Month-Gone Highlights

Hello! Thought you'd never hear from me again? No luck! Here I am again, eating a freshly-baked molasses cookie. I don't usually do trial runs of recipes before serving them to guests, but I made an exception for molasses cookies.

Here are several highlights from the last month of my life:

1. Somehow I ended up with two full gallons of apple cider back in October. I went up two Sundays in a row to Green Bluff only to find that the Hansens were completely sold out of apple cider. Finally, I made a special trip up there on a Friday afternoon and got my coveted cider. The next Friday, I got two free half gallons from a friend. I spent a lot of time on food blogs, searching for recipes and ended up making apple cider quick bread, apple cider baked beans (which I ate for a full, long week!), several batches of steel-cut oats, freezing several yogurt containers full, and drinking many warm mugs in the evenings. Ah, fall!

2. On the last Saturday in October, my friend Gerry invited me to a harvest party and hay ride out in the country. The man who hosts the party each year farms a ton of land (like 1,000 acres!) and has a beautiful spot in the country north of Spokane. Right after we arrived, a bunch of us (there were probably a good 50 people there with tons of little kids) hopped into two trailers packed with hay bales for the first hay ride of the evening. I sat next to a lovely older couple, and we bounced along for about half an hour. Tim, the farmer, pulled us with his big, ol' tractor. At one point in the ride, the back trailer that I was on came unhitched from the front trailer when we jounced over a rocky spot. It was tremendously exciting. :)

It was so lovely to crest the hill of wheat-stubbled fields on our hay ride as the sun was setting and the mist was drifting in. We saw a herd of deer and one of my companions pointed out the fiery yellow larches--conifers that lose their needles in the fall--that were striking against the dark green of the Ponderosa pines. We had a delicious potluck dinner with hamburgers and hot dogs and a full table of desserts. Gerry's daughter, daughter's son, and his family were also at the party, and we all went out on a second hay ride in the dark. At first, I thought it would be scary and cold, but then we got distracted by the night sky. The heavens opened and stars burned through, bright and clear. The six-year-old who was with us stared up and said, "Wow! That looks like outer space!" We four adults got a good chuckle out of that. We spent the next half hour looking for constellations and watching for the ghostly lights of the barn that shone through the mist. As you can tell, the party was fodder for an active imagination.

3. Since September, the aforementioned Gerry and I have been cooking meals for a monthly family night at church. The day before Halloween, the youth group hosted a carnival and chili cook-off for the kids and their families. I purchased all the sides for the chili and was there early to arrange them and help the youth director with all the preparations. It was a madhouse when all the kids were there! I sat by myself with my chili when I finally sat down because I was a little stupefied. I rallied, though, and ran the craft table for the quieter kids. Being removed from childhood, it was fun to see the boundless enthusiasm of the kids in their costumes as they decorating cookies, cake walked, and had their faces painted.

4. For the third year in a row, my friend Heidi and I spent the first Saturday evening in November listening to the Whitworth jazz band play with a famous jazz musician, this year the saxophonist Chris Potter. The Whitworth jazz band is fabulous! Heidi and I listened with rapt attention and great big grins. There was one song I loved particularly because it featured a saxophone trio with Potter and two students. They seamlessly slipped the solo between the three of them and it was marvelous. It filled me with delight, and I had to stand up and clap when it was done while also regretting that it didn't go on for many minutes more.

5. Work has been an adventure the last two months. My department--customer support--has a steady work load. In an average week, we get about 400 e-mails from customers about every topic imaginable relating to the Olive Tree Bible Study app, our website, sales, etc. Due to financial tightness, we had to let a person from my department go at the beginning on October. Several weeks later, another co-worker resigned, leaving my department with two people. The first full week in November, my one remaining co-worker was on vacation for a whole week, leaving just me in my department. It was a busy, crazy week, and I learned a lot. About 10 of my co-workers from other departments helped out in the e-mail queue that week, so I got to lead them, answer questions, refine my own techniques and understanding, and work my tail off. It was a good week, but boy was the next week even better with my co-worker back to share the load of people waiting for help! There are still just two of us in support (though still with plenty of help from other departments), so it continues to be draining. I can't wait for a change of pace at Thanksgiving.

