Archives for June 2015

fast & easy strawberry oatmeal cookies

June 30, 2015

Hello there! I am back home from my jaw-dropping, deeply inspiring 5 days in Colorado, filled to the brim with love and feeling truly centered. Renewed. Optimistic and proud Mama, too. Yesterday I very much enjoyed getting back to the business of daily farm chores and housework, a side effect of being reminded how great my “job” is. It’s perfect for me, really. One of the pleasures of being home is cooking fresh food in my own quirky, artsy little kitchen, and I’d venture to say that Handsome is glad to have me back here too. xoxo

Speaking of cooking, it’s Tuesday, so how about a quick little recipe? This is the cookie experiment to which I recently alluded and had taken to a book club event. Pretty tasty. See what you think.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, browned (two sticks melted in a skillet until lightly brown then cooled a bit)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup plain sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups quick oats
loads and loads of fresh, clean, hulled, chopped strawberries (I used about 2 cups, and that was a LOT for these cookies.)

What I like about this super easy recipe is that it uses produce in season (strawberries) and nothing too fancy. Stuff you most likely have in your kitchen right now. (By the way, you could probably split that butter amount with half shortening, but I hate that. Or, really, I just love butter so much.) This is just an adaptation of plain oatmeal cookies. I had wanted to make them “clean” but didn’t remember to buy the extra ingredients, which are something like honey, coconut flour, and magic. Actually my local grocer was all out of magic that day, so we had to go with good-ole-fashioned sugary cookies. Not mad about it.

Method:

Brown the butter and let it cool. Using an electric hand mixer, cream it together with the sugars. Add the eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and most of the flour. Now you might want a wooden spoon to finish up. With a bit of muscle, stir in the remaining flour and the oats. Then add the strawberries. That’s it!

Scoop the wet dough in heaping Tablespoons onto a cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for up to 10 minutes. Maybe try turning off the oven and allowing them to finish to a golden brown as the oven slowly cools. The strawberries get all intense looking and caramelized, like strawberry leather. And the oats are very nearly nutty. Tenderly crunchy. SOOO good.

I think this day I added a thin little powdered-sugar-and-milk glaze on top, which actually detracted from the cookie. Made them a but too moist. Your call. — I think this day I added a thin little powdered-sugar-and-milk glaze on top, which actually detracted from the cookie. Made them a bit too moist, plus I didn’t quite get all the lumps out. Your call.

Cool on a wire rack like normal. Serve with cold milk or hot tea or, like I did, as part of a ginormous book club feast surrounded by nine of your favorite people.

Side note: Our new pup named Klaus was brand new to the farm the day I made this recipe. Wearing his cute bandanna, he stayed beneath my feet the entire time and slept and slept afterwards. That was just a few of weeks ago, and looking at these photos I am stunned by how much he has grown. STUNNED. He is so big now! Wow. Maybe we should bake something to celebrate his growth spurt. : )

The cookie business really did him in. He needed hours of cuddles afterwards. I suffered through. You know, for his sake. xoxo

I can think of lots of fun variations for this recipe. How about you? Like, add walnuts. Add a white chocolate drizzle. Go that healthy route and try a honey-coconut flour-magic recipe. That is on my kitchen bucket list for sure.

Okay, happy baking friends! And happy everything on this gorgeous, summery Tuesday. I am signing off soon to work in the garden, play with the horses, and generally max out on this amazing life I get to live. Thank you so much for stopping here.

“People have got to learn:
If they don’t have cookies in the cookie jar,
they can’t eat cookies.”
~Suze Orman
XOXOXO

sketches of day two

June 25, 2015

Frigid water boiling along the pebble-bottom river bed, the symphony of its journey a constant temptation for me. Drawing me closer, daring me to jump in and swim away. Be carried away. She warns me every chance she gets about the dangers of the water, tossing in branches and flowers to demonstrate the swift kidnapping. Such a sweet maternal role shift. I call her the Mermaid of the Rockies and she holds my hand tight with both of hers while I wade and stretch until my shins are aching from the cold.

