use real butter

Recipe: chocolate-dipped orange peel cookies

Cooler than most of you, anyway! We are nearly a week away from the summer solstice and it is snowing outside.

and this is why i live here

Perfect timing as I have a double batch of lentil soup simmering on the stove. All of the barbecue I’ve been making over the past few weeks has me craving non-terrestrial animal foods. I say non-terrestrial because I don’t think I could ever EVER tire of seafood, our lovely, tasty, wonderful aquatic pals… We hit another sushi bar yesterday, but I won’t post on that right now because I don’t want to freak my dear Graeme out with too much fish.

these are not fish: chopped candied orange peel

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: raspberry cream cheese cookies

Happiness is getting another day of skiing when you thought your season might be over. We hit the local hill this morning and played around working on form, balance, technique. Another gorgeous bluebird day!

tele gurl

jeremy working on form

practice practice

A couple of weeks ago I made a bunch of cookies to send to my MIL’s quilting groups to thank them for the awesome ice cream cone quilt they made for me. With memories of those incredible melt-in-your-mouth cookies that Anita had sent to me from Miette, I searched for a cream cheese cookie recipe in an attempt to reproduce that kind of joy. I found a recipe in one of my old cookie books that looked pretty similar.

cream together the butter and cream cheese

The book suggests using full-fat cream cheese to maximize the tenderness of the cookie. Because the dough needs to be refrigerated, this isn’t one of those recipes that lends itself to last-minute rush jobs. EDIT: Dough refrigeration is necessary, but not for as long as the original recipe suggests. I make edits in the recipe below.

i used a 2-inch biscuit cutter

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Recipe: almond crunch cookies

Whenever I read the word doing I think of it as doing – as in sounds like boing. Anyway, you get another cookie recipe today because I made a veritable boat load of cookies yesterday. I really enjoy holiday baking except when I have surgery and then a head cold right before the holidays. I had to wait until I was fully well enough to 1) bake and 2) not make everything all nasty and sick because that would be a really unkind token of appreciation.

But wait! It is Teh Last Day of the Menu for Hope IV fundraising campaign. If you haven’t skidaddled yourself over there to bid on some prizes, please consider doing so now (and then come back to my post). Pim has neatly organized the prizes according to your statistical chances of winning if you should bid (and you should bid!). Thankfully, my prize is not listed under Great Chances, but under Good Chances. See, you have a good chance of winning this prize from me if you bid on UC01. Repeat – UC01. Just think, you could pay $10 for a raffle ticket to get a print of this image which was featured on the NPR website:

or you could pay considerably more $ for a straight purchase or persevere years of medical training and slice me open like my surgeon to get one. Uh, the raffle ticket is the definite no brainer.

**Jump for more butter**