LUCI'S 10,385 KMS BUTTER COOKIES...

          "Our roots will always be tangled..." -Ally Condie

Melt in your mouth butter cookies. Reminds me of whipped shortbread, only different. Can make the dough ahead and freeze in rolls till ready to use.

Recipe from my friend, Luci, 10, 3185 kms in the Phillipines. Her dad’s favourite treat.  Thanks, Luci, for sharing it with me. My NEW favourite Christmas cookie.  When I make them, it seems like she’s right here beside me, both of us munching away…

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cookie sheets with Silpat liners or parchment paper

2 cups flour, 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened, ½ cup sugar

2 egg yolks at room temperature, 2 tsp good vanilla extract

1/3 cup sugar for rolling dough

     "There is magic in long distance friendships..." -Diana Cortes

Lay out all of your ingredients ready to use. Soften butter by leaving out till pliable, or nuke in microwave 10 seconds here and there a little bit.

"Friendship is not something you seek, but something that finds you..."-M.  Mokhonoana

(Room temperature ingredients will blend better together, and be more stable. The baked cookies will have a lovely texture, because trapped air expands during baking, making them more tender with good flavour.)

      "No friendship is an accident..." -O. Henry ( Heart of the West)

Cream butter and sugar till fluffy and light.

Add egg yolks and extract and mix till combined.

Add flour till just mixed, then combine easily into a roll. This is beautiful dough.

Roll in plastic wrap and chill. Can also freeze for a later time.

I left the chilled roll of dough out for about half hour till I could easily scoop the dough. You don't have to roll in sugar, but when baked it gives them this  wonderful , crystallized crunch.

Next time I would do larger scoops, because the dough behaves so well when baking and doesn’t bleed all over.

I baked them about 10 minutes and had to add a couple more minutes till light golden. 

One batch makes  just two cookie sheets of butter cookies. Turn off oven at end and leave the door open a tad and let them dry out about 10 minutes. It makes them crisper.

Then pile onto a plate and gobble them up with a friend. Or just gobble them up on your own! These would be nice with additions like peel, or candied cherries, ginger, dried apricots, etc. 

"True friends are never apart. Maybe in distance, but never in heart..." -Helen Keller

Photographs 2025

WILD NOVEMBER...

"Now in November, nearer comes the sun down, the abandoned heaven..." -D.H. Lawrence

"I have always been fascinated by the ocean...touching eternity, that it goes on forever, till it begins here again..." -Lauren DeStefano

"There is October in every November, and there is November in every December. All seasons melted into each other's life..." -Mehmet Murat Idan

"The wild November comes at last beneath a veil of rain..." -R.H. Stoddard

"Mist to mist, drops to drops, for water thou art, and unto water shalt thou return..." -Kamand Kajouri

"The world is tired, the year is old, the fading leaves are glad to die..." 

-Sara Teasdale

"November wind has a different sound than any other..."-Gladys Taber

"It was the best kind of November day....cold and crisp, but not quite freezing, not icy..." -R. Rowell

"It was November, the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep hymns of the sea, passionate wind songs of the pines..."

-L. M. Montgomery

"The sea is a desert of waves, a wilderness of water..." -Langston Hughes
 

"Be thankful for what you have. Your life is someone else's fairy tale..." -Wale Ayeni

"November at its best, with a delightful sort of menace in the air..." -Anne Bosworth Greene

"Peering from some high window, at the gold of November sunset, and feeling that if day has to become night, this is a beautiful way..." -e.e. cummings

Photographs 2025

HAWKS and MOUNTAINS...

"Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky..." -Ursula K. Le Guin

           "The mountains are calling, and I must go..." - John Muir

"A pine needle fell in the forest.The hawk saw it. The deer heard it. The white bear smelled it..." -Edith Pattou

"Climb the mountain, so you can see the world, not so the world can see you..." -David McCullough, Jr.
 

                            "The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky...." -Rudyard Kipling

"Prayer clears the mist and brings back peace to the Soul..."

                                                                                                                              -Rumi

"Like a hawk, let your vision be sharp, your focus unwavering, and your determination unyielding..." -Unknown

"No wolf falters before the bite, so strike No hawk wavers before the dive just strike..." -Shannon Hale

          "I see you watching me like a hawk..."-Willie Dixon

"...his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front..."

                                  -J.R. R. Tolkien

"I have need of the sky, I have business with the grass, I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling lone and high..." 

                                                    -Richard Hoovey

"So long as the mist envelops you, be still. Be still till the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists..."-Chief White Eagle

"Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar above the morning lark..." 

                        -Shakespeare

"Faith moves no mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before..." -F. Nietzsche

"The mountain remains unmoved as its seeming defeat by the mist..." -R. Tagore

"As I stood and watched the mists slowly rising this morning, I wondered what view was more beautiful than this..." - H. Borland

"The silence holds with its gloved hand the wild hawk of the mind..." -R.S. Thomas

Photographs 2025 

    Sharp-Skinned Hawks ( I think), and Mt. Washington range, Vancouver Island, B.C.