A magpie joined us on the hike, his black and white tuxedo feathers so stark and crisp against the greens, browns, and blues of the lush landscape. He delicately tried to lead us up the side of the mountain, on to adventures we can scarcely imagine, toward the opposite end of wherever the freezing river would have taken us. He is one of a thousand magpies who found us at different points throughout the day, and not just on the hike. And not just on that day. Magpies follow her, and they watch her and have some kind of purpose we are hungry to divine. We call it her spirit animal and wait for more.

The vaulted rock walls impart a feeling of safety. Enclosure. And they pulse outward, a strong heartbeat that almost knocks you down where the forest parts and the view is suddenly unobscured. How the water flows so constantly, the cascading falls sprouting from those sky-high caves, is a thrilling mystery.

Everything here demands and deserves our attention, both the minuscule details near our feet- the ferny undergrowth, colorful wildflowers, and smaller rocks and mossy boulders- of course the enormous rocky, forested cathedral all around us. The foothills that grow up into sheer cliffs that take our breath away, then the down-tumbling avalanche memorials.

There’s just so much, and it’s all alive. It all has a very real pulse. So we slow ourselves. Press it all into our skin, our eyes, our hearts and souls. We listen to the birdsong and let it be our soundtrack. We touch the smooth, rough, cold, sun-baked rocks and inhale the unreal natural perfumes. We let ourselves become dry sponges soaking up the extravagance.

There are not enough words for beautiful.

We ended that very full and happy day at midnight on Trail Ridge Road, in a spectacular grayscale, exploring the highest reaches of the mountain beneath a dazzling, sloping quilt of constellations. Shadows passed beneath us like the behemoths of the watery deep. The air was cold. Cold! And the winds howled overhead and all through our ribs, combing our thoughts and feelings, pulling salty tears right to the surface. The smeary gilded half moon stood guard over this unbelievable scene while we stomped in our sandals and canvas shoes through old snow. Crunching and running in the stuff up to our knees, laughing and freezing ourselves into the purest exhilaration. Stars poured through an unseen funnel toward one mountain peak in particular, and I swear they were moving. Churning magic.

Do the mountains talk to each other, these ancient companions?

xoxoxo

arriving

June 24, 2015

On the short flight from Oklahoma City to Denver I read several chapters of Lotus Eaters and have to surgically differentiate the main character Helen from the very similar main character in another book I’m nibbling at, It’s What I Do. (By the way? I can’t wait to tell you about both of these books. Wow.) I eat a couple handfuls of dark-chocolate-almond-cranberry trail mix plus a small red apple and a full liter of cold water. It is nervous, happy eating, because that’s a whole lot of food for me at eight in the morning. Still, something tells me the energy will be well spent throughout the day.

I cannot stop smiling as I make my way from the landed plane to a speedy underground train and then to the baggage carousel and my shuttle rendezvous. Texts with Handsome and my firstborn make my heart soar.

Just minutes outside the Denver airport I see the landscape is comfortingly familiar to Oklahoma. Patchwork fields and modest farmland dotted with barns and silos. Scrubby prairie grasses, ponds, and even tree rows gone wild with time. It’s all very normal looking until I realize that above all of this, it’s not traces of clouds and sun I’m seeing, but rather snow capped mountains. Nearly halfway up the dome of the cornflower blue sky, I stare at the teasing, white, fragile looking shapes. Just hanging there. Broken silhouettes of the peaks where summer can’t reach, suspended above purple and blue shadows too smooth and quiet to be real. I have to refocus my eyes several times.

More brackish water in my life. Driving on the divided highway through the familiar-feeling terrain toward a brand new place. Closer and closer to my girl, my first baby, and a group of stunning rocks where her own heart has found purchase. Away from my own very real home. The drive is a pleasant mix of the two for a while, and I pray thank you and prepare my heart. Then once more thank you.

The whispers of the mountain range had been on our left for an hour, just a tenuous suggestion of a foreign land, but now we are turned toward them, facing their immensity, their colors growing sharper with every mile, their heft swelling and gaining a pulse. I catch myself feeling physically sad for the cars driving away. Leaving already? And I catch myself holding my breath.

