A Recipe From The Cookie Lady

Tima, you are definitely going to get a great cookie recipe on my blog this week! Since that seems to be almost all I have done over the past week is make cookies, that is what I am blogging about.

I love to bake. That is not a surprise to any of you, I know. The thing is, I'm not so crazy about having to do all the clean up, but unfortunately, that just comes with the territory, so I don't complain about it too much. I have a pretty good routine that works for me as I usually do about seven of the large (12 by 17 inch) cookie sheets. I tear off strips of non stick Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil and line the sheets with it. (That way I don't have to grease the pans). We have a working table in our kitchen and I get Dick on one side of it and I on the other and we spoon the batter by tablespoons full onto the baking sheets, five one way and three the other so that we have fifteen cookies per sheet. I bake the cookies according to directions two sheets at a time. One sheet on the lower level rack the other on the rack above it, which I keep on the third level from the bottom. My oven has five levels that I can place my racks on. The baking time is so much less for the batch when you do two at a time. After all the cookies are baked and cooled on racks (I leave them in the cookie sheets until they are cooled) I stack them on my table and when they are totally cold, I put put them in the freezer in containers that have tight fitting lids or tops. (I use lots of plastic containers) Now for the cleanup. I take the foil liners and clean them off one at a time with a paper towel. If you put the foil close to the sink, the crumbs will fall into the sink and the little bit that sticks to the foil will come right off with a little bit of pressure as you guide the paper towel toward the sink. I then take a clean dish cloth and rinse it in water and get it as dry as I can, and wipe off the cookie sheets. (Very little comes off, really) . I then stack the cookie sheets on the counter top and place the cleaned foil sheets in a stack on top of the cookie sheets and voila! they are ready for a new baking day, which usually is the next morning. This really works for me and it avoids having to grease the pans and then having to clean the icky sticky cookie sheets.

So now, I have to tell you about the new recipe I tried today. With so many recipes, I put my own touch on them by adding things other than the recipe calls for. My family is not fond of raisins in the cookies, so I usually substitute. Most of them don't like nuts in them either, but Dick and I are very fond of nuts in just about everything. We eat nuts every day, actually. You can add raisins or anything else you might want in these cookies.

So here it is sports fans:

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup margarine
1 cup peanut butter (don't use an off brand. Creamy or nutty can by used)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 and 1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 cups pecans chopped
1 cup milk chocolate chips
2 cups flour
2 cups oatmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Cream margarine, peanut butter and sugars together until creamy, add eggs and beat again until light and fluffy. Then add the flour, oatmeal, baking powder, soda, salt until well blended. Then add pecans and milk chocolate chips. Stir until well blended and put in refrigerator for thirty minutes to chill. Drop chilled dough by tablespoons onto baking sheets. Bake @ 350 degrees 13 to 14 minutes or until golden.

I do hope that some of you will try this and if you do, please let me know how you liked them.

I might mention that the recipe called for putting all the dry ingredients into a bowl and to stir it well to mix before adding it to the creamed mixture. I actually measured my dry ingredients into my large flour sifter and sifted it into the batter. This way the soda and baking powder get mixed evenly. You can choose to do it either way or if you have your own way of adding dry ingredients, disregard the two suggestions.

A Bright New Day

First of all I have to say, I'm totally well from my fall and feeling energetic and ready to start baking for the holidays. I have to give another big thanks to Jill (Grandma Honey) for being interested enough as to why they wouldn't wrap my ribs, to look up the answer on the internet. In 1990 they did a research on wrapping and found out that it did absolutely no good and could even do harm. Also, they recommended that patients with rib problems do deep breathing. I had been avoiding this as it really did hurt. I started right away and within four days I could totally breathe deeply without pain. Each day I improved so much so that now I am back to normal, my normal at any rate. I just wish I could do something so simple to make me lose my back pain and make my legs stop hurting. Oh well, I have learned to live with these problems.

Dick turned on our large freezer Sunday evening and I am ready to go. If I don't start in November, I won't have enough cookies to fill the Christmas boxes. I hate to start thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving, but as long as I am feeling well enough, I'm going to start tomorrow. I made one batch of peanut butter cookies (Dick's favorite) but I tried a new recipe (you know me, I love to try new ones) but I am not too crazy about them so am going to go back to the old originals. Everyone seems to love them best anyway, and they always turn out for me.

