Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Thank you for your support!


Thank you all for your support in the great cause! The auction has been kept open and will stay open until all the cookies are sold. So if you thought you missed everything, don't despair, you can still go to Landra's and snag your self some cookies for a good cause!

Thanks again, so much!

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Monday, September 22, 2008

The Great NieNie Cookie Sale - Spritz Cookies for all!


The day has arrived! Today is the day of The Great NieNie Cookie sale! Beginning at 8 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m. I am offering my very best cookies to the five highest bidders of my Spritz Cookies! Please read on to see just how you can help the NieNie Recovery fund! You'll be choosing from items 44(sold!), 45 (sold!), 46(sold!), 47, or 48!

What you need to do in order to have me send you some of these fabulous cookies. First off the bids, as stated by Landra, start at $20 a dozen. You can claim an offering by making a comment. Then you make a donation and it's yours. Keep in mind my dozens are 24 count, yes actually two dozen cookies! WooHoo!
The Great NieNie Cookie sale is here! Place your bids at Landra's blog, not mine please! She will compile all the bids and then get the list of recipients to us. The auction ends at 9 p.m. tonight! If a cookie you want has been chosen you can make a higher bid to claim it!
Spritz
They are crispy yet chewy buttery morsels of sweetness. You will love them! So make a bid. I'm offering 5 opportunities to participate. The five highest bids (remember this is a fundraiser!) will get the cookies. Oh and by the way, they'll be more appropriately fall inspired colors, not Christmas-y like in the picture. Thank you all in advance for being a part of the cookie sale!

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Friday, September 19, 2008

Spritz Cookies

Spritz
I knew there was a way I could help! When good women hear of trouble in a family, or a new family has moved into the area, or someone is having a celebration or a down day or possibly any other reason to bake, we do just that. We may not know the people, or how to lend a hand, or maybe even feel a bit helpless. So we do what any good baker does, bake up a batch of our favorite cookies and cover them with saran wrap and toodle on over with a plate full of love. You've read about the Nielsen family and wanted to help. You can help me help the Nielsen family! If you are not familiar with their story, click on the "about Nie" section of the page.

Landra Lynn has had her thinking cap on for a couple of weeks. Landra has decided to host a fundraiser - The Great NieNie Cookie Sale. She needs the help of a few good bakers and a few good cookie monsters. I fit in both categories, but this time I have chosen to be a part of the baking team!

My spritz cookies are the best cookies ever. You can tell from the picture how those sweet buttery quasi soft cookies draw you in just begging to be eaten. I am going to be baking my heart out, getting them ready for anyone who wants them.

What you need to do. Bid - be my cookie monster! Landra will list all of the cookies (and their bakers) on her site on Monday September 22nd! Yes, that's next Monday! You choose a cookie and bid. Bids begin at $20, yes this is a fundraiser. You are bidding on a dozen cookies.
For those of you who choose to bid on my cookies know that my dozen is a Robyn's dozen! You'll actually receive 2 dozen of my buttery, crispy-soft, sweet morsels of delight! Yes, a bid for one dozen gets you two!

Please mark you calender and bid with me to help this family! If you haven't read yet this morning. Christian is awake and has gone to see Stephanie in her room! He talked with her (even though she was still not awake) and prayed with her. What wonderful news!

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Black Licorice and Orange Sherbet


Not your likely combination, unless you're talking about Grandpa memories. The peanut butter and butter post evoked some memories for Carrie, her memories sparked some of my own. She is going to get back to me on a few recipes she loves but until then...

her best memory of her grandad was black licorice. In her comments she said "
As for my Grandpa, who has been gone for 7 years (and must thrilled to have Grandma with him now): black licorice. My kids think its disgusting. I love it." I'm the same way with Orange sherbet ice cream. I cannot drive by a Thrifty's Drug store (a rare site indeed) or see a scoop of sherbet without thinking of grandpa.
Sherbet

We would visit my grandparents each summer, for two weeks. Grandpa had little to do with the girls, he took my brother under his wing and spent the majority of time with him each day. Even still, not an afternoon went by that we didn't walk down to the local drug store and get a 5 cent cone of orange sherbet. No other flavor would do. We'd walk down Horne street in Oceanside a couple of blocks, buy an ice cream and walk back home. We'd point out neat stuff like magnolia seed pods and bird feathers and talk with grandpa. I'll have to tell you about the bird courts someday.

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Peanut Butter and Butter?


As a child, lunch was always a bit of a surprise. Mom was usually sleeping or not at home so we had to forage a lunch without her. The surprise was - surprise! there's food to eat - or surprise! get creative. Most of the time being the latter, we learned to eat almost anything between two slices of bread. My favorite was mustard. Yes, that was the sandwich. My brother's was peanut butter and butter.

My niece, Erin, recently wrote to me and said "I have to let you know, I cannot eat a peanut butter and butter sandwich without thinking of my Dad. I have no idea if the stories are even true but, for some reason I think someone once told me he used to make them for us as kids. So whenever I feel lonely or heartsick, or even just plain bored. I pull myself out of whatever chair I am in and go into the kitchen to make myself a peanut butter and butter sandwich on plain old cheap white bread.

Yes, Erin it's true. Erin's dad was my brother. Some of my readers may already know that he died when he was 32. His oldest son died also in the accident. They left behind his wife and four younger children. Yes, it's sad, but that's not what this is about. Erin was next to the youngest. She has very little true remembrance of her father. She was just a tiny little one when he died and has had to rely on many relatives to tell her the stories of her father and older brother.

When I asked her about food memories, this was the first to spring to mind. A simple, but well made, peanut butter and butter sandwich with cheap white bread. Mike came to love them. I did not. I tolerated them as they would take away the hungry feelings in an empty tummy. My brother, the brave conquering hero that he was, embraced the challenge and made them a part of the person he was. He even, to my dismay, fed them to his children. And they gobbled them up as if everyone who didn't like them was crazy. Creamy peanut butter spread thick on a slice of bread, the other slice a smear of butter, - actually margarine - butter was reserved for us a grandma's house not home, when put together made lunch for a king.

Simple food. Great memories. A father long gone. Memories to this day that make a heart full and comforted in the quiet hours of an afternoon.

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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Let's begin again

When I started this blog waaay back in 2005 I had been thinking of blogging for almost two years, I had become inspired by wonderful bloggers and I thought I could add a voice to the crowd. I'm really a sentimentalist and the idea I wanted to bring forth was to blog about people and about food and life in general. It was muddled. So I began the regular blog where I blogged about other stuff and left the food to its own.

However, what I really wanted to talk about was the people. And food. So I am beginning again. Right here. No bookmarks to change. Nor blogrolls to update. Just a new me, telling stories of people and the food they prepare. The food that make memories stick in the corners of your mind, hearts and possibly souls.

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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Let's ban the FDA

This story is why. They are not a good source for information of food safety. They long ago gave in to the pressures of big business and their fat wallets.

Let's hear it for big government!

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