Frankie's First Christmas Cookie & Necronomnomnom

  Frankie and I have been up all night baking. Shiner was my supervisor, but Frankie is worse. He eats about anything. He loves oysters and clams. We are using my Early American Cookbook this year. Christmas has been catproofed, so we're keeping it simple. We made simple butter cookies with a glaze: Yeti, Anne and Andy, unicorns, elephants, and ducks. I'd had one at Cornwall Furnace, a moose, and it was so good, better than mine. Cornwall has Christmas cookies, tea, and cocoa around their Christmas tree once a year. Next stop molasses and ginger snaps. My dear friend sent me Necronomnomnom, and I can hardly wait to get to that. Oh, my ghoul. I have a handmade Lovecraft doll and have yet to finish the complete works, which is huge. I've been sending offers out on Ebay for Collinwood, asking them to save it from the Leviathan, (Frankie). He's been checking into The Collins Port Inn for Christmas. Guess I have to move that too. 🌟

 

From BATTLEFIELD

 

  "Again, that reminder or remainder of humanity wafted on the air, and it startled me. I thought I might be going mad. 

  Having respect for the dead means that future generations don't pave over cemeteries for parking lots. Cemeteries are paved over, on occasion, but it is the exception rather than the rule. There is no law, however, that says cemeteries can't be tourist attractions. A headstone, plain or fancy, reminds onlookers that so-and-so existed within the confines of two dates. If the carved numerals are decipherable, a moment of mental arithmetic ensues, a calculation of how old so-and-so lived to be. 

  In Harrisonburg there are more than 250 Confederate graves in a quadrant of the oldest cemetery. Each small marble marker reads like a word in a chilling sentence, or a sentence in a numbing chapter. The regularity with which the markers are placed, row upon row like a marching battalion, suggests an orderliness, a solidarity of purpose. The Southern Cause is given shape and substance. I know it is an act of practicality, the organizing of corpses in a limited space, but still the geometry of the graves disturbs me. Death for any cause, lost or won, is not quite so cut and dried as a cemetery layout."

Peter Svenson

  We just got back from the casino. Frankie and I are about to make more pumpkin muffins from Shannen O'Lantern. I froze some. 

Happy Thanksgiving! 🍂

Shannen's Gifts

   Free HBO and MAX this week, looks like a load of commie 💩 there. Watching The Watchers, it's alright. Shannen O'Lantern's seeds with salt and butter, (out of oil), took twice as long to bake but taste twice as good. Frankie loves them. He also loves guinea wings. Although he could come and go from the fairy cottage to the barn he does not try to run away. He actually gets nervous that I'm going to toss him out. Sir Frankie Crisp is eating good in the neighborhood. He loves to play with toilet paper and paper towel rolls. My black Betta, Lennox, is doing well too. He's so black you can't see his eyes, beautiful. I used half of Shannen's sweet meat to make a dozen homemade pumpkin muffins. They're good. I still have a pot in the fridge to bake a cake with later. I've been captive in the kitchen long enough. I've got a costume for tomorrow that I've not been able to wear, so I'll see you then. Have a Happy Halloween! 

Dreams 7/17

 I've forgotten my dreams again although I might've dreamed about Annie. Anyway, this is what I remember: Ron had bought a big box of donuts that were in the pink and mauve carpeted hallway in a hotel where we were staying. It was a box of eclairs that were strangely vertically packed. I chose a yellow one from the right because it was a bit twisted. The donut was dusted lightly with powdered sugar and had egg in the batter. It was crumbly. The filling was a fluffy lemon meringue like I've never known. It must've had a bit of cream whipped up in it. It was the most sumptious donut I've ever had. 

Merry Pissmas!

 Why Pissmas? Shiner is seventeen, so I say, Welcome to Piss Pad Land! My baby brother, aka, Jack N Oph from fakebook gaol, has come to visit for WWII Weekend. He's got a gig with Weedeater, (I think). I made cookies and a'pizza. He hasn't been here since Ron was throwing biscuits at Thanksgiving, so he had a stack of gifts including Cheech and Chong-opoly. Ron crushed us. I was Chong and was out first. It's more fun than Monopoly. 

Boom Boom Ba

Who doesn't bake cookies all hours of the morning? 

Chocolate Chips: Check

 Started my holiday baking with everybodies' favorite: chocolate chip cookies. This recipe was a magazine winner in the eighties, and I've been using it ever since. Not certain of the magazine, perhaps Family Circle. 

Pre-heat oven to 375

2 1/4 c unbleached flour

(King Arthur or Navajo are both good. Most others are poison.)

1/4 c oats

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 c butter, softened

1 c brown sugar (packed)

3/4 c sugar

2 eggs

2 t vanilla

12 oz chocolate chips

(Not Hershey's as they fired their unvaxed employees.) 

2 c chopped walnuts

Mix together by hand and place on parchment covered cookie sheets, six per pan. 

Bake for 13 min. 

Cool on brown paper bags. 

Freeze in plastic wrapped containers in a plastic and paper bag. Send frozen. 

Zucchini Muffins

 Mummy, Grandma Bea, and Mrs. Keiler all made zucchini bread when I was a kid, but this recipe has them beat. It's quick and easy too. 

Zucchini Muffins

Ron's Birthday

 

Minou

 Today is Ron's birthday, and he has only opened his first gift, a little birdhouse I was lucky enough to find at The Primitive Barn in Sinking Spring before it closed forever, so sad. So, I'll have more about that later. Baked him a carrot cake from scratch using my Candlelight and Wisteria cookbook from the girls' academy down south. But, he got me Minou, Annette Himstedt's little Corsican girl I've wanted for thirty years. She and Tara were the first Himmies I'd ever seen at Bear Trax in Bethel Park, next to BORDERS, and they are gone too. Tara was my first Himstedt, now I have a dozen. Ron had asked if I was finally satisfied, and I told him not, I wanted a proper coven. I have the Spanish gypsy, Aura, but I want the Hungarian, Munira, too...  For now, I'm delighted with the gorgeous Minou! 

A'pizza Redux

No wonder I'm one of the only people Ron still likes. When you're good for something, go for it, and I've been baking since childhood. This is only my second go at pizza from scratch, and this time I was really hurting for ingredients so just made a pesto and a cheese pie. Now, the only question is which to go after, first, probably the pesto. I forgot I'd wanted to put some artichoke on that one, so next time.