Cooky Day _ Yes or No?

 

Hi everyone! On good days [sunny days] the low December sun warms us as we sit at the table, sipping tea, waking up. If it's not windy Mo and I can still sit outside for a bit, getting our dose of Vitamin D and salt air. Ice and storms are still to come, let's hope for a mild winter? Six, or 7 months now til summer.

This beautiful book is my morning read. I always have a non-fiction book on the table to read at breakfast. It has beautiful quilts by modern quilt designers who illustrated the classic tale.

We did have a bit of a storm on the past weekend. High winds---37-45 mph sustained wind from the south, from the ocean is strong and slightly frightening. I made all the usual tedious pre-storm preps---un-needed. Monday was  sunny, Tuesday sunny, fine. Then for no understandable reason at 5 pm on Tuesday the power went out. The house gets cold fast, though the lingering sunset and stars were beautiful. I had just been heading out to meet friends for our visit to the beach light show and dinner.

No power means no light  show and no dinner. It was a sudden disappointment, to cancel a long awaited traditional night out. My friends went on to  dinner,  away from the backout area, but I'd never leave Mo alone in pitch darkness and cold night, he might be very scared.

The lights are so dramatic on the black shoreline.

The flaws in my storm prep became glaringly obvious: I do have food and candles, but I need more lanterns, flashlights that work, light socket emergency plug in lights, and a phone charger. Maybe Santa will read this blog! The power came back in an hour or two. Supposedly a mylar balloon shorted oit a transformer here.

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Today was intended to be cooky day. But I am out of vanilla having stupidly purged my spices of old opened bottles and vials.

I'm ambivalent about the once beloved chore of baking cookies. I LOVE baking my Christmas cookies, love having a filled tin to offer friends who might stop by. But no one I know eats sweets or cookies anymore. 

I'll never forget making fancy [sugar free!, but royal icing] tiny cookies for my parents and a hand decorated  cooky plate for their home on Cape Cod. Sure wish I had that plate!  I'll never forget visiting months later and finding the uneaten unused cookies and plate in the pantry. My mom shrugged--we don't eat that stuff.

Be that as it may, her hand written cookbook is chockablock with cooky recipes and sweet Christmas and New Years desserts she once made. Strawberries Romanoff, Tipsy Squire trifle! Chocolate mousse.

And maybe six versions of Snowballs, some with brandy or bourbon!

I'll  make the simplest original version when I get the new vanilla--$$$--tomorrow.

My mo0ther's cookbook is not just cookies though. It was started for me when I left home for college and had my own apartment. [dorm life, shudder!]Useful things like cooking times and how to make mashed potatoes. Her various pasta sauces, french onion soup, pilaf. Mainstays.

Pickles, scripted from my dad's spoken directions.

Recipes from friends, like my cousin's Southern pecan pie, my friend Olga's Snowball cookies and her cheap meals hot dog recipe. And added by my mother in law, useful dishes like her pound cake, cole slaw, matzoh ball soup.

Such love and happy memories reside in this tiny black notebook. My mom is nearby, if only in my heart and thoughts.

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Lori/ Humble Quilts has her linky post up for Parsonsfield and a lovely post about Maine in snowy winter. My little quilt is unfinished. Instead I made a fun string patched stocking for my little artist friend.

I printed out a few coloring pages for her, but have the idea that they'd be wonderful in redwork, as pillow shams for the Christmas bed.

Instead of baking, Mo and I walked a bit, looking for pretty things in the brilliant setting sun. Winter hydrangeas are so richly colored.

December beach roses.

Glowing euonymus.

The sun set at 428 today, one minute more daylight than yesterday. Thhat signals hope for better days--longer days!---to come. One week til winter Solstice.

Have a good ''last week til Christmas"!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach...

vintage flower frog, slowly turning purple on the windowsill. I use it to dry flower heads for seeds.

Mr Mockingbird 2015, an established visitor already all those years ago, I think since about 2010.

And here he is enjoying a bounce on a windy branch last week. At night he shelters in the dense euonymus I showed above.