Coooooooookies!

So today the kid and I were making Christmas cookies after she got home from school, which inexplicably ends at 11:30AM for the final three days before the Christmas break.

I think between finals and the holiday frenzy that kids indulge in the teachers have had enough.

At any rate, while it snowed outside we swarmed into the kitchen and made two things:  my mom's recipe for Bourbon Balls and Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies.

The Bourbon Balls are made from Vanilla Wafers, pecans, corn syrup, cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar and awesome all ground up together and formed into balls.  Oh, and bourbon.  Bourbon Balls in the past have also become Rum Balls, Brandy Balls--whatever is handy, really.  They are simple, yet the sort of thing that people take a bite of and then stop--their eyes widen, they moan 'Oh, my GOD' around a mouthful of cookie and their eyes roll up in their head.  They're that good.

The Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies are Sugar Cookies, Take #2.  I foolishly tried to make my regular sugar cookie recipe the other day because I didn't have cream cheese on hand...and THAT recipe called for shortening only, haha.

This marked the last time I ever bake with shortening at this altitude ever again.  It was 2012's Thanksgiving pie crust fiasco all over again.  Into the trash it went...

The cream cheese version uses butter only, thank you, and will be the only way I make the damned things from now on.  While we were baking, I had the MP3 player blaring away while the house birds chirped along.  We're noisy bakers.  At one point I realized I was striding through the kitchen with a bottle of bourbon clutched in one hand and a gallon Ziploc bag of granulated suger in the other, singing along loudly with 'Time Warp'.

Good times.  I mostly refrained from doing the dance, though.  Couldn't risk spilling the bourbon.

The kid helped cut and decorate the cookies.

They are quite pretty...

But some artistic license crept in.  This glum little fellow, for example.

This little guy is happy though, despite being one of the 'burned' cookies my husband always requests.  He's weird that way.

Between these and the molasses cookies, chocolate covered peanut butter balls and raspberry meringues that are on for tomorrow, we'll end up with a good amount of holiday yummies to take to the school, local fire station, our dentist and other places.

And yes, we have a proper dentist, his office encourages the bringing-in of goodies, just like the places I used to work.  I knew I'd found the right dental professional when I saw the pile of flyers offering 15% off at the local gourmet chocolatier sitting on their front desk.

Raspberry Chicken Stew Cookies, Of Course!

So today was mostly devoted to running Chickam and cooking.

I decided to whip up a batch of raspberry meringues--deceptively simple, elegant little four ingredient tidbits that are super simple to make and crunch when you bite into them yet melt in your mouth.

Started with egg whites from the girls out back.

I was going to make half of the batch raspberry flavor and the other half coffee flavor, but got all involved and forgot to seperate out half of the finished meringue mixture.  So raspberry it is!

Toss together the egg whites, raspberry extract and cream of tartar.  Normally I make these with a teaspoonful of Chambord instead of extract, because, well, Chambord is awesome and luscious and made of angel whispers from God himself.  Next stick it in my trusty 900 year old KitchenAid mixture and beat the living Hell outta it 'until soft peaks form'.

Hmm, not there yet...

There ya go!

Now to add the sugar while the KitchenAid is whirring away and get it to 'stiff & glossy', which is what all little meringues aspire to be when they grow up.

Yeah, baby!

Onto my battle-scarred cookie sheets they are dolloped.  They don't spread but do puff up the tiniest bit when you bake them, so you can put them pretty close together.  Into a 300 degree oven for half an hour, after which you turn the oven off and forget about the things for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight.

Done!

They really do look disturbingly like styrofoam, and next time I make them I think I'll use an icing piping bag and try to make them look like packing peanuts.

Into the cookie jar they go!

At my house the cookie jar is a repurposed glass iced tea jar.

At the same time, I was making a chicken/vegetable stew for the animals.  I ladle the finished stew into muffin tins, freeze them and then I have little yummy chicken/veg disks to go on the dog's food or mix with rice for the chickens on cold days as a treat.  So the kitchen smelled of raspberry/chicken.

The kid ventured into the kitchen at one point, looking confused.  'What are you making...?'

No hesitation whats-so-freakin'-ever. I chirp out, 'Raspberry chicken stew cookies!'

She looks fascinated/disgusted for a moment, then disgust wins--but is quickly masked when I bend her a steely '...and you'd better like it!' gaze.  She wanders off in disappointment.

One of the true joys of parenting is messing with your kid every so often.

What...?

Time to guess, 'What The Hell Am I Doing NOW?!'

It appears I'm cleaning out kitchen cabinets.

But wait--no!

It's jerky making time in the dehydrator! All of the items pictured above are what goes into making the marinade, including coffee.

It was yummy!

Fun With WHAT...?!

...worms.

Earthworms, to be specific. This afternoon we took advantage of the fleeting nice weather to go out and play with the kid and chickens. For N. this involves just about anything, with the chickens today it involved J. with a shovel. The older ones know what The Shovel means and come running to stand on the blade as you try to dig.

We weren't planting anything, mind you. Just turning over the earth for the pure sake of breaking the soil, which ya gotta do in warm weather or die. It feeds the soul and calms the spirit.

What with all the rain we've had lately, earthworms were numerous and near the surface. The chickens happily pounce on them, not caring that N. was telling them SHE wanted one to hold and look at. Finally she got one of her own, and as I sat there mentally toting up how much I'd spent this Christmas on toys, she piled some loose dirt on an old cinderblock and commenced to tell her worm about his new house. Then she tried to stuff him into it, only to be robbed of her new plaything by Rita, a small black cochin hen.

Not shy about food, our Rita.

I struggle against laughing out loud as N. looks at Rita in shock and yells, "Hey--! Mom, she took my worm and I wasn't done playing with it!" Not only this, but Bear has noticed the Worm Home that N. has built, and realizes that she saw Rita grab a worm out of it. Destructor Bear moves in like a feathered bulldozer and obliterates the carefully constructed Worm Home, looking mildly annoyed at wasting precious food hunting time when no more worms are forthcoming. We leap to keep everyone happy with more digging, being more careful to seperate the five year old's worms from those destined to take up residence in our chickens.

Eventually the chickens tire of gobbling worms, which is good because several of them look as if they are in real danger of exploding. Liz has fallen into the holes several times when lunging for a worm, and Bear is using the smaller birds for traction.

A few of the birds are squeamish about the worms though. I guess it's the dirt that sticks to them. Phoenix the rooster only takes one for the barest instant, just to be polite, spitting it out with a nearly audible ptooey for one of the hens and then shaking his head afterwards. I do get him to eat a few that I have cleaned the dirt off of, but he doesn't look all that thrilled.

After a while we give up and go sit down. I see that Bear has a bit of root material hanging from her beak, and have J. hold her while I grasp her head and pull it out of her mouth. When I open her beak I get a full dose of Worm Breath, which I'm here to tell ya, ain't pretty. Meanwhile N. is kinda having a good time sending earthworms down her slide...but she has to keep getting a new worm each time, because the old one has mysteriously dissapeared.

Several very happy chickens wait at the bottom of the slide, though.