We are also going to get started soon on Dick's Danish pastry. That is a huge job, but fortunately for me, all I do is make the Danish dough and he does all the rest. Dick used to work for a baker and paid for his college education doing that. He used to make 80 pies a day, along with a lot of other things. It was always in his blood anyway as his dad was a baker and his grandfather was a baker. They both had their own bakeries and when his dad was in the Navy, he baked huge cakes for V.I.P.s. We have pictures of some of them and I wish now that I knew how to put them on this blog, but Dick doesn't even have those on the computer. He was never close to his dad as he left his mom for another woman and Dick hardly ever saw him all the time he was growing up, but his grandfather really took the place of his dad and Dick's love for him is enormous. He looks up to him as being the perfect roll model. I think he wanted to be close to him all the time, so he was around the bakery even as a small boy.

We are going to Heather and Matt's for Thanksgiving. Matt is Sue's oldest son, the one who has Sue's darling grandchildren, whose pictures appear often on Sue's blog. It was a wonderful surprise to find out that Sue and all of her family, except for daughter Karin and husband Bob, are going to be there too!! That will be so neat because that means that we will be spending both Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Andersons. This is definitely a first for us. There are going to be so many people there, over 20 as Heather is having all of her side of the family plus a couple of friends too, so it should be a merry place!!

I'd best get back to work. I am cleaning out our kitchen pantry. We donated a lot of canned goods as our ward is doing that this month. It will all go to a local food pantry for the homeless. It's a good cause and now that I have so much more space in my pantry, I can really make it look nice. Another reason I wish I could take pics and post them the same day. I am almost finished but took some time out to do my weekly post. Hope all of you had a good week and that the coming one will be a good one for all. My love to you...........

Learning Patience

This past week has been a pretty slow one, I'm afraid, and for a person like me, who seems to be busy and on the go, it has been one of practicing patience. I'm afraid I have never been one to be patient and I do so admire those who are. When the doctor told me I would be very sore for a few weeks, he wasn't just kidding and I am wondering just what he meant by a few weeks. It has just been seventeen days since my fall, and it feels like seventeen weeks.

Actually, I have been a few places, such as doctors offices, lab, and last night we went to some good friends of ours. They live in a gated community. We had dinner and enjoyed watching their video of their Alaskan cruise. How beautiful that scenery was. They had some great shots of the glaciers and the big chunks that fell into the ocean, complete with the sound. They really had such a good time and their son surprised them by hosting the other two children, their spouses and their grandchildren for this remarkable trip. This was such a great anniversary present to them. It was so fun to see the surprise on their faces when ALL of their family showed up, not just to see them off but to go with them. We also watched Dancing with the Stars so we didn't get home until after ten.

I had to take my big pillow with me, which I partially sit on and wrap the rest of it around my ribs. I don't know why the doctors don't wrap the ribs tightly anymore. They used to do that and I am sure it would make me more comfortable.

It was a good thing that we did go over there, otherwise Dick would have been going to the door for trick or treaters every few minutes. We only have a couple of kids in our neighborhood and where all these kids come from, I have no idea unless they bus them in. They come in great big groups, sometimes ten or so and it is constant for a couple of hours. We have well over 100 each year. It is fun to see the little ones in their costumes, but we have a lot of teenagers, who I think are a little old for that.

I have been doing a lot of reading. It's a good think I like to do that. The phone seems to ring off the hook too and it is hard for me to talk. It's bad enough to have my partially paralized vocal chords to deal with, but the sore ribs make it hard for me to breathe deaply and I have to do that in order to have enough force on those chords to get more than a whisper out. I always sound like I have laryngitis anyway, my voice is so raspy, but it is hard to talk loud enough sometimes for people to hear me over the phone.

Such a boring post this is, but I just needed everyone to know that I do think of you so often and love reading your posts. I don't have many blogging friends, but the ones I do have are so very special. I really wouldn't want any more. I couldn't possibly feel close to them all the way I do to you guys.