I see purple wildflowers, five feet tall. A pair of muscular, glossy horses grazing in a field that could be one of our own. A long, thick grove of vaulted trees all leaved out in silver and dancing shamelessly with the very Oklahoma-like wind.

If you are born here, if you grow up with these mountains as your nursery walls, at what age do you first acknowledge their splendor? Then, at what age do you grow bored with them and need reminding?

Now the feet of the giants are visible. Green and carpeted, knuckled with foothills bigger than anything I’ve so far considered a mountain. More silver trees, this time growing in perfect twin rows, flanking a narrow, unpaved drive, a lot like the great ancient oaks in plantations of the South. I see feathery green grass and every kind of tree, but mostly pine. Cabins or boutique hotels emerging here and there. Generous hidden meadows and colorful wildflowers. This impossibly serpentine road as we climb up up up and my ears pop.

I gasp audibly at the massive boulders spilled out everywhere. Tossed like powerful marbles, great and meaningful, shocking in their size and perfect roundness. Others are deeply gouged and creased by long gone water, and I make a wish that I can maybe carry scars so beautifully.

Still climbing, still sprialIng upward, I drink in a wide view of nothing but conical Scoth pines. They are stacked in wallpaper rows and layers, greens and grays, a color scale advancing up the mountain that seems to have no top.

My eyes are greedy for every detail.

trying to slow the sand & leaving for colorado

June 23, 2015

This past week has been so busy and happy here at the farm. Filled to the brim with work, projects, gardening, animal changes, sewing orders, fun with friends, special moments with family, romance and laughter, you name it. Whew!

I really would like for time to sloooow doooowwwn. A lot, okay? I need to breathe it all in. I crave for this beautiful life to take longer. Much longer. Even with the bittersweet current that is always there, life is amazing. We have learned how to maintain hope for the best things not yet seen and to keep that emptiness from becoming bitterness. So we want this peace to linger.

Doesn’t hurt one bit that this year, Oklahoma summertime is drop dead gorgeous.

This coming week will be unusual and wonderful in brand new ways. Instead of keeping up my normal hermit routine at the Lazy W I will be visiting our oldest daughter where she is working in Colorado. Handsome cannot make this trip, so it will be just me flying to see just her (and her friends) and the Rocky Mountains, a place I have never been before.

(Squeal!)

I am already trying to slow the clock down enough to really press every memory into our hearts. Mine and hers. I want every new sensation to become part of my skin, every conversation to echo in my mind for a long time. Forever. I want the next few days to drench her in all the love I have been trying so hard to transmit to her all this time. She makes us really proud, and seeing her as a young woman is getting easier and easier for her mama who is in a bit of a time warp.

Anyway, I’m not yet sure how blogging will go this week, but whether I have time to write or not I would be so happy if you join the Colorado adventure on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you groove it. All signs point to “photos will be amazing!” Also, “Gorgeous doe-eyed artist daughters right around the corner!”

Okay, thanks for checking in! I’m pretty darn excited. And if you have the magic spell for slowing time, do tell.

Carpe Diem
Slowly
XOXO

random farm updates

June 18, 2015

Hello again, and happy Thursday! Or happy whatever day you are reading this. Thank you so much for dropping in here. Lots is happening at the farm, and I feel like getting it all out.

the rose of sharon are blooming and the skies are churning...xoxo — The Rose of Sharon are blooming and the skies are churning…xoxo

The seasons are changing, then changing again, and basically keeping us guessing. Oklahoma is probably past tornado season but still dealing with torrential rains and flooding. The temperatures are nice and summery, though, so overall our gardens look amazing.

Except the east facing flower border. Some shrubs have overgrown, and three others (my red tipped photinas) have contracted a disease that made it necessary to remove them. Jeep-jeep to the rescue! I have big, colorful ideas for the newly wide open soil here.

