Gather at the River

                                            A gorgeous spring day at the river.

Birds are singing and flowers are blooming.

The trees are free of snow.

The earth is warming.

The woods are waking.

The river is free again.

Ah!  Spring...

Easter Cookies Batch Three

Easter Cookies Batch Three

Continuing from my blog yesterday, I am reporting on roll-out sugar cookie progress.

After warming the cookie dough rounds stored in the fridge all night, rolling and cutting the dough with proper Easter Cookie Cutters and stamping them with designs…we bake them. 

“WE”, because Mum came for a visit, now we are both working on this project.

Everything is fine so far.  Remove cookies from the oven, do another round of dough. Completely cool all cookies on the racks.  When they are cool, we begin to decorate.

All ready…the bags of dyed icing, prepared with frosting tips.  First lesson: Don’t use the disposable plastic bags.  One promptly has a blow-out, causing delays while repairs are carried out with duct tape...careful not to allow purple frosting and duct tape to come into contact with one another.  (No Easter-coloured duct tape, gray suffices.)

Much discussion and anxiety about how to decorate, what tips to use, which colours, what designs, where, etc.  We plunge in using an assembly-line method.  Discovery: Heat from our hands melts butter cream frosting inside the decorating bag.  Some tips do not function properly. Or is it the operators?  More discussion.  A tiny glass of wine to facilitate and promote decorating ideas.

Husband wanders in from garage. Unwisely makes dangerous comments about shaky hands and squiggly lines drawn on cookies. “What are you two doing anyway?”  Discussion.  Husband invited to help.  Husband declines invitation to help.  Husband invited to return to garage. Much muttering all round.

Decorating is efficient for a while, assembly line is working.  Again, start to run out of ideas.  Slightly larger portion of wine is poured.  Ideas discussed.  Decision made: Squiggly lines, wonky looking dots deemed to be quite acceptable.  Some discussion about responses one could offer if cookies get too much criticism on Easter Sunday.

Running out of different colours of frosting; using what is left.  Some cookies must now be eaten as some decorating is objectionable.  Imperfect cookies dispatched promptly.

Counting number of people coming to dinner on Easter Sunday.  Counting number of cookies.  Numbers don’t match.  More cookies must be made tomorrow!

Husband strolls through kitchen again, this time wisely declaring that cookies look wonderful and wanting a sample.

What the heck!  More cookies must be made; everyone has cookies and a bit of wine.

All in all, a good afternoon. 

Mum says she had fun!  Might be back tomorrow…

Easter Cookies

Easter Cookies

My niece invited us for dinner on Easter Sunday at her new house.  It is pot luck—everyone brings their speciality.  My husband is making mashed potatoes and dressing to go with the turkey and the ham.  I’m making sugar cookies, not my speciality, not yet anyway!

Why am I making cookies that aren’t my speciality?  I just received these new cookie cutters as a late birthday gift.  They are from Williams-Sonoma called Message in a Cookie, Cookie Cutters and Stamp & Style Easter Cookie Cutters.  They look interesting and creative so I’m trying them.

The basic cookie dough is a Sugar Cookie Recipe included with the cutters.

Ingredients

• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• Sprinkles or other sugar decorations (optional)

Preparation

Using an electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar and salt and beat until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg; beat until well blended, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and beat in vanilla. Add flour and beat on low speed just to blend. Gather dough into ball; divide in half. Form each half into ball and flatten into disk. Wrap disks separately in plastic and chill until firm, at least 4 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.

Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper to 1/8-inch thickness for smaller (2-inch) cookies and 1/4-inch thickness for larger (3- to 4-inch) cookies. Using decorative cookie cutters cut out cookies and transfer to prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart.

 If cookies become too soft to transfer to baking sheets, place in freezer on waxed paper for 5 minutes before continuing. Gather scraps, roll out dough, and cut more cookies, repeating until all dough is used. If not icing cookies, decorate with sprinkles or other sugar toppings, if desired.

Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are firm on top and golden around edges, about 7 -10 minutes for smaller cookies and up to 12 - 14 minutes for larger cookies. Cool completely on rack. Decorate with icing, then sprinkles or other sugar toppings, if desired. Let stand until icing sets. DO AHEAD: Can be made 4 days ahead.

The icing is a Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting.  The recipe is in http://www.epicurious.com/  click here to see it.

I haven’t made roll-out sugar cookies in a long time so I am practising.  I made a batch two days ago; weren’t great. The cookies were edible but I needed to chill the dough longer as they squished out on the parchment paper.

I made another batch yesterday.  They turned out well but the decorating didn’t.  I am rusty.  The vanilla butter cream frosting tasted yummy however my artistic abilities were just this side of horrific. 