Hopefully next week I'll have more interesting things to post about, although at the moment I can't imagine what it will be. I also wanted to post some pictures, but guess what? I have forgotten how and Dick is at his church meeting. Can you believe that? Oh well.............

Home Sweet Home

We got home from Dallas last Saturday evening and let me tell you, the best thing about that whole day was getting to sleep in my own bed. I swear, every time I get on an airplane I am convinced that the seats are smaller, with less room in the front and to the side than ever. The last time I flew it was to Dallas, and the way I feel now, I don't think I'll ever fly there again. (Sorry Nancy).

I have been inundated with phone calls and every one asks, "Did you have a good time?" My answer......."No." Of course they want to know why so I start out telling them that the first three and a half days were great, even though we didn't get to visit with my niece, Nancy, very much. She was so busy. The phone rang off the hook. It was either about her estate or the wedding. She is finally getting everything sorted out as far as her estate is concerned, but it's never really over, I think. I have told Dick that I am going to be very mad at him if he dies before me, even though our "estate" is very small.

I will have to say that the wedding was wonderful. David, the groom, had never been married and he was 41 years old and Nancy's "baby". His wife, Karyn, is such a lovely girl and we feel he really has a wonderful life ahead of him. The wedding was held in the Dallas Art Museum which is in downtown Dallas and it is a beautiful, very large place. We had to walk from one end of the building to the other, and I was beginning to feel sorry that I hadn't brought my wheelchair, but thankfully, they had one to loan me, so Dick got his exercise that night pushing me around, first to the wedding itself, which was beautiful. Then the reception was at the other end and was held in a super large place with a big stage for the band. The ceiling was very high and our nephew, Fred, got some pretty neat shots by going half way up the stairway to take some pictures. Of course, every time he turned around, he was taking photos with his really nice professional camera. The catered dinner was amazing and the wedding cake consisted of multiple small, super delicious cupcakes shaped like a large wedding cake. Terrific idea, I thought. We moved our chairs over a bit so we could watch the dancing and from that point everything went downhill for me. The band played a nice slow dance so Dick and I danced it and when he brought me back to sit in my wheelchair, I started to sit down (or so I thought) and for some reason, instead of sitting down, I must have lost my balance and I started to go forwards. I threw my left arm out as I was falling in that direction, and I landed on that hard floor on my left side. A few of the men wanted to try and help me up, but I told them I just wanted to lie there for a minute until I could take stock of my physical condition. I hoped nothing was broken. Finally, I let them help me up into my wheelchair and fortunately I didn't have to wait a super long time until it was time to leave. Of course we were one of the last ones to go and had to go through the ceremony of them throwing rose petals as the newlyweds as they exited the building. It was much prettier than rice. They brought the car around to me but not before my discovering that I had lost the center diamond in my wedding ring. I was doubly sick but Nancy assured me that David would fix it for me after he got back from the honeymoon. In fact, he did get to look at it, because I discovered it before we left the dining room. We did go right home and I went straight to bed. I was really hurting but I was so exhausted that I did sleep. The next morning I could hardly get out of bed and my ribs hurt so badly and my upper thigh had a huge bruise . I told Dick that I thought I had better go the the ER because I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to make sure that nothing was broken or that my lung hadn't been pierced. We got straight into the ER (not like here, where sometimes you have to wait for hours unless they feel you need to get in immediately) The doctor who took care of me was so nice. I told him that I had a grandson about his age who was in medical school and he seemed very interested and asked, "Which medical school ?" and I told him it was UC Irvine and he said, "Oh he must be very smart!" I bragged a bit and had to tell him that Todd was a straight A student. But I also told him that Todd was older and was 29. He said, "Oh that is how old I am." He looked me over and said he wanted to take Xrays and when he came in after getting the results he told me that I was very lucky that I hadn't broken anything. He was quite amazed that I didn't at my age. He also said I must have pretty strong bones. I have a huge hematoma that will not be healing any time soon, and he told me that I was going to be sore for a long time as sometimes when ribs are as badly bruised as mine are, it can hurt as bad as when the ribs are broken. He sent me home with instuctions to ice everything and wanted to give me pain medication. Of course I had to tell him I was allergic to all that stuff, so I have been having to tough it out. I can tell you that plain Tylenol doesn't even begin to make a difference.

