Spring draws near.  The singing of birds, the irises pushing their young greens up towards a sun still deciding if it wasts to shine or play hide and seek behind clouds of grey.

Trees think of budding.  The ground is warming.  The pests of spring are awakening while cats/kittens seek the sunbeams shining onto wooden floors.

It’s a new year.  A slow start.  The swirling of things to do, decide, to be, enjoy, leave behind and yet look forward to.

Of destroying and reshaping. Of building and reclaiming.   A reimagining of what it should be.  Or not be.

Now to get the damn pictures off the camera that show the mess in the front yard, the stump of the fallen weeping cherry (sob, so sad to see you fall) and the huge rock that needs to move yet again.  I think I’ll get Girrl out there to push it around.   Blink.  Blink.  That’s not moving no matter how much she tries.

Backhoe!  STAT!

But to soothe the frazzled nerves, calm the panic of a yard gone to dirt/mud/chaos.

Cookies.

Be still my heart.  The cooking bug is back and it’s demanding.  Pushy damn thing.

Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 cups quick cook oats
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup of coconut

Cream together the butter, the sugars.  Add eggs, stir until combined.  Add vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda, salt mixing it all together.  Add oats, pray wooden spoon doesn’t break.  Mix.  Add chocolate chips and coconut.  Stir until all ingredients are combined, arm tired.

Oven 325 degrees

Use spoons to drop dough onto greased baking sheet.

Suggested cooking time is 12 minutes.    For cookies the size I made them, more like 18 to 19.

Cool on sheet, remove to wire racks to finish cooling.  Swat Girrl and Retro-Man away from cookies like flies at a picnic.

Enjoy.

Variations in the works:  dried cranberries and almonds in place of chocolate chips.

My hips will never be the same.

The ingredients flew from the cupboards like a strong wind stirring up trouble.   I pulled down the bowls, selected a size and started assembling.

In went flour, baking powder, and salt measured by hand.  From the fridge, out came butter and milk; from the drawer a fork and a spoon.

Unwrap the butter after measuring what is needed, grab the paring knife and slice, slice and slice into the flour combonation.  Hands oily, mind racing.  No calm to be baking but what the hell.  All speed ahead.  What can it hurt?

Use the fork, smash the butter and flour into a messy look.  Slop in milk, remove fork, in go hands and growl, smash, mangle, work the dough.

Flour stove top, dump dough, grab rolling pin and steamroll the dough as if it’s the answer, or the cause of all potholes.

Clean hands, grab butter again, slap on dough.  Scrub hands of slippery slimy feel before looking for brown sugar. Toss on and give it the hmm, is that enough or more look.  Away goes the brown sugar, back into the black hole of my baking past.   It screams neglect.  I don’t listen and shut the door.

Cinnamon, where is it?  I grab paprika and move it and shove chili powder and cumin around until I shove the oil out of the way.  Damn cinanmon is not where it’s supposed to be.  The spice cupboard is jumbled, a mess,  a place of haphazard who gives a crap organization.  Locating the damn spice, I sprinkle it on the dough.

Biscuit dough gets rolled, sliced with the buttery paring knife and for once I had the baking pan ready to go.  Except for the baking spray I totally forgot to use.

Into a preheated oven, 15 minutes later out come godzilla’s revenge.  They aren’t pretty and the aroma through the house is amazing.  I can’t wait to chomp, the inhale and enjoy something so tasty.

And the biscuit could qualify for a puck.  A hockey puck.  A stone.  A masterpiece of overworked dough that should never have seen the inside of an oven.

Obviously I’ve forgotten a gentle hand is key to making a nice dough/biscuit.

Maybe I’ll try again today as a nice treat for Boy.  It’s his last day of high school.

Where in the hell did the years go?  I know, they ran off with my baking skills.

Happy Wednesday!

It’s Sunday and I’m the only human awake in the house.  Some chores have been started/finished/looked at while every one is still in a horizontal I’m still sleeping body.

And yet I’m awake.