Well, those are the highlights! I do have a closing thought for you though. I'm part of a book club during Sunday School at church, and the leader asked me to co-lead this year. We've been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, and I'm finding it to be full of challenging and rich passages. I have my dad's version from 1979, and it has so many underlinings and notes and scribbles. It's delightful! I spent a lot of time alone this weekend. Really alone because I hardly saw any of my housemates after Saturday afternoon. It was thus ironic that the chapter we discussed in Sunday School yesterday was "The Day Alone." Being alone always makes me take stock of my life. So much of life is so very ordinary. As I looked back in my planner, so much of what I do day to day is the same: eat lunch and make lunch, walk, journal, look at recipes online, read, talk with my parents, e-mail, ignore chores, fill up the laundry basket, do laundry, fold laundry, and on it goes. And yet, the ordinariness is infused with changing, shifting life. New lessons to learn, challenges to overcome, gratitude to be expressed, and daily life to be shared. Life isn't always easy, but there is always plenty to be thankful for, and today I'm thankful for life, the ordinary and extraordinary both.

The Week in Review

Last week, I bought something really cool at Costco:

We had a June birthday celebration at work this week, so I made this (Peanut Butter Ice Cream with Peanut Butter Cups):

 

With these:

The verdict? Delicious! I can't wait to make more batches of ice cream throughout the summer. It will be my go-to dessert. It was fun to share my first-ever batch with my co-workers, as they all have a hearty appreciation of food. This was the first fun thing of the week that I'm going to share with you.

The second fun thing was "cooking" a meal for 25 people on Friday night. My co-worker Emily has been involved in the start of a new college ministry in town that's being spearheaded by several current Whitworth students. Every Friday night, Thrive (the name of the ministry) meets in a church building downtown for dinner, worship, a message, and small group discussion. Because Thrive is just getting off the ground, they don't have the funds to provide dinner every week, so they've been soliciting help from friends and members of local churches. I had extra tithe money from housesitting in May, so I volunteered to make dinner for this week's Thrive gathering.

The catch is that the church building, which used to be an art gallery, has no sink, stove, or oven, so the meals prepared for Thrive need to be creative. Fortunately, God has provided me with many opportunities to coordinate food for bigger groups, so it didn't take me long to come up with a menu: cold, sliced ham from Egger's Meats, bread from Costco (multigrain and rosemary olive oil), and carrots and sliced cucumbers with Sabra hummus. No dinner would be complete without dessert, so I made vegan/gluten free cookies (made with bananas, peanut butter, and oats for substance) and a chocolate sheet cake with peanut butter frosting. Every day this week, I've been preparing some part of the meal, so packing up and transporting the meal downtown on Friday was a breeze. Here it is all packed up and ready to go:

 

I was nervous about the evening and how it would all come together, so I asked my parents and several friends to pray about it. The biggest thing was that the two people I knew weren't going to be there. Providentially, Emily connected me with her friend Anneliese, who was going to be leading Thrive that evening. When I was driving downtown looking for parking, I passed the building the first time and when I came back around, a car was leaving the spot right in front of the building. Praise the Lord! The other miraculous thing was that I didn't get a parking ticket, as I only had enough change for an hour of my time. :)

 

It was a piece of cake (hehe) to set up the meal. Anneliese, her friend Amanda, and I had time to pray for the evening before it started. People trickled in steadily until 6:15, and I enjoyed talking with handful of people. The meal came off splendidly. There was enough for all and a manageable amount of leftovers. Actually, I had almost the whole cake left which was disappointing until I tried it when I was back home. I'm telling you, it is delicious!

 



You might be surprised to know that the vegan/gluten free cookies were also good. The leftovers are in my freezer, ready to emerge at some fortuitous occasion.

Speaking of fortuitous occasions, the third thing I want to share with you about the week is that I finally saw a LIVE MOOSE!

 

My family has been to all the prime moose spots in the United States--Yellowstone, Vermont, Maine, Yosemite--and we never saw a live moose. My church hosted a bike ride on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes today through the beautiful lakes of northern Idaho. As my housemate Pam and I were riding along, we saw the moose chowing down across the lake. It was awesome! The ride itself was also lovely. Here are some pictures from the trail that entirely fail to capture the beauty we witnessed:

 



And that's a wrap! Have a blessed Father's Day tomorrow!