Well, that is quite enough about my drama. Needless to say, I am extremely grateful that nothing was broken and I know that it will just take time. (I am still applying frozen gel packs daily and having Dick rub me nightly with Biofreeze. Thanks to those of you who recommended it). My gosh this had gotten way too long. Please forgive my not editing this. I am afraid that I type too fast and am prone to make mistakes, even though I am really a very good speller. I'm just too tired to sit here one more minute! Later..............................

LETTER FROM DALLAS

Here I am in Dallas and it has been pretty hectic every minute until now. I have a couple of hours before I have to start getting ready for the wedding. The rehearsal dinner was last night and it was really nice. The only thing is that I have been freezing ever since I got here. Actually the day and night temperatures were pretty close to what they are in Palm Desert so I thought I would have no problem and I took the kind of clothes I would wear at home. It isn't the outside temperature that is the problem, it is the air conditioning. People here have it freezing. They set their temperatures at 74 degrees, which to me is cold cold cold! In the desert most people have learned to set their temp. at 80 because it is so expensive and the summer season is very long. When the outside temp is 110 and you walk into a house set at 80, it feels really cool. At any rate, I only brought one sweater. Thank goodness it is my warmest one, but I end up having to wear it over everything. I know I will have to wear it at the wedding too. Oh well, enough complaining.

Dallas is a very interesting busy city. We have enjoyed riding around with my niece, Nancy, who has been a wonderful host, just having lost her husband a few weeks ago. She is still recovering from all the trauma with that. (getting her financial situation in place, having to deal almost daily with attorneys, insurance, probate judges etc.) Her husband was the senior partner in a very successful insurance business and the other two partners are having to buy her out. I do feel sorry for her and am amazed that she has managed so well all alone. She hates living alone in this big (almost 6,000 square feet mansion) and I don't blame her. It is a beautiful place, but just too large for one person.

We will be here for one more week, so I will likely be posting once more before we leave. I haven't been on Nancy's computer before. It is a Mac and so different than ours. I don't know how to navigate it at all so I am just not very comfortable using it, but we can't use our lap top because we don't have the pass word to her wifi.

This certainly isn't much of a post. It is more like a letter and I guess that is okay-----just a personal letter to my blogging friends.

Love to all

Home Sweet Home

Today we had a very nice Relief Society Birthday Luncheon for all of the people who were born in October. We have these once a month on the on the first Tuesday of the month. It is pot luck and of course I always eat too much at these luncheons, but they are so much fun. Dick always gets to go too because he is one of the two Priesthood holders that have to be in the building whenever we have anything going on with the women. After the luncheon we had to do a bit of shopping so I naturally wore myself out this afternoon. I have such a time walking and it is such a lot of trouble to get the wheel chair out each time we go to a store. We went to only two looking for 7 inch long thin spatulas so that I can have them to give as presents along with a crepe pan and my recipe for Swedish Pancakes. That is what I give all the members of my family for wedding presents. Since we will be attending the wedding of our grand nepheu while we are in Dallas, I wanted to be sure I had the spatula to go with the pan I have, to give to them. I don't know why these particular spatulas are so very hard to find anymore. You used to be able to find them in all of the grocery stores. Now you have to go to specialty stores like Kitchen Kitchen or Williams Sonoma. Dick had already checked out Kitchen Kitchen so today we went to the Alley and to Williams Sonoma. No real luck at either so we are going to have to keep looking.

We leave a week from today and I am already getting nervous about what to take because I like to pack light whenever we go away and we will be gone for ten days so I just know I will wish I had packed a certain something when I get there and it will be at home. It always happens to me whenever I go away. I can never seem to get my packing right.

Here are the pictures I promised of my house. I haven't found one of the outside yet, but will post the interior ones:

This is what you see of the living room from the entry way. The celings are very high and unfortunately do not show up too well in this pic.

Yoou will see my favorite chair where I spend most of my time. It is the reddish one in the corner. The sliding windows go out to the pool so I have a nice view when I twirl my chair.

