July Days

 

                July flew by, and it was more eventful than I expected and am used to.  Last July not much was going on, no indoor or large gatherings and staying home to avoid catching the virus made for a string of lazy summer days spent blowing bubbles, reading, and keeping in touch via texts except for a few times friends or family stopped over to visit on the patio sharing coffee.  This year was different, the weather has not been as pleasant, and more days were spent inside with the air conditioning than out in the hot humid air.  With my family all being vaccinated we are able to gather inside, and we have.  Our most notable time together was my Christmas in July cookie exchange.

               It was arguably the hottest, muggiest week of the summer leading up to the big day, and it may sound crazy, but I baked 2 kinds of cookies, as did my sister in law and niece together.  It’s challenging getting my dough right in such weather conditions because even though I have the air conditioning, it affected the texture of my dough.  Lemon cookie cutouts became lemon drop cookies because in spite of refrigerating the dough for 24 hours it remained too soft and sticky to work with.  So I still decorated them with red and green sugar and they were just as tasty, unexpectedly puffy and crisper than I expected.  They were delicious with iced tea and had a very light lemony flavor.  My other batch was eggnog walnut oatmeal cookies.  They are a drop cookie but again the dough was very sticky despite refrigerating it for a few hours.  They were crispy and flat, and very tasty with a slight spicy flavor reminiscent of eggnog and delicious with iced coffee.  We also did a Christmas craft making fans with last year’s Christmas cards.  It was simple to do, (my guests dubbed it a Kindergarten craft), but fun and useful if one is too warm.  They can be hung on the Christmas tree as an ornament or be used to embellish a gift.  Then we did Christmas Mad Libs for a while before ordering pizza to munch.  While we ladies were busy tasting all the cookies and drinking iced coffee and iced tea and making our fans, my husband and brother went shopping at a new hardware store they’d been dying to check out.  We saved them some cookies, of course!  All in all it was a really fun day and we ended it by donning our Santa or elf hats for a group photo.  I think this will be my favorite memory of the summer.

               Although we’re not really back to “normal”, (whatever THAT is), we’re doing more than we did last summer with others and it feels good.  I don’t think things, at least for me, will ever be the way they were before everything shut down but it can still be good.  Maybe better in some ways, and different, which isn’t a bad thing.  It just might take some getting used to.

Of course there had to be a Christmas tree and some gifts!

                             The fans we made and the Mad Libs.  So much fun!

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Here are the two cookie recipes I used, in case now you feel like baking cookies!

 

Lemon Christmas Tree Cookies (5 dozen small)

1/3 cup soft butter           1 cup sugar

1 egg                                   2 cups sifted flour

½ teaspoon soda              ¼ teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon lemon peel              3 Tablespoons lemon juice

Cream butter thoroughly.  Add sugar gradually, beating until fluffy.  Beat in egg, then add lemon peel. Sift together flour, soda, and salt. Add to creamed mixture alternately with lemon juice, mixing until smooth.  Divide dough in half and wrap in waxed paper. On lightly floured surface, roll out ½ of dough at a time to 1/8 inch thickness.  With floured cookie cutter, cut into desired shapes (I usually use a tiny Christmas tree cutter) and decorate with colored sugar, if desired. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375* F for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

**When I made them drop cookies they were bigger and took a couple minutes longer to bake.  I got only about 2 ½ dozen.**

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Egg Nog Oatmeal Walnut Drop Cookies

1 cup all purpose flour          ½ teaspoon baking powder      ½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon           ½ teaspoon nutmeg                   ¼ cup shortening

¼ cup softened butter          ½ cup granulated sugar             1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg                                        2 Tablespoons milk                    ½ teaspoon vanilla

1 cup quick cooking rolled oats                   ¼ cup chopped walnuts

Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ¼ teaspoon salt and spices.  In mixer bowl beat shortening and butter for 30 seconds; add sugars and beat till fluffy.  Add egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well.  Add dry ingredients to beaten mixture, beating till well combined.  Stir in oats and walnuts.  Chill dough 2 hours; form 1 inch balls.  Dip tops of balls in additional granulated sugar or cinnamon sugar, if desired.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake in a  375*F oven for 10-12 minutes. Makes 36

Purple and White Clover

 

            One recent day I was out walking Hillary up and down the driveway, just to do something besides sit in the house, as our van was in for repairs so we couldn’t go anywhere.  It was a hot day, this being July, and I noticed that we have a lot of white clover growing wild all over the yard.  It reminded me of those slower paced days when my first daughter was nearly a year old and our summer days were spent with the little kiddie pool in the grass where she played and discovered the world, as toddlers do.  I remember watching the honeybees in the bright sun flying from clover to clover, collecting pollen while small white and yellow butterflies floated from flower to flower drinking the nectar they contained.  It’s a lovely memory of easier, happy days when my whole world was right there in my view, no matter what else may have been happening in the world at large. That was a serene time of life.

               When I was a kid our yard had white clover growing in it, too, and I remember making little chains from it, braiding the stems together to make bracelets and garlands to wear like a crown.  My mother said that you can eat clover, but it’s better to have the larger purple kind as it’s easier to pull the petals off and taste the sweet nectar inside them.  She was right!  They used to grow along a dirt road by our house that we always referred to (and still do) as the new road.  That road connected our street with the next one up a hill and was blocked off by phone poles lying across both ends as it wasn’t open for vehicles until the town paved it many years later.  On the sides of that road grew not just the purple clover, but Queen Anne’s lace, black eyed Susan, daisies and corn flower along with other weeds I can’t name.  We’d walk along that short stretch of road with the sun hot on our backs; gravel crunching under our feet whenever we walked to the grocery store or the post office.  Picking the Queen Anne’s lace on our way home and then putting them in little glasses with colored water was one of the best things to do, and exciting to check on them periodically all afternoon while the white flowers lined up on the kitchen windowsill changed to the color in the glass. I’m glad I had a mother who taught me about flowers and growing things.  Our yard had flower beds and a small vegetable patch where we grew radishes, carrots, scallions and leaf lettuce. It’s a nice feeling to grow some of your own food, we spent time together weeding and caring for the flowers and vegetables.  One year we planted marigold seeds in a sunny spot and that year we had monarch butterflies by the dozens, drawn there by the heady yellow blooms.

               It’s amazing how just noticing what is right in front of me can evoke so many pleasant memories.  It’s a little like time travel going back in my mind to things I have forgotten about.  I think it makes for a little bit of serenity in what is a stressful time for all.

The months of this year just seem to be flying by.  Each month brings a new beginning.

         I have no trellis for the clematis, it's just growing among the pachysandra.  Things got a little out of control this year!