Cooking Faster

Time goes faster when you get old.  It really does.  I remember how long a week-end or a summer vacation seemed when I was young.  Loving school probably had something to do with my attitude, but I think the clock starts speeding up noticeably after you marry and have children. One day you can’t wait for them to walk and talk and the next moment they are walking down an aisle for graduation or a wedding. Have you experienced this?

In my senior years I’ve begun to distill activities to their essence.  I rarely spend 1 ½ hours making a coconut meringue pie from scratch anymore, unless Bob requests one for his birthday.  Gone are the days of baking 4 loaves of bread and 2 batches of chocolate chip cookies on the same days I taught piano or voice in my home studio.

I flip right past recipes from Martha Stewart or Julia Child that include 20 ingredients and 2 hour prep times these days.  People who still make their own corned beef or sauerkraut or angel food cakes from scratch amaze me.  I’ll buy mine from the deli, thank you! Putting up three day lime sweet pickles once a year is about the most time consuming culinary commitment I make anymore.

Maybe this is just because I’ve gotten slower, but I prefer to think I simply have other things I like to do better and there’s not enough hours left to do them all. Jeremiah 15 talks about extracting the precious from the worthless and I’m all for that.

I still love to cook and bake, but quicker recipes appeal to me these days. The granddaughters and I especially like making ice cream pies and cakes. Any dessert that starts with ice cream, candy bars, cereals, or other store bought ingredients to speed up the end result (the eating!) will usually get a try around here.

Like this one for Graham Cracker Toffee Bars that a friend often makes for our bridge club.  The few ingredients are usually available in my fridge and pantry, the prep is a snap, the results are a cross between a cookie and a candy bar, they keep well in fridge or freezer, and are yummy.

Enjoy!
DeAnna

Ingredients:  graham crackers, 2 sticks of butter, ½ cup white sugar, and nuts.

(Yep, that’s right…2 sticks of butter!  The best toffee is almost all butter.)

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.



Line a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

Spread whole graham crackers over the foil and

sprinkle nuts over all.  I used almonds & pecans here,

but any kind will do.



Melt 2 sticks of butter with ½ cup white sugar

and boil 2 minutes on stove top over med high heat.

Pour the hot toffee mixture over the grahams and spread it

out with a wooden spoon.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool in pan. 

When cool, peel the foil from the back of the cookies and break

them into thirds.

I like to store mine in plastic ware in the fridge or freezer, but

you can eat them immediately too!

                   

 

 

 

House and front yard in 2011 drought

Trees and Me

I can’t remember a time that I didn’t love trees.  The first poem I ever wrote was about a tree.  “I look out my window and what do I see, The birds and the bees and a bright green tree”.  I was six years old.

I imagine that mom instilled the value of trees in me because she had lived through the Dust Bowl of the 30’s here on the Oklahoma plains.  On the first farm my parents owned, they planted a shelterbelt of tiny elm seedlings that were free from the USDA.  Watering them from a tank in the back of an old pick-up on hot summer evenings seemed like a fun family activity to my sister and me, but I imagine it was a tiresome job for our folks.

Early in our married life on our own first farm, Bob and I planted 60 three foot tall arborvitae in hard clay soil.  I nearly lost a leg in the process, however, to a post-hole digger on the back of our tractor. My quick-reacting and strong husband saved me by jumping off the tractor and lifting me out of the whirling blade, leaving behind only my right boot, long-underwear, and jean leg! I escaped with a few stitches and a new appreciation and fear of 3-point hook-ups.

I think one of the reasons we moved to Colorado to ranch later was our mutual love for trees, mountains, and cattle.  At Christmas time I could take an ATV and a chainsaw into the woods behind our home and cut my own fresh tree.  What would it be this year: pine, fir, or spruce?  No more stickery dry red Oklahoma cedars in our living room!

Unfortunately the tourists all loved the Colorado forests and scenery too.  As ranch country began to fill up with housing developments and little “ranchettes ”,  land prices rose and grazing permits decreased.  This, combined with the cattle market crash of the early 80’s, renewed our appreciation for the more open and lonely plains with their easy calving weather and year-round grazing.  So back to Oklahoma we came.

When we bought our second homestead here, there were only 8 old elms and 3 locust trees on a huge expanse of Bermuda and buffalo grass, so we began planting again.  Cedars, pines, arborvitae, hackberry, Osage orange, oaks, ornamental pear, bald cypress,  maple, American elm, Chinese Pistache, mimosa, cherry, redbud, yew, plum, dogwood, althea, euonymus, forsythia, crape myrtle, and a multitude of shrubs.  This time we were smarter (lazier?) and rented a big hydraulic tree spade for the cedars and arborvitae.

Well, after 17 years now here on the plains again, I have my wish…I live in a forest. It is beautiful around here, but guess what?  I’m beginning to yearn for good Bermuda grass again! The tree roots and shade have killed a lot of our lawn and the alternative shade grasses seem too time consuming and expensive to plant and maintain with our rural water system. And riding a nice zero-radius mower is lots easier than the continual fertilizing, spraying, pruning, and stick pick-up that trees require!

So I guess that this side of heaven, I’ll never be completely satisfied.  Maybe I need to remind myself that some day even the trees of the field will clap their hands and praise the Lord and I will have been responsible for planting some of that praise!

 

Isaiah 55:12   and Ezekiel 17:24

Sitting in the shade,

DeAnna