I still do not have any honeybees to replace the hives that last season fell under attack from hive beetles, but that’s really my fault. Or at least, it’s a consequence of consciously prioritizing farm projects. The good news is that we still have scads of honeybees in the vicinity, and they visit us daily. I see them in the vitex (chaste tree), in the vegetable beds, flowers, fruit trees, everywhere. Chances are that the forest next door has several wild swarms practically begging for me to get my act together and catch them. It’s just a matter of time or the ability to clone myself.

Speaking of fruit trees, the plums are numerous and ripening slowly. I am so happy about this! At my childhood home in Oklahoma City my Mom grew a plum tree in our front yard, and I was unreasonably proud of it. Not that I had anything to do with it; it just made me happy. So petite and healthy, so beautiful and productive. I thought my mom was magic to be able to grow plums like that. So seeing my own plum tree now heavy with green and nearly purple fruit, silken and firm, it’s pretty thrilling. One of my apple trees, though, is suffering from some rain-related copper-colored fungus. Not the end of the world, but I will have to do something about that if and when the sun ever comes out for good.

The hens are still providing us with up to ten fresh, heavy eggs per day. Sometimes they lay in the barn, which is fun to discover, either in a hay nest or behind one of Handsome’s tool boxes. Our fridge is always full of eggs, and I’ve been selling them locally too. To me this is pure luxury. I eat eggs anytime I want, which is all day long; we sell enough eggs to continue feeding the flock; and everyone is happy. Except maybe the liquid chickens who are so delicious. : )

My sweet little sewing and embroidery machine has been putting in some good hours, exploring new patterns and fun fabric combinations. I am slowly but surely spending up our abundant scrap supply. Okay that’s not true. It’s unlikely we will every be empty of fabric scraps here. But the dent is noticeable, and it’s sure fun. I’m selling various little kitchen accessories, too, so drop me a line if you’re interested.

ruffled, appliqued, & embroidered dish towels, each one unique, $9 — Ruffled, appliqued, & embroidered dish towels, each one unique and slightly weird, $9

Don't fold it. Don't stir it. Don't blend it. WHIP IT. Whip it good. This is the beginning of an apron and towel set for a new bride. : ) 3-piece set for $25. — Don’t fold it. Don’t stir it. Don’t blend it. WHIP IT. Whip it good. This is the beginning of an apron and towel set for a new bride. : ) 3-pieces total for $25.

Basil, you guys. The basil is coming.

I just… I just don’t have enough words. I have recently enjoyed two meals with little specks of it on top, and I just know that with a few days of good, baking heat every bed where the fragrant sprouts are growing will explode with the beautiful stuff. Pesto is about to be a reality.

When is National Basil Day? There’s a designated calendar event for every other food in the world. Not basil? The King, nay, the Emperor of herbs? Somebody make a phone call. Handsome! Send a terse email. Let’s make this happen.

Look out, Spaghetti Sunday. I'm coming for ya. — Look out, Spaghetti Sunday. I’m coming for ya.

Book club gathered last week and I took some strawberry-oatmeal cookies. They were so legit. It was kind of a mash up of a few different recipes, so I will try to share that soon. Strawberries are so abundant right now! Fat of the Land, and all, Barbara Kingsolver would be proud.

I’ve been staying really active fitness-wise, just not running so much as before. Hence, no “Marathon Monday” posts lately. But that’s about to change because I crave it again, hard. In the two months or so since the marathon I have been doing more weights and Jillian Michaels videos, plus gobs of time on the elliptical and just running maybe twice per week. It’s been really nice to enjoy some variety in working out. I have noticed my stress levels drop significantly, and I am also down ten pounds. Yay!

Let’s see… Let’s see… What else?

Anything else new here?

We did make an addition to our farm family. Our farmily as Honey Rock Dawn might say.

Only the cutest, sweetest, smartest puppy in the WORLD!

But I bet you don’t want to hear all about Klaus the Wonder Pup,
The Most Perfect-Amazing-German-Shepherd-Baby-Genius ever born.

Do you?

I didn’t think so. I’ll save those scrumptious details for a whole new post. Soon. Right now I need to go cuddle him and sniff the basil.

Happiest possible Thursday! Or whatever day you are reading this! Okies, don’t float away!

Life is so good.
Over and out.
XOXO

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