So…I’ll be at it again today.  I’ll let you know about the results in the next blog.

Easter cookies ready for the oven

Love in Springtime

The two of them sat huddled together on the curb in front of our house, for over an hour.  Two slender awkward adolescents, a girl with caramel-coloured hair and a boy, more fair.

The day was chilly with drizzling spring rain.  The cement curb must have been hard and cold and damp.  They seemed not to notice, so absorbed in their conversation and shared soda.

They didn’t touch just sat hugging themselves against the weather.  Shoulders hunched around their ears, shivering in the wet.

He chain-smoked, inhaling and exhaling in short bursts—perhaps trying to impress her or calm his nerves.  They talked and talked and laughed, self-consciously drawing patterns in the dirt on the street with random twigs.

I looked out at them occasionally, as I sat writing at my kitchen table.  Wondering to myself, “What are they doing out there in this cold rain?”

Suddenly, I was flooded with memories of you in high school: tall, good-looking, a cigarette dangling dangerously, older than I and so mysterious.

I remember quiet glances and sudden shared laughter.  Self-consciousness.  Heart thudding with excitement and wonder.  The fragrance of after-shave mixed with bitter smoke.

We too were shy, oblivious to the weather, standing at the bus stop scuffing at the wet, spring snow with the toes of our shoes.  Not touching, too bashful and innocent to know what to do.

Young and naïve and new to love. 

I remember you bent down and tenderly kissed the huge wet snowflakes from my eyelashes.

This House of Ours

This Home of Ours

Today is an anniversary.  We’ve lived in our house for six years.

This is a good place to be, cozy and comfortable, a wee house with a generous, treed yard.

When we bought it six years ago, the house hadn’t been updated nor looked after for a long time.  No yard care, no tree trimming, no painting, no cleaning, no maintenance outside or in.  Quite a challenging mess!

We’ve made progress.  Cleaning and repair are simple, mostly hard work.  The “must-do-it-list” still dominates the “want-to-do-it-list”.  Slowly we create changes, improving the appearance and feel of the house — our continuous project.

Each time we re-enter, we are content to be home again.  This house is a humble, relaxed place, a fireside retreat with comfy familiar furniture and cozy welcoming colours.  It is full with music, sunlight, sumptuous baking smells and three playful cats.   It is home, our home, a home we’ve made together with time and love.

My mother has a cross-stitch hanging, handmade by my grandmother, framed in her bedroom.  It says:

Having someplace to go is home.

Having someone to love is family.

Having both is a blessing.

Six years of blessing in this house, this home.

Grapevine Intrusion

Each year, our nonconformist grapevine manages to pull the sturdy cedar fence apart, as it works and twists and squeezes its way along the rails.

We fixed our cedar fence yesterday, nailed the fallen posts back into place, creating again the proper path for the ambitious grapevine to travel.

This presumptuous vine is enterprising and determined!

Our grapevine escapes riotously and regularly into the neighbour’s yard each summer, wrapping sly tendrils round the leaves and twigs of a nearby maple, exuberantly seizing the soft furry trunk of the sumac.

Even though we tie the grapevine to the fence rails to offer support, in some way it resents these restrictions, preferring to stagger and lurch into the openness of the neighbour’s yard in search of greater sunlight.  It is a challenge to keep the errant vine contained at the edge of our property.

We are still learning what the vine wants and needs, in hopes of harvesting delicious fruit at summer’s end.

Usually our grapevine produces only tiny green pellets of grapes.  Last summer, a magical combination of moisture and sun produced clusters of dusky purple grapes!

As we waited for the grapes to swell and ripen, one autumn day, a flock of finches feasted full.  We were too late!

Even though we didn’t get to taste the fruit ourselves, we learned much about nourishing grapevines in our micro-climate.

So, maybe this fall, we’ll be successful…unless the finches get there first!

Survival of the smartest?  Birds-one; us-zero.

Faces of Tulips

My best friend sent me a link to Abbey of the Arts, a guide to transformative living through contemplative and expressive arts.   I was so stunned by the vibrant reds of the tulips contrasted with the ethereal blacks and whites of Christine Valters-Paintner’s photos that it has taken me a few days to want to share them.

Keeping them all to myself seemed necessary; I wanted to secretly enjoy them first.  How selfish!  But delightful!

Look at what she does with a camera; how she lets the photos speak.  Completely lovely!

She begins her Visual Meditation: “The faces of tulips” with a poetic excerpt from Mary Oliver, one of my favourite writers.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips

~Mary Oliver

Explore the website and enjoy Christine's photos and words.  These photos are Christine's.