Here’s the peanut butter cookie recipe I use. For the cashew butter cookies, I just subbed cashew butter for the peanut butter. If you get it at Fresh Market, the smaller plastic tub is one cup of cashew butter.
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 375°. Cream the shortening and sugars. Add the peanut butter and mix. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the flour, baking soda, salt, and vanilla and mix well. Roll into balls or use a medium cookie scoop and put on cookie sheet. Using a fork, make a criss cross pattern on top of the cookies, flattening slightly. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before moving to cooling rack to cool completely.
There ya go guys. I can’t remember if I have made you guys peanut butter cookies before, but if I did, that is the recipe I used. They are good as is or you can dip them in chocolate to make them yummier.
Yes I know that Christmas was months ago, but I never posted what turned out and what didn’t. The maple fudge turned out well. It was popular with Carl’s coworkers so it will definitely be made again next year. I used Pioneer Woman’s sugar cookie recipe. It always turns out well for me, but the regular recipe makes a small amount of cookies so I always double it. I also made oreo pops. Take a double stuffed oreo and separate the cookies and dip a lollipop stick in candy coating then into the oreo stuffing. You don’t want to push it down too much as the cookies may break. Then put the other half back on. You want a good bit of candy coating to make contact with both halves of the cookie. After the candy coating is set, dip the cookie pops into melted chocolate or candy coating. Lay them on parchment paper to set. I also make hot chocolate on a stick. I think I got the recipe from a link on giver’s log, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to look for it again. The first batch of toffee did not set at all. I think the issue was my candy thermometer. I bought a better one and the second batch turned out great. I did flip it over and add a second layer of chocolate so there was chocolate on the top and bottom. The chocolate mice turned out pretty well. If anyone in the family has a request for next year, please let me know.
Last year when we got back from vacation, Carl and the boy made me 2 garden boxes. I planted some beans, 2 types of lettuce and spinach. I also planted broccoli. The beans and leafy stuff did really well. The broccoli did ok. I got 3 tiny heads of broccoli that looked more like an individual floret than a head of broccoli. Gardening is always an experiment and the broccoli just wasn’t the best one.
Anyway, I have already started on the Spring garden. I have corn, peas, green beans, 2 types of tomato, anahiem peppers for the girl, zucchini, black tulips, rosemary, chives, and parsley. The girl wants to grow mint so I have a pot ready for that whenever the garden store gets in mint plants. I also have a cayenne pepper plant to give as a birthday gift. We’re trying out some citronella plants to see how well they work at keeping the mosquitoes away. Those are in pots so we can move them around as needed.
The peas, beans and corn have come up. The tomatoes and peppers are starting to sprout. The zucchini were seedlings I bought so they were already sprouted.
OH! I also put in 4 blueberry bushes. They when in last night. Two of them have some nice green growth on them and they should do ok, but I’m not too sure how the other 2 will do.
YAY!! Today the stitches came out and I got to take a real shower. Until they came out, I could not get them wet, so that meant no showers. I had to carefully take a bath or wash up in the sink, neither of which really make ya feel clean. And since there were no showers, that meant i couldn’t wash my hair either. at least not on my own. Sunday, before the rehearsal for Lynn’s wedding, I had to lay down on the kitchen counter while Carl washed my hair. To make sure the stitches stayed dry, I taped gauze over the stitches and then held wash cloths over that in case Carl got a little crazy with the sprayer hose. Yay, clean hair.
Today after spending 2 hours in traffic because people here are morons, I got to take a real shower and wash my hair. YAY! All clean!
On Wednesday, I had arthroscopic surgery on both sides of my jaw to try to straighten out the issues from dislocating my jaw on Memorial Day. I really don’t remember much of anything after the anesthesiologist gave me the first round of meds in the prep room. I do remember giving me oxygen and putting my out on the operating table and then nothing after that until i was in recovery and i was awake enough for them to wheel me over to where Carl would sit with me. Trying to eat crackers when your jaw is bandaged up is not fun. Neither is trying to get a pain pill in your mouth to swallow it. When they bandage you up after having this surgery, you end up looking like a chipmunk in a water polo helmet. Your cheeks get mushed leading to the chipmunk effect. and the bandage that go over the sutures are covered in tons of gauze and then you get a wrap that goes around your head that makes it look like a water polo helmet. Not the most flattering look. Thankfully that came off on Friday and not I am left with stitches on both sides of my head right in front of my ears. At least they are low enough that I can wear my glasses without touching the stitches. Now I’m just waiting for everything to finish draining. Eating is still an adventure. I can chew food if i can get it into my mouth. So I’m back to cutting things up small enough to get into my mouth so I can try to chew normally. The sooner I work my jaw like normal, the better. I go back to the oral surgeon on Wednesday and hopefully everything will be healing like it should.
Tomorrow, we have a rehersal and dinner for Lynn’s wedding. Then the wedding on Monday. The girl is a junior bride’s maid and has to get dressed up and everything!
Have a good weekend!
Carl is doing a morning meeting on Wednesday and since it’s breakfast time, cupcakes really aren’t the best thing to send in with him. So i am going to make some blueberry muffins, ham and cheese biscuits, and some apple cobbler muffins with a recipe I found on Pioneer Woman’s website. She made hers with raspberries, i’m using apples since that’s what i have.
For the apple cobbler muffins you will need:
2 cups self rising flour
2 cups sugar
2cups milk
2 sticks of butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon (my addition)
chopped apples
brown sugar for sprinkling (my substitution, Ree used white sugar)
Mix the flour and white sugar together. Add the milk. Add the melted butter, stir to combine them, then add the vanilla and cinnamon. Pour batter into muffin tins that have been sprayed really well with non stick cooking spray. Drop in the chopped apple pieces and sprinkle on the brown sugar. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. Invert them onto a cooling rack. Serve them bottom side up, ie the wide top is the bottom when you serve it. Recipe should make 24 muffin cobbler things. 
Last monday, i took the nephew to the park so he could play a while before the rain started. he was having fun climbing up the ladders and coming down the slides. while watching him play, i yawned. i didn’t think it was any different from any other yawn until my mouth wouldn’t shut. well crap! now my jaw is locked open. kiddo thought i was playing around since i was talking funny. and so the adventure begins. after taking kiddo back to teh house, i went to the urgent care place to see if they could help. it was a fairly slow day for them so i got back pretty quickly, but by the time i saw the doc, it had already been an hour that my jaw had been locked. two docs, a nurse, a shot of lidocaine, time waiting for Red to get there to drive me, a shot of valium and several attempts at resetting my jaw later, i’m still stuck with my mouth open. valium was not my friend that day. i’ve had enough of my head being shaken around, so now it’s time to go to the ER. the ER took some x rays, used me for a human pincushion, and finally gave me something better than lidocaine for the pain. the first doc (yes it took more than one here too) was smart enough to wrap gauze around her thumbs for padding before she tried to reset my jaw so she wouldn’t have to worry about me biting down on her thumbs. urgent care guy, you should think about doing that. anyway, she had no luck either. time to call in a bigger doctor. before he came in they gave me more meds. thank you ER doc for that. i zonked out from the second dose of meds, but carl tells me it took the second doc 2 tries to get it reset.
now i’m having to track down an oral surgeon that will take our insurance to make sure it is healing well. there are 4 within a 50 mile radius all of which are on the other side of the river. yippie!
now should you ever find yourself with a locked jaw in search of medical attention, make sure you take a pen and paper with you. trying to talk is pointless as it just makes things hurt worse, and no one knows sign language. not even numbers or the alphabet.