The Cookies that Made Me Want to Get Married

Make at Your Own Peril Do not confuse with the Weed Hybrids Known as Cookies

I first met Melanie Jane when she was in the third grade, and I was thirty-five. Oh, snap, a really bad Alabama politician joke (Southerners will get that one). Actually, I was in the sixth grade, so I qualified as a much older kid. We were in line at what we called our lunchroom, and I saw her. I told her she resembled her sister my age, and her response was to stick her tongue out at me. Thus our relationship began.

I finally asked her out right before I graduated from High School, and headed off to UA. We became inseparable in no time. After a few dates, she asked me if I would like her mother to bake me some cookies. It was impossible to refuse.

After about five cookies from the mountain that her mother made, I had an epiphany: There were many things I could do with my life that were worse than eating food like this for years. In short, I was a goner. It didn’t hurt any that there was a beautiful and highly intelligent young woman sitting next to me, while I swined away (she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college).

At any rate, here’s the recipe, updated a bit.

Ingredients

1/2 cup Sugar (Honey would be a good substitute)

1/4 cup Butter

1 Egg

3/4 cup Oats

A pinch of Salt

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

3/4 cup AP Flour

1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder

1/4 cup Milk

1/2 cup Raisins

1/2 cup Pecans

Cream together the butter, sugar, and egg. Then add the dry ingredients, and finally the milk. Bake 12-15 minutes in a 350 degree F oven. Then get ready to pig out. This makes about 2 to 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

A few weeks ago we received as a gift the original recipe, engraved on a bamboo cutting board, in the handwriting of MJ’s late mother, Agnes Olga, who baked the original mountain of cookies. It came from the very sister whose comparison caused MJ to stick her tongue out at me. I’m sure I wouldn’t mind having my legacy being great food.

Cheeseballs!

I wish this was as funny as the Mel Brook’s classic movie, Spaceballs, but it is just sad, pitiful, and an amazing display of ignorance instead. It does say something about people who buy processed food like cheeseballs.

It ain’t easy getting banned from Wal-Mart, but these two doofuses from Minnesota did it with ease. They decided to wear face masks with swastikas on them, to protest the mask requirement there. As MJ and I are both of German extraction, we take some serious affront to anyone who thinks a protest should include a swastika.

As they were getting kicked out with their toilet paper and giant container of cheeseballs, the female part of the duo said this gem: “If you vote for Biden, you’re going to be living in Nazi Germany.”

She says this while wearing a swastika. Irony now is officially dead.

Hoya! Don’t use Sawdust in a Chicken Coop

Once again, the chicken experts on the interwebs have struck Hoya! I have now been told that sawdust is deadly to chickens. Tell that to the more than 100,000 chickens that we had while I was growing up. Admittedly, they all now are dead, but blame that on the soup company they were sent to, to be beheaded.

I shoveled untold truck loads of sawdust for our nest boxes, and the birds didn’t have a problem with it, as they turned out far more than a million hatching eggs. I personally filled up the nesting boxes, and gathered most of the eggs.

For those who are not familiar with Hoya!, it’s the stuff you don’t want to step in when you’re in the horse’s stable. The interwebs is et up with Hoya.

Michaux’s Lily

André Michaux was one more botanist, gardener, and traveler. He was the Royal Botanist to French King Louis XVI, (that is, before the King misplaced his head), and botanized all over Eastern America, Canada, Persia, and parts of the Indian Ocean. Among his friends were Ben Franklin, William Bartram, and Thomas Jefferson. This Southern lily is among the many things he discovered.

We have been fortunate enough to have owned two properties where these were native. That’s a good thing, as these are practically impossible to transplant. I got that info from Ben Pace of Callaway Gardens in Georgia, where he said they killed about twenty of these before they finally gave up on them.

This, however, is the first yellow one I have seen. The more common color is orange. If this makes seed, I will try and plant more. Deer and rabbit love to eat these things, so I will just have to play wait and see on the seed angle. (Note: I just noticed that it has been eaten. Correction! MJ found it for me, as it was hiding in the maples, and it has a seed pod on it!)

While I’m on the subject of Michaux, here’s another plant he discovered–Big Leaved Magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla). It has the largest leaves and flowers of any plant in North America.

There is even a legendary yellow flowered version that is found in Alabama. I have seen one of the trees said to have yellow flowers but not while it was in bloom. It’s location is a deep dark secret.

Easy to grow, but hard to find, these are too big for even a deer to eat.

Box of Maters, Precious

We hit the quinella today at the Festhalle market, as we got this box of maters for $25, and a basket of pink eye purple hull peas for $8. Now we have to either can or freeze the surplus, which will be just about all of it.

The result will be this–pints of maters.

We have thirteen pints already, and we will easily double that, and then some. I will undertake canning four quarts as well, which will mean I will have to drag our massive old pressure cooker out of the basement. It’s more than worth the trouble.