A Christmas Cookie Recipe (with a dash of History)

At work tomorrow, we're having a Christmas party with a decorating competition, Christmas cookies, Christmas music, ugly Christmas sweaters, etc. As the events planning head, I created the sign-up sheet for people to bring Christmas cookies and put my name at the top of the list. I knew immediately which Christmas cookie recipe I would make: Twists. My mom, sister, and I have made twists at Christmas for as long as I can remember and my grandma made them for as long as my mom can remember.

 

I called my mom up to get some history about the recipe. The recipe is from the Eighth Grand National Pillsbury Best baking competition cookbook from 1957, my mother's birth year. I did a little sleuthing around the internet and found out that the competition is still going strong, except now you win $1 million instead of the $50,000 at the 1949 start of the competition.

 

Here's a quote from the cookbook: "Get out your pie pans, your cake pans, your cookie sheets, your casserole-and, of course, that bag of Pillsbury's Best flour...and good baking-good eating to you!" The original name of the cookie was/is Starlight Sugar Crisps. My mom wasn't exactly sure how the cookies came to be christened "twists" apart from their shape. But they are delicious in every way and fun to make. Here's a little step-by-step twist tutorial with pictures. 

 

I recommend making the dough the day before because it has to chill for at least two hours. When you're ready to bake, split the dough in half and mix two bowls of sugar with vanilla. 

 

 

Roll the dough out with 1/2 cup of the vanilla sugar mixture underneath and then fold it into three parts after sprinkling a tablespoon of sugar on the top of the rolled-out dough. Roll it out again and repeat the same folding and sprinkling process.

 

After rolling the dough out for the third time, use a pizza cutter to cut strips. Feel free to make them more even than mine.

 

Then twist each strip and lay on an ungreased cookie tray. See all those lovely layers in the picture? All of that rolling and folding creates thin layers of dough with vanilla sugar between each crispy, sweet layer.

 

Put the cookie sheet in a hot oven and you'll get these...

 

Golden, crispy, sweet twists.

 

Here's a photocopy of the original recipe. It's faint, but you can see my grandma's handwriting to the side where she made notes on the recipe.

 

And after several batches into and out of the oven, you'll get this, a glorious stack of twists!

 

As Julia would say, "Bon Appetit!"

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Starlight Sugar Crisps (Twists)

 

Bake 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.  Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

 

Soften......Soften one package of yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water.

Sift together......3 1/2 cups flour and 1 1/2 tsp salt into a mixing bowl.

Cut in......1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup Crisco into flour mixture until particles are the size of small peas.

Blend in......2 beaten eggs, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix thoroughly. Cover; chill at least two hours or for up to four days.

Combine......1 1/2 cups sugar and 2 tsp. vanilla.

Roll out......half of chilled dough on a pastry cloth or board which has been sprinkled with about 1/2 cup of the vanilla sugar. Roll out to a 16x8-inch rectangle. Sprinkle with about 1 tablespoon more vanilla sugar.

Fold......one end of dough over the center. Fold other end over to make three layers. Turn 1/4 way around and repeat rolling and folding twice, sprinkling board with additional vanilla sugar as needed.

Cut......into 4x1-inch strinps. Twist each strip 2 or 3 times. Place on ungreased baking sheets.

Repeat......entire process with remaining dough and vanilla sugar.

Bake......at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes until light golden brown (watch carefully...they get dark quickly!)

Valentine's Day is A-Coming

I’m making peanut butter cookies right now. I have no good reason to make them, nor was I planning on making cookies at all today. But I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t made plain-Jane peanut butter cookies in ages, and they’re so good right out of the oven and, conveniently, right out of the freezer. I asked my events planning committee at work if we should do anything to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Tuesday. Surprisingly, I got an enthusiastic response from even the two men. So in the spirit of V-Day, my mind’s been full of sugar and red and pink and hearts. I’m not planning to share these cookies at work, but I’m trying to think of what would be a good store-bought treat. Any ideas? Anything besides the ubiquitous Safeway sugar cookie with too-thick red frosting is fair game.  

I'm in the process of writing a far longer post, but it's taking me some time. Thanks for your patience!