The beach, and pretty things shared.

family, ocean, , , ,

The day after Christmas I went to the beach with both of my sons and Soldier’s whole family. It was not picnic weather, but neither was it windy or raining, so we spread a cloth on the sand and ate the picnic we’d brought. That was after football games, and shell collecting, and losing a wiffle ball in the extreme piles of driftwood (I found it!)

Soon after we ate, the temperature did begin to drop, so we headed home.

Later in the week I gathered from all over the house and garage my entire shell and rock (not including garden stones) and sea glass collection and laid it out on a big bed, for the Colorado grandchildren to glean from and take back for their own boxes of treasures. I didn’t realize how many of these smaller groupings in plates and bowls there were until I got the idea of passing on some of my Special Things.

We talked about the distinctive features of this or that tiny stone or bit of sea glass, and Brodie tried hard to hear the ocean in a mini version of a conch shell; a little sand dollar was wrapped in tissue so that it wouldn’t get damaged by rocks. Each of the children filled a ziplock snack bag with their chosen favorites, and when they were done I was able to pack all of my remaining things into a small box.

This kind of downsizing is extremely satisfying, and great fun for everyone!

This cookie might be worth the trouble.

Christmas, food and cooking, ,

I did get around to baking cookies — after Christmas Day. With so many family members arriving and departing at different times, our schedule of activities was hard for me to keep up with, and cookies weren’t a high priority. I made only two kinds in the end, the ones for which I had made a point of buying ingredients. One of those was the one I gave to you last month from the New York Times cooking site: Ginger Cheesecake Cookies.

They were not difficult to make, but they were tedious. You freeze the cheesecake filling in little dollops and then wrap soft gingerbread dough around one at a time. That wasn’t hard to do at first, but I had to interrupt my work and put the dough in the fridge for a day, and when I took it out again it never would become pliable enough to manipulate easily.

Piping the dollops, from the video.

However, my dollops of cheesecake came out almost perfectly even with the amount of dough, and in spite of the sloppy way I did everything (for example, I used a spoon rather than a piping bag to form the cheesecake parts), the resulting cookies were big and beautiful — and dreamy-delicious. The balls flatten in the oven and you end up with a hidden layer of cheesecake inside a cookie that has an intoxicating flavor in itself, from fresh, dried and candied ginger going into the mix. The contrast with the creamy cheesecake layer is special; the family members who were still here to try the new cookie raved about them.

When I finally put the last pan in the oven, I thought, “I’ll never make these again!” But I have already changed my mind about that. The recipe is for 18 cookies, which seemed a ridiculously small number to me, so I doubled it. When I saw how huge the cookies came out, and had realized by then that the dough would best be used right away, I decided that a single batch is plenty to work with in one session.

From the NYT Cooking video.

If you are interested in this cookie, and you click on the link for the recipe, you might want to read the cooks’ comments; many of them suggested making this into a bar cookie, to make it faster. This recipe was one of the Cookie Week 2024 collection, so there is an accompanying video of the creator demonstrating everything. I hope some of you try the recipe in one way or another and let me know how it works for you: Ginger Cheesecake Cookies.

So much of any year is flammable.

calendar, poetry, time, ,

I hadn’t read this poem carefully since 2011 when I first posted it. Now that I consider it afresh, that last line about Things I Didn’t Do is haunting me again!

BURNING THE OLD YEAR

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, born 1952, American poet

When when Maria Horvath posted this poem on her blog in 2011, she included the painting below, “Abstracto,” 1935 by Joan Miró

Tea and stollen for the whirled.

books, Christmas, Nativity, tea, ,

Early this morning I waved good-bye to the last Christmas guests as they drove off toward home in Colorado. A few minutes later I was back in bed, and soon after that had fallen asleep while listening to Jonathan Pageau’s podcast on “Christmas: The Anchor of Reality.”

Now it’s afternoon, I just finished breakfast, and decided to try one of the new teas I received recently from Tea Runners. The grandchildren who just departed liked this one, called Winter Wonderland Rooibos. I added half and half, and served up a slice of the stollen Soldier gave me for Christmas.

 

I was arranging my stack of Christmas books and realized that I have not read Winter Fire during either of the Christmas seasons since I got it; it is subtitled Christmas with G.K. Chesterton, and is compiled by Ryan Whitaker Smith. So I opened its pages and browsed a little, and remembered that it is arranged as somewhat of a 30-Day Advent collection. Yet for myself I think it will be a good read in the next few days, as winter has only begun here, and I could use more meditation on the Incarnation, as I process all the events large and small that have whirled around me of late.

There are so many things I want to write about, to highlight here, of our splendid Glad celebrations over the last ten days, but at this point my head is still spinning a bit too crazily, and my heart just wants to go to church, light a candle on St. Basil’s Day and The Circumcision of Christ, and give thanks for all that God has done.

Gift from a friend at church.