Monthly Archives: January 2012

Rain Songs

family, music, nature, water, , ,

Rain is falling and I’m happy. Recently I refreshed my memory bank of rain songs by means of the recording, “Rainy Day Dances, Rainy Day Songs,” by Patty Zeitlin and Marcia Berman. We used to borrow an LP from the library when the kids were little, and the songs have lodged in my mind forever.

On the recording there was also an instrumental tune, “Over the Waterfall,” played on the hammered dulcimer. I can’t find anything on YouTube by the musicians who gave us this collection that so blessed my children and me, but I did find a similar, simpler rendition.

I loved the silly dancing and singing we did to songs like “I Don’t Care if the Rain Comes Down,” “Windy Day,” and “Why Can’t I Play in the Rain?”

I bought my CD copy of the album from the Bullfrog Ballades site, where you can also hear samples of the songs. Today I’m having a lazy day being thankful that God is watering the earth again, as I let my thoughts slosh about in rainy images like this one of me (on the left) with my sister a long time ago. If you can’t play in the rain, perhaps a puddle will do.

Lemony cookies are good any time….

food and cooking, ,


Last week I finished baking the last of the Christmas cookies. Encouraged by the happy eaters of the Lemon-Poppyseed Sandwich Cookies at previous holiday gatherings, this year I had made a double batch, and then ran out of time to complete more than half of them. The remaining dough and filling waited in the fridge until I got back some strength, and a plan for where to send the finished product so that I wouldn’t eat them all myself.

With so many young, even teen-aged, folk around here at Christmas, I expected to see the cookies go faster than they did. But never during the week of feasting did I spy anyone who might vie with me for the Cookie Monster title, and there are certainly no other contenders remaining in this house now. So when I found a willing person to be my delivery man, I sent them to Soldier and Joy.

The recipe (based on this one at Epicurious) starts with sugar cookies that are heavy with poppyseeds and two sources of lemon flavor, and finishes with the crunchy cookies enclosing an also lemony cream cheese filling.

At the epicurious.com site one can read comments from many readers detailing what happened when they tried the recipes, and the various changes that we daring cooks insist on making.

Most people who had made these cookies thought there should be more filling than planned for in the recipe as given, and I also ran out of filling at my first trial, so this year I doubled the cookie part, but tripled the filling. Not that it’s a problem to have leftovers of either. The cookies are wonderful by themselves, and the filling would be awfully nice spread on toast.

The majority of bakers also liked the cookies better after they had sat in the refrigerator and softened up, though the original recipe said to fill them not long before eating to keep the cookies crisp. I prefer them soft, as did most of the people I fed them to. They are good straight from the freezer, too, I found out!

Here is my version with the extra filling, and a couple of other changes, cut in half so that no one has to assemble 60+ cookies to find out if she likes them.

Lemon-Poppyseed Sandwich Cookies
COOKIES
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
4 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
FILLING
12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preparation
FOR COOKIES:
Mix flour, salt and baking powder in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until light. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in egg, then poppy seeds, lemon peel and extracts. Mix in dry ingredients. Gather dough into ball, divide into two parts and flatten each into a disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least 2 hours. If wrapped well, it will last in the refrigerator over a week.
Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter 2 large baking sheets. Roll out 1 dough disk on floured surface to 1/8-inch thickness. Using 2-inch-diameter cookie cutter, cut out cookies. Arrange cookies 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheets. Gather scraps; reroll and cut out more cookies.
Bake cookies until edges just begin to color, about 18 minutes. (If you use insulated sheets as I did they might take longer.) Cool cookies on sheets 3 minutes, then transfer to racks and cool completely. Repeat rolling, cutting and baking with remaining dough. (Can be made ahead. Store in airtight container at room temperature up to 2 weeks or freeze up to 1 month.)
FOR FILLING:
Beat all ingredients in large bowl until light and fluffy. Spread 2 teaspoons filling over bottom of 1 cookie. Press second cookie, bottom side down, onto filling. Repeat with remaining cookies and filling. (Can be made ahead. Cover and chill.)

