It's a lovely day in my neighborhood!

#73

#74

#75

 Some Mail Art collages - #73 uses very specific shapes, #74 uses left-over shapes (and I do like this one a lot) and #75 is an altered vintage postcard that my friend Andrea sent to me. It's sort of Colossus of Rhodes, right?

It's such beautiful weather today that I've taken my lap top outside; where, I can enjoy the garden, and the lovely, low humidity and light breeze.

Meanwhile, inside, a chard pie was baking! Here it is. I did it without the pie crust that the recipe called for. I think it'll be good!

 Here's my lovely little garden. All hosta and ferns and other shade loving plants. The couple bird feeders are back in business attracting birds. Yay.

On Monday, I got together with my friend to finish up day 21 of #CreativeSprint. The prompt was to call someone you hadn't spoken to in awhile, and have them give you a prompt. My friend suggested that I make a map of a place we could walk to easily, so I did. We walked the map together, first to a nearby "shelf" to leave some things, then to a coffee shop to leave books.

The book is registered on Bookcrossing. I hope that whoever found it will make a journal entry.

Whatever is on the shelf is anonymous, so we'll never know who took our stuff. And someone left a miniature china cup and saucer, and I took it for our grand-girl. She loved it.

So there you go, a lovely day in the neighborhood. I hope your day has gone, is going, or will go well.

Tea Time and baking day.

 This is what I had after baking today. I made corn bread from a package called Miracle Maize cornbread and Muffin Mix. I never tried it before, the company's been around since 1903, so I figured I'd give it a try. The corn bread was delicious! I, also, made Mexican brownies (with cinnamon in them) topped with a really delicious frosting of cooked brown sugar & butter (and some other stuff.) This was part of the Chili dinner that I'd donated to the Richmond Peace Education Center auction last November. The purchaser called for it for today. The dinner consisted of vegetarian chili, corn bread and brownies.
Since the purchaser lived nearby, we walked over with the food in a red basket, very Little Red Ridinghood, no?

 I buy my eggs from a woman who lives over in Surry County and raises hens and bees. These are not factory eggs. They come in all sizes and colors. This dozen had a pale greenish-blue egg amongst the browns. Pretty.

This lovely photo of a tea cup is actually a postcard that was submitted to the new mail art call for TeaTime Mail Art. You can see the entries and why we had to renew the call, here.  I'll be adding more cards soon as many new ones have arrived. Please do check it out.

The Turtle Cookie story

My mother was a terrific baker. She had a large assortment of recipes and we loved them all. There was the thumb print cookies, the Sonja Henie cookies, the little curved cookies rolled in powdered sugar that melted in your mouth, and more. BUT our favorite of her recipes was the turtle cookie. We loved how it looked and how it tasted. Yum. We assumed, and she never said anything to the contrary, that she invented this cookie. One year, my family encouraged me to enter a baking contest with "mom's recipe," which I did. I didn't win, thank goodness. Last year, my older sister sent me a copy of a page in a cookbook that she got. It was the story of the Snappy Turtle Cookies. Yes, that's right, Mom's cookies were originated by another person. Her name was Beatrice Harlib and she lived in Chicago, Illinois,  just like our Mom. Did Mom know her? I doubt it.  Well, my sister and I had a laugh about that. We can't talk to Mom about it, because at nearly 97 (in 6 days) she won't remember  where she got the recipe or even the cookies themselves, though she'd love to eat them. I've posted the cookies on my other blog, here.

Hamentaschen

This is the Jewish holiday of Purim...when the story of Queen Esther is read and children dress in costumes (like Halloween except it's all about beautiful Queen Esther for the girls and, hmmm, something biblical looking for the boys.) Evil-doer Hamen supposedly wore a three corner shaped hat, thus the shape of these delicious annual treats. I can't give you the recipe because no matter which one I try, lots of them open up, loosing their 3 sided shape. I've tried cream cheese dough, buttery dough, cake mix dough, same results. I've used the traditional poppy seed mix, but today I used Bonne Maman preserves: raspberry and apricot. So they taste good no matter the shape, in the end, it doesn't matter, contents, not looks, wins. Look here and here to see where the best hamentaschen can be found in the U.S.A.