Mail Art and the Storm Part2

 View from my kitchen window this afternoon. We left the screen in so it caught the drops and gives a nice filtered look. The rain isn't torrential but the wind has picked up. Hello Sandy!

#86

I thought this would be nice for yesterday's storm watch.

#87

This minimal Mail Art works nicely for me. I really do like working with 3 elements to see how I can make an impactful composition. I think this one works nicely. The man is from the background of a still for the movie " A Bout de Souffle" (Breathless) by Godard. I remember seeing that when I was young and being so impressed with it. 


This is what my side porch looks like usually. My honey has hung a striped cloth to divide the area closest to the back door, with it's chair and a little table, from the back of the porch.

Here's what happened today with the wind blowing. The wind lifts the curtain every time there's a gust. Now you can see what's behind the curtain. The yard furniture was brought it so it didn't get tossed around, and there are our recycle bins, plus assorted other stuff.   No porch sitting today!

 Ingredients for making cookies, yesterday.

 Here they are, crunchy oatmeal cookies.
Today, I made pumpking muffins. Must keep busy baking. Come on over and have tea with me!

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.

Sunday Snow Day

We woke this morning to find that the sun was out and the snow had finally stopped falling.
Because the back porch door had stayed closed, we had snow piled against the outside of it. Look at that height!
I started to cook and to prep for baking. While I was in the warm kitchen, my honey worked his way to the garage, got the shovel and cleared, first the back walk, then the front walk. He was pretty pleased with himself.
He had lots of layers and said that he didn't feel the cold at all. Hmmm, okay, but to me 21F is quite cold, no matter how many layers I have on.
The Carrot Cheese cake turned out really nicely. Here's a picture of how a small slice looked. Very moist and cheesy. Last night's potato soup turned out good, too. Today, I made a tomato sauce and am making chocolate chip cookies right now. I added pecans and dried cranberries to them. I like being my own prep chef, using all my little bowls to set up my ingredients. It's like: make believe I'm doing a TV cooking show. I'm going to bring some of the cookies around the corner to my little neighbors. Yes, I plan to step outside! With enough layers, I think I can make it around the corner and back home without feeling too arctic.

Holiday eats

Merry Christmas to all my friends out there who'll be celebrating this holiday tonight and tomorrow.
We're stopping by our neighbor's briefly before heading off to the country to be with friends tonight. I've made my yummy spread (yes, cheese and butter mixed!) and my chocolate pecan pie (which gets topped with whipped cream.) I'll be making another pie for tomorrow night's Christmas day dinner, which we'll celebrate with other friends, AFTER our niece's open house. Oh so much eating. I feel immensely grateful for such abundance. For any of you who may have tried to make my oatmeal cookies....big apologies. I forgot, YES, skipped over, two very important ingredients. Our cousin, the original cookie maker, tried the recipe and got tasty but odd cookies. Pourqoui, por que, you may ask...what I forgot was the flour and the baking soda!! In my haste to share the recipe, I never reviewed before posting. So Sorry! The recipe has been corrected so if you are game to try again, or even for the first time, you can find the recipe here.

SNOW and more SNOW

The snow started last night, about 5 p.m. and hasn't really stopped since.
You can see in one photo how it looked when it first started, then in the other just a short time later. See by the light, the snow still falling. It's very cold. Right now it's 28°F according to the weather channel, and 1' to 2" more snow is expected. In some areas, there are up to 18" of it. I didn't measure but you can see from the photos that we had quite a bit.

My honey got stuck in NYC, as his plane was canceled. He was scheduled to leave last night but the earliest I could rescheduled for was Sunday
afternoon. Now with the storm headed up the coast, he may get cancelled again. Oh, dear!

My back porch door got blown open during the night. Snow piled up outside, then snow was blown onto the porch.

I made a batch of oatmeal cookie dough and invited my little neighbors from around the corner to come over and bake. Not only did they make cookies, but they tramped the snow down on my front steps (no shovel!) and they played in the back yard. Recipe for cookies here.

Some Bruges

Bruges, a lovely little city. I loved the canal boat ride, even though it was very chilly. We were able to get a good view without all the people on the crowded little streets. We went on Saturday with a bus tour, returned on Monday (when it was raining) when there were fewer people, and were glad we took the opportunity to go there. We'll now have to rent the film In Bruges again to see if we spot streets we'd actually been on. There were lots of little lace shops, many souvenir shops, a really nice design store that Chuck said he could live in, and lots of places selling chocolates and good buttery cookies, and of course, frites! Belgium is definitely a good country for eating!

Bercy Village

Chuck was reading the Rick Steves' book someone left here and found that there was a little shopping area east of our neighborhood. It had been warehouses and such. We took two metros to get there, including line 14, which is very fast, driveless, and has some unique stations. The metro exits directly in front of the "village." It turned out to be across the Seine from the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
We enjoyed walking, looking in little shops, having lunch at a very French cafe, among only French people. No English speaking people seemed to be there. We treated ourselves to cookies, nougats & caramels from a cute little shop.