ALC wanted out.  And out.  Out again.  How much was I need to go pee, please, omg, if you don’t let me out I”ll puddle on the floor needs?  Or was it oh, please, oh please, let me go look at the cheeeeeeeeeeeeeekins (chickens)?

Yes, chickens.  Andaulusions.  2 months old.  Three of them.  Pullets, soon to be hens.  Not dinner.  Pictures coming.

A splash (that’s a dirty looking white), a blue (which looks more grey to me), and a black which is just black.  They talk.  They scratch.  They enthrall my dogs.

But do they have to do it a 6 freaking am on a Sunday?

It appears so.

To top it all off, I forgot this was Memorial day weekend.  Don’t ask how.  It’s easy in the land of Chaos to forget holidays and which day it is.

Will it be a lazy day?  Uhm, hell no.  I wouldn’t be that lucky.

Retro Man’s neice is graduating today.

Reduce, reuse, recycle and burn, baby, burn day.  A trip to the burn gods (aka as the waste to energy incinerator).

If I have a spare moment, and a working pair of brain cells, the scones.  Make them.  Inhale the aroma that is cinammon, brown sugar and then consume with a mad twinkle in my eye and a cackle dancing through the house from my laughter that says all is good in my tummy.

Then collapse with the book I’m reading— Curse the Dawn by Karen Chance.

Plans for this weekend?  Reading something good, bad, or ho-hum?

On the menu for today: scones.

I hope I can do it today but if not, it’ll be done this weekend.  The idea of having these on hand is making my tummy rumble and grumble and dare I say, make the mouth drool?

I’m a sucker for cinnamon brown sugar combos.  Poptarts.  Cinnamon rolls.  Just a few items that put that together and make me nom nom nom.

Have a favorite bakery item?

Cinnamon Scones

Filling:
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoons cinnamon
4 tablespoons butter, softened

Scones:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
4 tablespoons butter, melted

Topping:
3 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper

In a small bowl combine filling ingredients until they form a thick, crumbly paste. Set aside.

In large bowl mix flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Combine beaten egg with buttermilk and add about 3/4 of the mixture to the flour along with the melted butter. Using a fork, stir until dough comes together, adding more buttermilk mixture if too dry. Just as dough is coming together, turn onto floured service and kneed 4 or 5 times gently, just to bring dough together nicely.

Pat dough out into a rectangle, about 10×16-inches. Place filling evenly along one, long side of the rectangle. Fold long side of dough over filling, ending up with a rectangle about 5×16-inches. Seal edges.

Slice into 4 rectangles, each 5X4-inches. Slice each rectangle on the diagonal, ending with 8 triangle shaped scones. Place scones on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush tops with remaining buttermilk mixture, or if none is left, with plain buttermilk. Combine cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over tops of scones.

Bake at 425 F for 14-16 minutes or until firm and lightly browned. Serve while still slightly warm or cool completely.

Makes 8 scones.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

It’s a perfect day to take a book outside (currently reading Curse the Dawn) and just laze about watching the ALC run around in the freshly mowed grass while devouring a book I can’t put down.

Also a fine day to bake.  But what?  Hmm, must think.

Finding a recipe that works for me when a baking urge hits is a plus.  The urge for something hit, a craving, a want, something that just coulnd’t be foud in Retro-Man’s stash of safe for a million years goodies.

What to do.  What to do.  A freezer full of freshly frozen peaches.  A sudden want for summer to hit my mouth and put a smile on it.

Out the peaches trotted, thawing, I went about my day and wondered what I’d do with them.  Syrup for pancakes? No.  Not quite what the craving is crying for.

A pie?  No.   Never been a big peach pie fan.  Sadness.

A cobbler.  A warm, oozing sweetness and summer cobbler that will curl my toes with the first bite.

Did I want my cookbook recipes?  The books fallen and disorganized, neglected by me for too long, or did I want something new?

And I landed here. A place I don’t always head towards for a recipe.  Mainly because I never have what they call for and that puts a crimp in my frustrated cooking creativity.

Peach Cobbler
by Paula Deen