I Can Have Cookies Magically

We are hitting new stages at our house all the time due to four little boys who are constantly upping their game and discovering the world. This week we reached the, "Bake Their Own Cookies" stage. Ru asked me if he could make cookies and told me that since he knows how to read decently now and he could tell that I was working on dinner...he'd do it alone!

And then, because he's a total extrovert who always feels better working in a crowd he recruited all of his brothers to be a part of the occasion, including the naked, potty training toddler. Ha!

It was amazing! He found the recipe, read it, got out all the ingredients, made the cookies and put them in the oven and then cleaned up the work area!

Voila! Life is amazing. He's 8 and we can have fresh cookies whenever we say the word.

Poetry Friday: Cookie Season Verse

Happy Poetry Friday everybody! It's been an age since I celebrated, eh? I have been feeling poem-dry and a little intimidated, plus Friday has a way of casting me deep into "who cares anymore!" mode. Heh heh. Ah the weekend, consumer of my motivation.

I am starting to think about New Years Resolutions and all the they entail, the idea of kicking your own butt back into shape and getting back on all the horses that bucked you recently. So, yeah...I'm back poets and poetry lovers. Poetry Friday must not be ditched. I have to be strong and keep at it. Sometimes I will just write crap. This is life. But keeping on and still writing is the the key to ever turning out good stuff. In the next couple of weeks I hope to compile and number all the poetry I've written this year as a result of this project and if that's not motivation, I don't know what is! Hooray for having output!

I am neck-deep in cookie baking right now, dough and flour from floor to ceiling, I swear it! So, it is time to do some cookie poetry. I bake a lot of cookies during the holidays. It is one of the strange projects I have invented for myself which admittedly creates a lot of work but also gives me a huge amount of satisfaction. A thinks I'm insane. I might be insane but I do bake anyway. :) I bake about 20 different varieties every year and every November I sit down and analyze the list from last year and cross out cookies that were just "meh" instead of amazing and add back anything from previous years that is getting a lot of fond remembering and then I go trolling for new recipes to add. This year I decided to make baklava, something I've made and enjoyed before but never at Christmas.... and then a poem came with it.

Baklava in Advent

I  wrote "baklava" down on the cookie list
It sounded strange but delicious to me,
Sandwiched between the gingerbread men
And sugar cookies iced with sprinkles.
I brush butter, sprinkle spiced nuts and
Gently coax the butterfly wing dough
Into softly fluted layers, rich with scent.
I preheat the oven and remember visiting
The sun-baked land of the Christmas Child.
I remember the heavy pressing heat in Galilee,
Arid country shattered and dusty like pastry.
There was a fervent squawking of hawkers
Selling whatnots in the streets of Jerusalem,
Over-laced with honey and spices drifting up
From the tented market stalls below our hotel.
I slide the finished pan into the waves of heat
Squinting to see through the invisible billows.
And upstairs, amid the squawking of my children
I address a Christmas card to my cousin in Israel
And wonder to myself, how much postage
It will require to send our family photo to that
Exotic port, home of honey and warmed spices,
Birth place of my baklava and my God.


Please do realize that I am in no way asserting that Israel is the birthplace of baklava, just that The Middle East is. I am no sort of expert on the origin of foods and this particular one is a source of great contention among peoples of various Cradle of Civilization nations.

Have a poem you want to share, either one you wrote or one you admire that another author created? You can go share too but posting a link in the comments of today's host for Poetry Friday: Robyn Hood. Happy weekend everyone!

Teething in the Glow of the Christmas Tree

It's a good day at our house. The kind of day when we have (finally, finally) a chance to reflect on the week and the season that have been whooshing past with all kinds of speed and just soak in good moments.

Moments like this. 

Is there anything sweeter than babies asleep in the sunshine? Poor little Nib has been extra sleepy lately because he's cutting the second of his two big rabbit teeth on the top. And also one side tooth. These will be his fourth and fifth teeth. He's positively bristling with ivory these days. I think the whole process must be hurting him a lot because, periodically, I give him a dose of painkiller and he collapses quite promptly into a deep sleep and is sacked out for an hour or so. I'm glad he's getting rest although I hate to see that he's in such pain that he needs to collapse to recover repeatedly. True to form, he's ridiculously good-natured for a teething baby. He is one of the most resilient individuals I've ever met.

The other thing that's wearing him out is his new incessant desire to stand and walk. I think we might have another early walker on our hands, just like Ru who walked at the absurd age of 7 months....right across the kitchen counter to his Aunt Jane's arms. Happy Thanksgiving he crowed and then boop, boop, boop...there he was walking. Maybe Nib will reprise the performance for Christmas or New Year's. Maybe I should alert all 8 of his aunts of the possibility and see if I can get them to compete.

The boys are all down for naps at the moment after a nice crackly fireplace reading session downstairs and then a long game of hanging and then re-hanging and then re-re-hanging candy canes all over our Christmas tree. I always forget to buy candy canes before we put the tree up, it's getting to be tradition, and then I have to run madly all over town finding some, mid-way through December. The bonus is that I almost always get a discount because they're already marking them down at our local drugstore.

I plan to get myself back down to the kitchen with all due haste, get a load of laundry humming and then mix up a batch of cookie dough for assembly-line cutting out and baking once the boys are up and buzzing their way down the stairs. We also have outdoor lights and fresh pine garland to hang before A is home and dinner is making it's steaming way to the table! Tis the season for all sorts of fabulous merriment!

