters sent her. They gave her everything, and she gave it back in due time. I can't tell you much about these cookies except that they were hers, and that's actually why I made them. Turns out they're a crispy, sweet pecan sandy. A nice shortbread. I bet she dipped them in her coffee.