This shows a tiny bit of the fireplace with the entertainment center on the right. The bit of blue you see in the foreground is the end of the love seat.

This is our dining room area. The sliding doors go out toe the patio, which is where Dick has his built in barbecue and our outside eating area. Will take a picture of that for a later post.

Dick's office, but I do share it. You can see his chair behind the desk and the television set is directly across from it and on the side is a sliding door closet where he keeps all of his office supplies. We converted this fourth bedroom into an office and it is light and cheery with a big window to the left when you are sitting in the chair.

Here you will see our kitchen which is really quite workable, even though it is small. We have what I call the "kitchen annex" in our garage that has lots of built in cabinets which house my pots and pans that I use only occaisionally.

This is how the den looked before we took out the couch and put in the day bed with the trundle underneath. I actually like the look of day bed and trundle better than the couch. I pictured the new look for this room somewhere earlier. The mirrors reflect the large china cabinet that Dick put together from an Ikea kit. The walls in all the bedrooms are irregular, so it makes it interesting. We converted this bedroom into a den and it also has a huge closet with sliding glass mirrors.

This is one view of the guest room. It is small, but adequate and it has a huge closet with sliding glass mirrored doors all across the wall directly in front of the bed. It had a very interesting wall decor over the bed that my sister and brother in law made before they died. Unfortunately it fell on Stacy who came to visit us before she married our son in Lake Tahoe. She wasn't hurt, but was quite surprised. I have taken the broken part off and have restored the center section and have since hung it above the bed, but now I need to get something to put on either side.







This is a shot of part of our bedroom. It is seriously old fashioned and I like it that way, except for the totally outdated artificial flowers above the bed. I hate them and have been trying to find something different, but have been unsuccessful so far. I don't want pictures. I just look for something to cry out to me when I'm shopping, that will say "this is perfect", but so far haven't been successful. Any ideas anyone?


I hope this hasn't been too many pictures, but I really wanted for you to get an idea of all of our rooms, except for the bathroom (three of them) and our wide wide hallway in which I have my photo wall, with pictures of the family all over them. I really wish I had more wall space. I will save the hallway for another post. It really is quite interesting. Will write more next Tuesday, which will be the day we leave to stay overnight with our oldest daughter, Nancy, in Huntington Beach and the next morning she will take us to John Wayne airport where we will leave for Dallas.

At Home in Palm Desert

I've mentioned how interesting I thought it was when at the beginning of spring we could see the snow on the mountains in the background and the palm trees in the foreground. Now that I can finally move pictures to my blog, I wanted to show you this shot from the street in front of our house. Sorry our neighbors hadn't taken their garbage in, but it does give you an idea of our view. The mountains are very high and our temperatures down below are perfect. We have a tram that can take you up to the snow. I went on it shortly after it was built and I hated it, so haven't gone back since. And to tell you the truth, I have no plans to visit the snow up there because I hate being in snow. Lots of people like to go up there though, both in the summer and the winter.

This is where we spend about 45 minutes each afternoon, doing our aerobic exercises so that we can keep fit. This only shows part of the pool. I'm afraid our pictures are not easy to access because they are not filed properly. Since I don't know how to do that, it will be some time before I can show you a bigger picture of the back yard and the pool area. I plan to show you our home and yard when I can find the rest of the pictures. If I can't, I will just have to get Dick to take them again. We took a lot of pictures of every room in the house last year to have for insurance purposes so I know they are somewhere. I just didn't have time to look for them right now. I want to do this because I know how much I have enjoyed seeing pictures of so many of your homes and yards and have always wished I could do the same, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

This has been a very busy week for me. It seems like every day I have had something major scheduled. Today we did a huge grocery shopping at Winco, which is a large supermarket that we like to go to about once a month because for the most part, their prices are somewhat less than Von's, Ralph's, or Albertson's, which are our three major supermarkets. It is getting to be so depressing to go grocery shopping as every month we go, I notice how much the prices have gone up. Honestly, it is really sad for those of us who are on a small fixed income, such as we are. Oh well, I am definitely not going to blog about our terrible economy.

Just found another picture of the pool which gives a larger view. These are some of the grandkids playing in it. Now I am finished for tonight.