Some of the cookies in this later batch are a bit wrinkly, a result of the dough having dried out a little. I did add a few drops of water when I re-rolled the scraps and that helped them look better. But the wrinkly cookies were otherwise fine.

After my last post featuring a photo of lemons, Jody asked how I like to use these fruits. I consider myself a good person to ask, because my father raised not only oranges but lemons, and until a few years ago when someone very stupid — yes, I mean it — took out the two large trees that remained from ten acres of lemon grove, I used to have as many lemons as I wanted for free.

Lately I’ve been using a lot of lemons just to add the juice to hot water for drinking on cold days. But of more elaborate recipes, some that I’ve loved over the years are Lemon Curd, Greek Egg-Lemon Soup, Lemon Chicken, and Lemon Pudding Cake. And now — Lemon-Poppyseed Sandwich Cookies!

Sunshine Bounty

agriculture, church, food and cooking, friends, winter

Our neighbor Elizabeth stopped Mr. Glad and me as we were walking past her house and gave us these lemons that she had just picked.

Citrus fruits are like a long-term investment that God makes on our behalf, pouring light and heat into the fruits over several months, then rain for another while, as we work and play through Spring and Summer and Fall.

Then comes the time of year when light is weak and slant. We need extra vitamin C in our diets, and some color in our field of vision. Well, aren’t we lucky. The activity in the account we probably weren’t thinking about bears a dividend of sunshine.

Ida’s Letters – And who was she?

family, history, , ,

Ida was a great aunt of my husband’s, whom I met once when she was old and senile, but cheerful. 50 years before that she had traveled from California to Panama and Peru as a missionary, and the gifts she brought home long ago have decorated our houses over the decades and made her name a household word. Like this carved gourd:

Recently I came into possession of several packets of the letters she wrote home from 1919 to 1922, when she was in her early 30’s. I am spending many hours of these winter days typing Ida’s words into computer documents so that this little bit of family history will be accessible to whoever is interested.

Ida wrote to her mother as she was preparing months ahead:

Florence Fletcher is making me a couple of skirts and a dress and I have enough waists and underclothes. You know things mildew down there so I’m taking only just what I need and no more. I’ll have to hang everything that I possess in the sun every week so I won’t want a couple of trunks full of things. Picture me dressed in white every day, just like a real lady. When my corset covers wear out (I have 6 good ones) you can make me some more.

Now don’t worry about me. I’ll get some fish berries and flush and won’t even be sea sick. God will lead me there safely or he never would have called me to go so you just rest easy in the Lord because that is all there is to do.

The night before she departed from San Francisco:

My war stamps will bring me $42.90. I had to wait 10 days so they (post office) are going to send me the money. My ticket will be $114. The fare is $152 with a 25% discount for missionaries. So you see I have plenty of money…. Sent my trunk to-day and to-morrow a.m. Sat. I go up to the city on the 7.20 train. I’m taking my rattan suit case and then 3 suit boxes done up in heavy paper with a shawl strap. Have practically all of my clothes with me.

She makes me laugh out loud, the funny way she relates her responses to the people and culture she encounters. And I admit that some of my laughter is over her less-than-charitable opinions which I would be unkind to publish. But here’s a fairly innocent clip from Panama, less than a month after she’d left home:

I’m sick of cockroaches but I do have many in my room. But ants and cockroaches have complete possession of our kitchen. Our girl is so shiftless and it doesn’t seem to be any body’s business to make her clean up.

There is no such thing as wall paper here. It wouldn’t stay on the walls – too damp – Nearly all the houses are ceiled, sides and all and painted in a most hideous shade of bluish pea green. The kind that makes you crazy. They are strong on red too. You’d think it would make them hot to look at it.

I like the spirit of someone who writes things like, “Don’t worry about me because you know I’m always happy anywhere and I sleep and eat like a brick, as per usual.” So I’ll likely have more expressions of her verve to pass on as I go along with Ida on her South American adventure.