Tag Archives: Everyday Life

Oatmeal Cherry Cookies

27 Friday Nov 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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It’s hard to think about anything heavy to eat after Thanksgiving.

After a big holiday meal like yesterday, I prefer a simple hamburger from one of our nearby burger places.  But I’d be willing to eat other food as well…as long as it’s not turkey and someone else is doing the cooking.

Soon, I’ll head back into my kitchen.  Later this afternoon, perhaps, since these “just right” cookies my friend Ann makes have been on my mind.  Moist and a just little tart with dried cherries, these cookies taste as good as they smell.   Part of their simplicity is that the ingredients are so basic that they are likely stored in your kitchen cupboard.  And as they bake and cool on my kitchen counter, they fill the house with an aroma of simple everyday goodness.

Turkey and cranberries, as good as they are, are foods I enjoy but once a year.  It’s food like hamburgers and oatmeal cookies that remind me that the best of life is not found in holiday feasts or in those special days where we receive some nice certificate to hang on our wall or hide in our safe deposit boxes; yet, isn’t it ironic that we remember the times when certificates change hands —  like  for a marriage or the birth of a child or a college graduation — and forget that the best of real life is found sandwiched in between?

These everyday cookies remind me of all that is good about everyday life.  Bake and serve them for those certificate days of celebration or on one of the many, many days in-between.  From my life to yours.

Oatmeal Cherry Cookies

Makes approximately 5 dozen

1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, well-beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup dried cherries

Sift together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon. and set aside.  Cream the butter and sugars until fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Mix the beaten egg in thoroughly, then stir in the vanilla.  Add the dry mixture.  Then mix in the oatmeal and then the cherries.  Give it a final mixing.

Refrigerate, covered for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Pam a cookie sheet.  Place walnut-size pieces of dough on the prepared sheet, allowing space for cookies to spread.  Bake for 10 minutes, or until set.

A Thanksgiving Toast

25 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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Jon and Dad -- November 24, 2009

This year I”m thankful in all the usual ways.

But it’s the unusual that  has me writing in the midst of tomorrow’s meal preparations.   The work can wait but this urge to grow still cannot.  I feel the need to sit down and gather my thoughts and name my feelings that tug at my heart,  to write words that will become a prayer of thanksgiving to God for my brother Jon.

It is a crazy sort of grace that the year’s Thanksgiving toast goes to Jon, who has been in and out of drug addiction for more years than I wish to count, but who is now in recovery.  Two years and counting.  To no longer associate Jon with drug addiction through  Pavlovian response makes me shake my head in wonder.  It is pure gift to not worry about Jon working his recovery program, though I know Jon has no such luxury.  Jon can never let down his guard, Jon can never believe he’s healed from his drug addiction, if he wishes to do  “good” and be “good”‘.

So what does “good” look like?  Do good acts cause a person to become good  when others say so — when a person has jumped through enough hoops or spoken all the right words?  Or does goodness arise in the heart of one doing good, as if the good acts themselves are some sort of mysterious medicine to heal whatever is broken.  Perhaps it is both; I know it would be hard for me to believe in my own goodness if others did not.

Like all of us, even the biblical saints like Paul, Jon did not do the good he wanted to do, and instead did the evil he did not want to do.  This is the human condition.  I don’t acknowledge this truth to excuse  or sugar-coat Jon’s bad choices.  But it would be evil to not confess that we all slide up and down the good and bad continuum, that we are all broken in some form or fashion, that we are all a mixed bag of good and evil.

Jon is not the same Jon as before.  That would be impossible; the Jon before drug addiction is buried under the  new face Jon wears, the one who has learned and helped us learn about the power of drugs to destroy and disintegrate relationships and businesses and credit ratings and good reputation and hope.  The one who had to learn how to survive life in prison.

Yet there is a part of Jon that has survived all the drugs and destruction.  Maybe this is the part of Jon that is eternal and real, I don’t know.  But if I can call it this, then the real and eternal part of Jon is the one who can still make me laugh.  The one who is generous with self, possessions and forgiveness.  The one who takes our father to the potty with Daddy’s dignity still intact.  The one who, since being released from prison, faithfully calls his two daughters twice a week and who is now paying monthly child support payments.  The one who is even making child support payments for an illegitimate son he has never met, conceived on one of his many stints in a drug recovery program.  Maybe someday Jon will be able to meet George.

