Cookies Anyone

As a child, two of my favorite cookies were my mother's "Dad's Cookies" and my grandmother's "Soft Molasses Cookies". While I have made my mother's cookie recipe numerous times over the years with great success, I could never turn out a molasses cookie to measure up to my memory Grammie Wile's Soft Molasses Cookies. I think I am missing an important ingredient

...the wood stove!

My mother's recipe:

 

...but not my mother's Dad's Cookie!

 

Expanding waistlines have necessitated some revisions to the basic recipe...we could just resist eating cookies period, but what's the fun in that...so I made some changes to cut down a little on the fat and sugar, making them a little healthier. 

Dad's Cookies
1/4 c. butter or margarine
1/4 c. applesauce
1 c. brown sugar 
1 c. sugar replacement (I used Compliments) ***
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. flour
1\2 tsp. salt
1\2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 c. coconut
2 c. rolled oats (I used the old fashion kind)
2 Tbsp.ground flax seed
1/2 c. dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream the butter, brown sugar, and sugar replacement. Add eggs, apple sauce and vanilla and mix together. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet and mix until combined. Roll dough into balls, place on a cookie sheet and flatten balls with a fork dipped in milk. Or...you can be lazy like me and just drop the dough from a spoon onto the cookie sheet and press down with a fork.  Bake for 12 minutes or until slightly browned. Remove from cookie sheet a cool onto a rack.

*** You are supposed to be able to replace sugar measure for measure using this product but don't. I find it leaves an after taste but using it to replace half the sugar called for in a recipe works fine.

Never Too Old

Posting on this blog has ranged from sporadic to almost never in the past year or two and it's been about six months since I've even bothered to check in. Imagine my surprise when I finally do, I discover a lot of my photos have gone missing. After checking back through old post I have come to the realization that my big mistake was uploading photos directly from my Dropbox photo file. When I later deleted photos from my Dropbox folder, I inadvertently deleted all traces of them from anywhere I had posted them on the web, my blogs, Pinterest  and perhaps even Facebook. For someone who loves photos, this was an important lesson for me as in this day and age everyone including me relies too heavily on saving everything in the "cloud." But photo sites are not forever, and just because you may have uploaded photos to other places online does not guarantee you will always have them.

I do save all my special photos, especially of family, to my hard drive as well as to those little UBS thingies as a backup, and I still get a lot of my photos printed because nothing will ever replace the feeling of having a physical picture in your hand, but I will from now on, make sure I save any photo I post to FB, Pinterest or my blogs to folders on my hard drive before uploading them so they don't disappear at a later date.

I have learned a valuable lesson, proving old dogs do learn new tricks, and would like to pass on some advice, especially for young parents today. The digital  age is wonderful! It never ceases to amaze me what we can do with a camera, the thousands of images we can take and edit online so we do not have to waste money on imperfect images, and the wonderful overlays and backgrounds we can add to make them even more special, especially as memorials to those who are no longer with us. But, unless you are saving them to your hard drive, backing them up or having them printed off, you risk loosing them as soon as the the editing site you are using goes belly up. I have shelves lined with photo albums filled with pictures of my kids that I consider some of my most valued processions and cannot imagine not having them. Take the time, save your special photos, and print them off so you will have them to enjoy later.

"You Are On The Right Path!"

I love this quote about gardening...

From Two Women and a Hoe

but this  quote is more 

indicative of the reality of gardening.

(though, if you were to quote me,

there would be some extra choice words inserted

between 

"but" and "weeds!")

A slow start hitting the gardens this year resulted in a rampant

overgrowth of weeds, 

shrubs needing pruning and 

plants needing dividing.

August is normally a month that I give gardening a rest

...it's just too damn hot, but I am still out there

slowly tackling one garden at a time.

We spent too much time, effort and $$$

over the years to have our park like

gardens go wild.
 I'm just not ready to abandon them now,
but life would be a lot easier if
the hubby could help with
the "grunt" work.

...oh well...one day at a time!

Aside from the grunt work,
I am having fun making some new additions to the gardens,
like this old  watering can
 I picked up at a yard sale for 50 cents.
...love cheap!

I made three stump gardens today.

This one is my favorite.

Using rocks I already had scattered around the gardens, 

I cobbled together my own little inuksuk
for my road side garden.

 Inukshuk, the singular of inuksuit, means 
"in the likeness of a human"
 in the Inuit language.

The traditional meaning of the inukshuk is

 "Someone was here" 

or

 "You are on the right path."

A closer up view...and I know what you are thinking but I assure you
...it was totally unintentional!
Actually,
it shows up in the picture more than when you
are looking at the figure itself.
I am giving my inuksuk a name,
"Mellors"
after the games keeper, Oliver Mellors from the book,
"Lady Chatterley's Lover."

As for that "stone",

 I may just keep my eyes open for a more realistic looking one 

to replace it with.

After all, if the Louvre in Paris, France can exhibit "theirs"

 and call them works are art...

I should be able to display mine!

 

Dad and Goliath

Paul Merril Hiltz

Nov. 28th, 1926 - May 8th, 1997 

My dad was many things, 

and while he was not always the father

he could have been,

 he had a kind and loving heart, 

a keen and witty mind, 

and 

an uncanny ability to tell a great story.

 

Dad and Goliath

A slingshot,

my father's constant companion,

lovingly whittled from forked branch,

traveled in his pocket

from youth throughout manhood.

...a witness to his life,

the loss of an eye,

a brother-in-law's death

delivered by my father's hand,

and rejection by army recruiters

who had no use

for a one eyed soldier.

 Carried in his pocket

during vows softly spoken,

the birth of eight children,

at bootlegger's 

and Legion Halls,

and on the job,

one night in Cape Breton,

in a boarding house room

cold enough to freeze

 piss in a bucket.

Men hastily stripped down to 

long-johned bodies

rushed under blankets of wool,

only to realize

no one had turned out the light!

None brave enough to venture

back out into the cold,

my one eyed father

 faced Goliath that night.

With a button ripped from his chest

he loaded up his sling...

and eye to glowing eye

took aim...

and

"PING"

turned out the light.