Freeze The Good Stuff

 The nights are getting pretty chilly now, we're breaking out the footie pajamas on a regular basis. Ru asks every single morning now, "And Mommy, is it going to be cold today?" because he is hopeful that we will have a warm day which means that he can wear short sleeves and sandals, and that there will be snow, which is his fondest dream at the moment. I kinda think this cold weather business is here to stay for a while.

And we have a new family dessert, ice cream is passe, cocoa is in. A has been pioneering a new family tradition of after dinner homemade cocoa...and we're drinking them topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, in little espresso mugs. So much fun! I am hoping the trend continues long enough to extend beyond the classic rendition to: warm eggnoggy white cocoa, minty cocoa, nutmeg dusted mugs, and maybe a white chocolate variation? Its a great way to get a little, warm shot of dairy in at the end of the day. What flavor dreams am I missing?

 The boys are enjoying the leaf fall and the fact that at the moment there are giant piles to jump in, on every single curb. There are detours to be made between the car and any door....wander this direction to kick leaves....wander that direction to jump in a heap....wander over there to throw some in the air like confetti....  Such fun. Strange to see the naked trees reaching up over the horizon now though...

 Been having lots of fun in the kitchen lately. Made the first batch of Christmas cookies and packed them away in the frozen zone. I baked up some simple, no fuss chocolate spice cookies, Midnight Cracklers from Dorie Greenspan's classic baking tome. Pretty dead easy and dark, rich, chocolatey flavor...mmm...I'm not even that wild a fan of the whole chocolate chocolate chocolate thing but, yeah...these are good. They remind me of Mexican hot chocolate with the rich chocolate, hint of spice business. We're off to a good start.

 Oh...and warning. The dough is almost better than the finished cookies. So delicious. Like moist grown-up brownies in a chewy, wad-able, hold-a-chunk-in-your-hand form. Dangerous stuff folks. I bagged those suckers up for the freezer at lightening speed!

 I also baked up this pound cake a while ago and remembered, (per the recipe's instruction) that I'd frozen one for later and we broke one out to celebrate an autumn picnic in our yard after church on Sunday. This pound cake rocks and it freezes astoundingly. Its almost better out of the freezer...I'm not sure how that's possible, but there it is.

 See, aren't the colors an amazing whirl of light? Most of these leaves are down already. That's why we're glad we are lucky enough to own a camera. Nice to freeze more than just cake and cookies for later.

Happy last moments of Autumn everyone!

Back in the Saddle

I am very full of heart tonight. How could I not be? Really, sitting here in the cricketing evening (yes there are crickets in our part of the small city we've moved to) listening to the wind in the maples behind our house I feel so many shades of "good" that its preposterous to be trying to enumerate really. The keyboard is just as springy as I remember, the lovely, zippy Internet so full of inspiration, friends and brilliance and the house, this lovely, dreamy house...every inch my hopes come to life. Its true that there's no bathroom on the whole first floor, and yes there's some amazing acoustic tile and faux wood paneling and heaven knows the master bedroom entry floor could hardly be creakier....but I do love it. There are wood floors, there's a fireplace, windows everywhere you turn, a clotheline pulley, an old apple tree, some glass door knobs, radiators, and all kinds of fabulous little bits that I'm still discovering.

Can you believe this cool window crank on my kitchen sink window?

And check out this cool old clock they left....am swoony over it.

A nun from next door (there are nuns next door!) stopped by to beam at the children and greet us energetically and made sure that we knew were were welcome to come over anytime. The neighbor lent us forks for our first meal at the house, we've had three plates of welcoming cookies and two deliveries of homegrown tomatoes and something like 10-12 visits with people from the surrounding houses, all grinning away and telling us to knock on their doors if we needed anything. The garbage men have been past and taken away the first load of packing paper and boxes, we've found the flour and the canned peaches and our collection of silverware although admittedly we have no silverware tray at the moment. I have cooked real food for three days running now and we're starting to think about finding some of the laundry baskets and hoping one of the dressers I keep trolling Craigslist for will materialize so we can start putting clean clothes away again and stop living out of our suitcases.

This is just about how great life is at the moment.

It is a bit absurdly chaotic still but, really...every time another neighbor rings our doorbell or we're pulling our hair out over all the boxes and we go outdoors and watch the kids tumbling around in the grass of our very own, generous lawn....I feel painfully, stunningly lucky. I can't believe this is me! I feel like I'm living in a movie script or like I've wandered into an episode from Mr. Rogers. How in the world does this sort of thing really happen to people, least of all me! I feel a little dizzy from the fabulousness.

The Big Rock in our backyard. (with a load of cousins on it)

There are so many thousands of little delicious bits about our new house to share with you all that I am sure the introduction will stretch out for some time but, tonight I especially want to share with you the lovely wood floors we uncovered when we took off the amazingly nasty blue carpet that was EVERYWHERE in many of the rooms.

The men who ripped it out for me said that that guessed it was at least 30 years old. My shots somehow look a lot more rosy than it really did.

 There were dark grey trails where the main traffic patterns had been. It was positively delirious to see the beautiful wood emerge from under all of that and watch as it became more and more alive as it was swept and then washed.

I knew it was going to be stunning.

Our tree hydrangea....so pretty!

The basement door.

Of course the rooms are mostly a jumble of boxes and assorted homeless items with the occasional bushy haired child thrown wildly in for good measure but, eventually here I will be able to do a more personal introduction to the particular spaces we're living in these days. I am already dreaming of paint!