Happy Thanksgiving!

On garden and relationships

But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head . . . The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on. ~Robert Finch

Happy birthday, Sherri! Love you.

Cobbler

Mmm, yesterday I made...



I heard about it on the radio driving home from walking one day last week, and found it online.
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Start to finish: 10 minutes prep; 45 to 50 minutes bake
Yield: 10 servings

•1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
•1 cup sugar



• 4 ounces Neufchatel cheese, cut in small pieces
•1 cup all-purpose flour



•1 egg, lightly beaten
•1 cup milk
•1/2 teaspoon salt
•2 teaspoons baking powder



• 2 quarts whole strawberries, capped and washed



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and pour into a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish.

In a small bowl, mix together the egg, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour directly over the butter in the baking dish, but do not stir.

Add the strawberries, arranging in a single layer as much as possible. Sprinkle cream cheese pieces over strawberries.

Place in preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes 35 minutes (check for doneness), or until top is golden brown and edges are bubbling. (Crust rises up and around the fruit, but fruit will still peek out of top.)



• Plain Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream for serving, optional

Serve hot out of the oven with choice of topping, if desired.

I put vanilla yogurt on mine and ate it cool - 'twas was like eating trifle! YUM!


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Abbie, June 2012

Christmases past

December 1956  My first winter of life. Massachusetts.



December 1964  Part of a family portrait from my Nana and Grandpa Bird's 50th wedding anniversary party. (The teenager is our cousin. Chris hadn't been born.)



Same trip  We drove 30 hours straight to be in Utah this year. Another day with my grandparents.



January 1, 1970  No need for winter clothes too much in South Texas.



December 1973  I got the camera for Christmas and am picture-taking here (except for this first one below). Marcia's holding our cousin Lance in the second picture.



December 1979  By now I had married Marc and we had Jenny and Erin and I was expecting Brad in just two months. We drove 12 hours south to Mexico City to visit mom and dad. Marcia and Brent and their baby Brent flew in as well.



I can't really post Christmas morning pictures from this year 'cause we're all in our night clothes! So how 'bout images touring Mexico City.



December 1984  Salt Lake City. Miss you, Mark!



December pictures further forward in time are in a shoe box at my house or have been given to the kids - I sure don't have digital images from the 1980s to 2004 or so. Not unless someone's given me them like dad did by scanning these oldies one year and passing them forward.

Lots of memories wrapped up in this gift.
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December 2007

There's our Mark, hugging Laura... one of my favorite all time holiday pics!

Sweetest of all

O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort
and joy!

In very busy December can there be anything so comforting as Christmas cookies?! The thought of cookies alone fills me with joy; the smell as they bake or are hand-picked from the bakery counter; the texture in that first bite and, mmm, the hit of sweet! You should have seen the face on our ward choir director when she described to the entire choir two Sundays ago the moment she sampled what is now her favorite gingerbread cookie of all time, and how she finagled the recipe from the cook. The sweetest of all, she said. And yes she would share (at various ones of us with raised eyebrows) and did produce plates of frosted cookies and the recipe at the end of choir practice.

I might have a yen this direction myself seeing as how this sweet delight can be made using butterscotch pudding. Boy howdy, makes me think of butterscotch pull-aparts... Erin taught me to make them - she got the recipe from her girlfriends. But that's for another time.

Colleen Bean’s girlfriend's GINGERBREAD COOKIES 

2 pkg of butterscotch pudding (not instant)
2 sticks of butter or margarine (I use one of each, says Colleen.)
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 t. vanilla

Cream together, then add:

3 c. flour
3 t. ginger
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt

Mix together – chill for 30 minutes
Roll out and cut into desired shapes.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. (I spray the pan with Pam.)
Frost with favorite buttercream frosting. 

EASY!!

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How does this in any way relate to Putting Christ back into Christmas? Remember that's where I started this month and I think my December posts are pointing to that. But this one? Cookies? (And yes I did one on cookies already... here.) Technically not. Unless you count the very generous way in which Colleen shared. She's good that way... loves people. So this is maybe about goodness and love? For sure. And comfort and joy.

Not to be overlooked - far from it and indeed the focal point of the season - is the message of comfort and joy to all God's children because He let the One come down, His Only Begotten in the flesh. Implicit in the Savior's birth is His own goodness and great love for us and the wondrous work he will accomplish on our behalf. Much was done during His ministry and more is to come!

¶ Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; for the LORD hath comforted his people. (Isaiah 49:13)

We greet the season with all her sweet delights with this knowledge, the sweetest of all.

Now to the LORD sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
comfort and joy,
O tidings of comfort and joy!

Coming together

"An assemblage of forms creating a new whole, a new reality..."
collage!

I love
scrapbooking
where images,
such disparate ones,
come together and can make
perfect sense
to the eye and the brain.

It's a rush. A joy!

Oh hey,
hurry before the week wanes -
Christmas is almost here -
put on your Hallelujah Chorus
CD . . . 

(. . . sure you do)
(oh, sorry, tell Siri  
on your iPhone ) 

and hear,
really listen for, the
collage of sound!

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When Kent and I married ten years ago we blended families.
In one sense NOT, since he doesn't have children; I didn't become a step parent
like he did to my kids. 

Next week after Christmas, almost before I know it -

in the blink of one little eye -

two small boys will be in my house and then around my Christmas tree
and later at dinner at Auntie Laura's with the big family,

and the next day at breakfast with me and Grandpa Kent and their dad,

and Jenny who's going to marry their dad, and so she's like the mom.

There'll be an assemblage of people in my house verily creating a new whole.

A brand-new reality.

(Have I posted this yet? Don't kill me you guys. Cuties!)

Coming together.

It makes perfect sense
(I'll be stepNana)
and is, hallelujah,
a little bit of a
rush!

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Oh, and at the end of January I get to go see
Jillian Paige.

Winter time

Pandora's playing Christmas Jazz on the computer. I just finished eating a peanut butter and honey sandwich and that after creating a mess making cheese ball. Kent dove into the cheese ball almost before lunch leaving it about eaten!



I'm thankful for this quiet winter afternoon.


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Well done

A.M. on Thanksgiving. ↓



Of course.



We dined at Laura's. Eighteen of us and we were, um, not well fed, we were OVER fed! So good!



We ate (and ate) then some of the party vamoosed for a nap. There were more of us here at the blessing on the food! And a good one that was - Mary Ellen offered it. Talk on this end of the table with the young adults stayed lively! Jamie and Adam, Kaylee, Skylar, Marc, Adrienne and Scott - and Laura stayed in the middle of that. Then there were the parents, to whom Sharm gave much attention - a whole 'nother conversation there. On the far end you see Sam's empty chair (empty because Sam ate fast and disappeared thank you) flanked by Shayla and Stan and Kent and me; not a one of us appear to be in place but Shay. Of course I'm on this end hobnobbing and taking pictures and standing up purely to help digestion! Kent's probably cleaning up at this point and Stan, like Sam, retired on a full stomach.


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