Last Thanksgiving, well actually it was the day after since the prison unit was locked down on Thursday, I brought Jon a paper plate  loaded with Thanksgiving goodies.  This year Jon and I will spend Thanksgiving the way it’s suppose to be spent in all the best stories with happy endings.  We will spend it surrounded by family and friends in a home filled with lovely smells of roasted turkey and dressing and yeast rolls and the click-clack of silverware and the five different snippets of conversation all going on at once.

A new day breaks in my brother’s life and I pray, oh Lord, I don’t know what to pray.  But tomorrow is Thanksgiving.   And I am thankful that my brother Jon and I will break bread and celebrate our brokenness together.

Granny’s Cornbread Dressing

24 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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I am drying torn up pieces of bread so that I can later wet it  with home-made chicken and turkey broth.  This seems an odd process when I let my mind rest on it.  But at its most essential, that’s what cornbread dressing is — lots of hot broth and lots and lots of dry bread.  Somehow, within this humble combination a miracle happens, which makes the ordinary anything but.  And this was especially true when Granny took the stuff to task.

I’m not sure, but I have a hunch that Granny used whatever bread she had around:  maybe a few hamburger buns, left-over brown-‘n’-serve rolls from Sunday’s dinner, a few leftover canned biscuits that my Grandfather wanted at every meal, in addition to store-bought loaves of bread.  And of course, Granny would have baked fresh cornbread to dry, probably from a store-bought mix.

Maybe I like to think Granny did this because this is what I do.  I don’t purchase store-bought loaves of bread often, though I did have half a loaf sitting in my freezer that went into my drying pans.  This year’s assortment  also includes freshly baked cornbread from 3 packages of a Shawnee Mills mix, a dozen plus left-over Sure Shot Rolls from Sunday’s dinner and a few baguettes bought from the local French Saigon bakery.

Long after I’d mastered Granny’s egg noodles, I never thought to recreate Granny’s dressing in my own kitchen.  The thought seemed not just intimidating but a sacrilege; to attempt this miracle would be to walk on hallowed ground.  But one  too warm November  day in Texas —  when I was  hungry for a taste of home and probably not in my right mind —  I decided to metaphorically shed my shoes and take a few baby steps.

Like most of Granny’s best dishes, no written recipe exists.  I know this since I inherited Granny’s one and only cookbook; all her prized Thanksgiving jewels are missing; no noodles, no cranberry relish, no cornbread dressing.  So when I called Granny, she had to  come up with a recipe on the spot.  And while I don’t kid myself that my dressing, even with Granny’s recipe, tastes anything like Granny’s, it’s better than any I could make with any other recipe.

Perhaps it’s time to hunt down the missing recipe of Granny’s Thanksgiving trilogy —  surely one of the aunts has Granny’s recipe for cranberry relish.  I know my brother would be mighty grateful for a taste of it.  In the meantime, try Granny’s dressing for a taste of the best in southern comfort food.  From my life to yours.

Cornbread Dressing

8 to 10 Servings

5 cups dried cornbread pieces
5 cups dried yeast bread pieces
5 to 6 cups hot chicken or turkey broth
3 stalks of celery, diced
1 small onion, diced
3 Tbsp butter
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Three days before (see note for quick dry method)

Tear up bread into a large cake pan or roaster; spread thin enough that bread is able to easily dry.  Stir daily until dried.  Leave on counter, covered at night.

One day before:

Bring broth to a boil.

Saute vegetables in butter until softened, over medium low heat.

In a large bowl, add dried bread crumbs and mix in spices.  Add all other ingredients (except for eggs.)  Taste to adjust seasonings.  I often double the sage and poultry seasoning; and depending on the amount of salt in the broth, I may add more salt as well.   The consistency of your dressing mix should be more than just moist, rather like cooked oatmeal.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator overnight.

Serving Day:

Spray a 9 x 13 pan liberally with Pam.  Do one final taste test to adjust seasonings before adding eggs.  Add more broth if dressing  has lost its oatmeal-like consistency.  Then add eggs  to the dressing and mix well.  Pour dressing into pan and bake in a 400 oven for 20-30 minutes.

Note for quicker dry: Preheat oven to 250 degrees and turn it off.  Place bread pieces in oven proof pan, to dry.  Every couple of hours stir bread pieces and reheat then turn off the oven.  In the evening, the bread should be removed from the oven, and once cooled it can be covered.  The process can begin again the next day until bread is dried.  This was my Mother’s solution, when she  would inevitably remember on Tuesday that she’d forgotten to begin drying on Sunday.  Once dried, leave on top of the counter, still exposed to air, until time to mix.