Scenes from the Holiday Season.
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Cookies from the mouse
Grand Floridian Chocolate Chip Cookies
Found this recipe at https://mommymouseclubhouse.com/grand-floridian-chocolate-chip-cookies/ but the site kept crashing over and over to the point it was unreadable. I created this post so I could actually use this recipe to check if they were good.
Ingredients
2 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
10 Tablespoons Butter, softened
1 Cup Brown Sugar
3/4 Cup Powdered Sugar
2 Eggs
2 Teaspoons Vanilla
12 Ounce Bag Chocolate Chips
Instructions
Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
Use a stand mixer or hand beaters to cream the butter, brown sugar, and powdered sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the vanilla.
Combine the flour mixture with the butter mixture.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Use a 2-Tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
Bake at 330 degrees for 12-14 minutes.
Allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Burning
Just a few days ago, I made up a batch of Spam spread sandwiches. This is a 'recipe' that dates back to the long lost days of my youth. My mother would make these sandwiches for all of her after game parties she held in the early 1970s. Celebrations held every Friday night through football and basketball season. Cans of Spam shredded with a cheese grater, along with cheddar cheese. Also from a time when cheese had to be grated up, as well.
Mixed up with sweet pickle relish, 'Miracle Whip' mayonnaise and horseradish sauce, spread onto hamburger buns and wrapped individually in 'tin foil' packets. Don't forget the salt and pepper, because you cannot have Spam sandwiches without that extra salt! And then baked in the oven until warm and toasty!
Having not purchased Miracle Whip in decades, I use a dollop of our ever present jar of mayonnaise from the fridge. Also, because it is 2023, these gooey ooey sandwiches are simply wrapped up in a paper towel and microwaved for 30 seconds each. Even minus the numerous glass dishes filled with mixed nuts and butter mints, these sandwiches never fail to transport me back to my single digit years.
I read a line in a book a few years back that stated, 'Every time a person dies, a library burns'. All of their thoughts, feelings and memories just bleeped away with that last breath. This week, my cousin passed away. obituary Born just one month after me, she was the closest cousin to me in age. I have memories of many summer days spent playing Barbies in her bedroom or puddling through the reeds in the Bass Lake shallows.
This June is fourteen years since my father passed away. Fourteen years, and feels like both an eternity and a single moment, at the same time. I never don't miss him. Yet, this season I forgot until the day after the anniversary of his passing. It hurts my heart to think I could forget, even for that single moment. Just couple weeks earlier, we celebrated what would have been his 96th birthday with our yearly glass of Gin and pink lemonade in his honor.
Pungent smoke hangs heavy,
caught tight inside the bitter cold.
Wood burned red hot,
loses its blistered heat.
Sweet thoughts of times gone by,
are held inside the fragrant scent of burning pine.
Suspended in the ringlets,
locked frozen in the winter harshness,
crackling logs bring recollections of autumn days
and summer eves.
The scents and senses of childhood
joys and friendships lost.
A wisp of wind spirals
the perfume of melancholy memories away.
Saturday, June 3, 2023
Just checking in
Hotel room view of snow on the mountains.
Driving through snow to baby's birthday party.
Being stuck in the crazy SoCal weather ever since we moved back from the Bay Area, the snow and rain just won't let go. While we have had moments of snow covered mountains since we moved out to California 12 years ago, most snow scenes lasted just a day or so, as the Cali warmth would melt it away. Beginning last autumn, we have had snow on our mountains constantly for eightish months. Even now, the first week of June there remains the lasts bit of the cold wet snow clinging to the deep crevices thousands of feet above us.
On the day of my youngest grandbaby's first birthday, the wet whiteness fell for well over an hour. Wet goopy flakes felt just as cold as snowstorms from our Minnesota memories. Even now, days away from the beginning of summer, we are twenty plus degrees cooler daily than those Minnesota folks are enjoying.
Between moving from the apartment we moved into in late 2021 to where we live now, we played vagabonds, living with my daughter, son in law and grandbabies for a few weeks. Then several more week in the local extended stay hotel while waiting for the new apartment to open up. Having spent 18 months being hotel bound, we didn't think it would be hard to stay in one again. Sadly, the quality of this last hotel was bad. Between vomit and dog doo doo left for days in the hallways, to literal AR15 live shells dropped right outside our hotel room door, it was not a good experience.
Finally, we moved into our new home. Because this is the way things have been going lately, moving came came with pounding, pouring rain. Cold, wet and four inches deep right in front of our door. MN son and daughter in law, touring with work through the southwest, stopped by for the second visit in under a month to help us move in.
First day moving in moments.
Now, after two months in our new place, we are all moved in and life is settling back into a pattern of normal. Having hoped that with a 'normal' lifestyle returning my brain would settle back to normal, as well, I am frustrated living with this strange fog brain. Still, we have been busy building storage shelves in the garage and creating a patio garden filled with flowers instead of weeds. Just writing this update shows that I am improving, at least a bit. Flowers and sunshine, what more could we want?
Springtime in the garden.
