The quiet before the storm

Merry Christmas

Andy and I are all set for the festivities.  Mike left for Colorado today for eight days to ski with Nate and Adam.  The house is clean and decorated and the first guest arrives the 22nd.  I think cookie baking is in order pretty shortly after that.  The next day Brooks and Carly arrive, that's the 23rd.  The twenty-fourth evening we go to church and then out to eat at Spagos (sp?) The 25th we have a large Christmas luncheon and then in the afternoon the guests scatter and go.  Brooks is deployed early in January for nine months so prayers will be welcomed.

Life changes so fast any more. It is difficult to keep up.  But the activities keep one young and active.

Winston is healing nicely and is off all medication.  He did not seem to mind going off all four pain killers and did not get the shakes or have any reaction at all.  He's a tough dog.  The only thing it did was increase his appetite.  He is skinny so he can handle the extra calories.

David has a new dog, Leo.  He lost his dog several months ago and finally got over it and found the puppy, Leo.  He is spoiling him as he did his other dogs. If you are a dog you would want to belong to David.

Andy has selected his classes at OSU for the next term.  He does love to learn. You would have to beat me with a big stick to do what he does at Ohio State.  He feels right at home there after all he did teach there a long time ago.

2019 is wedding year for us.  Good news about engagement just keeps on keeping on. Andy and I will also celebrate 60 years of marriage in April.

Have a lovely Christmas and may 2019 be exactly right for you.

Madeleine At the Franklin Conservatory

Cookies

It was a Christmas tradition of mine to make hundreds of cookies, usually with my nieces Nancy and Linda.  I would take a platter for each teacher to the school on Sunday afternoon and place one on each teacher's desk to greet them on Monday morning.  I would make big platters as Christmas gifts for the relatives until one of them said "Oh, just what we need, sigh." and then that was the end of that! I have not baked large amounts of cookies for years or even small amounts.  But for some reason yesterday I hankered for those dessert cookies; the recipe was published by the Dispatch in November.  I had submitted it three years ago, and for some reason, it popped up this year reminding me how good they are. So I doubled the recipe yesterday and it filled three tins, one of which disappeared last night.  They are better the next day, but still yummy right away. They are not beauties but simple cake-like cookies that everyone smacks their lips in delight when they taste them.

I had the kitchen in disarray like you would not believe and both dishwashers were full and running steadily.  All the counters were full and I just did not remember that cookies sound simple, but if you don't have someone else in the kitchen to take up some slack, not so simple. (The three dogs were NO help.) Nor was the husband.

The cookie recipe, dessert cookies, was in a little hand done recipe booklet that came to me from Lavonn Rogers someone  who antiqued with me sometimes.  Every recipe that I tried in that rag-tag booklet turned out to be delicious.  It is as though only the tried and true recipes made it into this little, now valuable, addition to my recipe drawers.

Alyssa and Beth are baking cookies Saturday.  I will try to get them to try some of the recipes from this booklet so that they too can pass on some of these gems.  As for me, I've done my cookies for the year (now that the kitchen is back in order) and now I am going to hide the rest of these treats on the sun porch where they will be cool and safe.

Happy baking...if that is what makes you happy.

See.  Rag-tag but good

Just now ·