The basic method that MJ taught me is to pour boiling water on the tomatoes, peel the skins off, sterilize the jars also with said water, and then put the packed jars into a boiling water bath. We have determined that a longer hot water bath is much preferable to a shorter one.

So another Sunday is to be spent in the kitchen. I forgot that I also have corn to boil and freeze. At least we won’t go hungry this winter, or buy produce from who knows where.

Summer’s First Vegetable Soup

We jumped ahead of schedule, or maybe just jumped the shark, making this soup, as we had to work with a bunch of non-ordinary ingredient sources. In about a couple of more weeks, we will be able to make this with all fresh local ingredients. But sometimes you just can’t wait.

Ingredients

Chicken Stock

Crowder Peas

3 Ears of Fresh Corn

A small Onion

Butter Beans

Large can of Tomatoes

Salt and Pepper

Half of our ingredients were local, but the rest were scrounged for. We did have stock made from a locally grown chicken, which is unusual. The corn was fresh from the Festhalle, and the butter beans were from there as well, but they were hiding in the dim reaches of our freezer. The okra was really excellent and fresh, again from the Festhalle market. Here’s where we go worldwide.

Crowder peas are not yet in season, and hard to find fresh anyway, so we used dried peas from the famous Camellia brand from New Orleans. New Orleans folks consume as many Fagioli (beans) as Tuscany, and this brand controlled 95% of the market. They are that good. Cook these first.

The onion was an organic onion from California, and the big can of tomatoes was organic as well, but they were San Marzanos from Italy. I just happened to have some cans of them in my pantry.

MJ and I enjoyed this with some fresh corn muffins, made with McEwen cornmeal.The leftover soup will be frozen for the winter. The left over muffins were devoured by our chickens.

Food Safe Wood Finishes

Instead of using toxic chemicals, I use finishes on wooden cooking utensils made from plants and bugs. This is great, as long as you don’t mind eating bug juice. Here are the four best, from right to left, Chinese style.

Linseed Oil. Flaxseed oil, which is usually heat treated to decrease drying time. (That’s an old Elijah Craig bourbon bottle, by the way.) I use the brand Tried and True, who makes a great “Danish Oil,” which dries quickly. That big Walnut scoop turned that color with just one coat.
Shellac. Essentially bug secretions which are dissolved in denatured alcohol. Comes in a variety of shades, and is easily homemade. Those two mason jars in the middle are dark amber and blonde, and made by yours truly. It leaves a very shiny finish.
Wax Finishes. The most durable is Carnauba wax, which is what that Liberon turner’s wax is made from. The carver’s mallet on the end is covered in that wax, which gives it a good bit of shine. Beeswax polish is made from beeswax and a combination of either an oil and/or turpentine. Terps can be a little sketchy on cooking utensils, so I go with linseed oil.
Nothing. My favorite finish, which is on most of my personal utensils. As woodworkers like to say, it’s free, and available everywhere. If you really cook, your wood will soak up a nice finish in no time.

As the great food writer Michael Pollan says, don’t eat anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce. The same goes for food safe wood finishes. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t put that finish on your spatula.

Mallet, Part II–Hop Hornbeam Carver’s Mallet

I am headed toward the bowl carving stage of my giant kitchen tool making project, and decided I needed a really good carving mallet. There, in my log pile, were four logs of hop hornbeam, from a tree that died on our property. It’s one of the hardest, strongest, and heaviest domestic hardwoods, and the price was right. I rounded off a blank with a broad hatchet, and commenced to turning one.

I got the following info from https://www.wood-database.com. I’ll quote: “Overall, a difficult wood to work. Hophornbeam has high cutting resistance, (which also means that the finished wood product has good wear resistance).” The strength is off the charts as well: “Modulus of Rupture: 14,100 lb_f/in² (97.2 MPa).” That’s a tough cookie, perfect for whacking away at carving tools.

It took awhile to make on my foot-powered lathe, but I used a simple carnauba wax finish to shine it up some; compare these two finishes.

The bottom two pieces of wood are from the same log. The gouge handle is coated with linseed oil, and turned that light brown. The mallet just has a wax finish. Now it’s time to get back to work.

Great Food Poetry, Part III–“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”

Emily Dickinson, aka the Belle of Amherst, is my favorite poet. This poem has an orchard in it, so it fits the category.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

Thanks again to the Poetry Foundation for making these poems available to everyone.

Not to get too nerdy, but I’ve always linked this poem to the Protestant reformation, and it just so happens that the surplice is a part of the clerical vestments that was rejected by the Puritans, leading more than a few of them to emigrate to Massachusetts. Ms. Dickinson is too clever for words.

Great Food Poetry, Part II–“After Apple Picking”

We picked blueberries in the 85 degree F heat today for about thirty minutes, until we finally said, Fornicate It, the birds can have as many as they want. Then my favorite food poem came to mind, written by the magnificently wicked Robert Frost. Here it is, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation:

After Apple-Picking

BY ROBERT FROST

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

The bad news is we will have more blueberries in a few days.

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Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236)

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After Apple-Picking

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