When I have too many eggs

The chickens haven't slowed down their laying yet, which has me cheering. I've gotten into a happy groove of dealing with our eggs over the years, mostly by eating one for breakfast every single morning and working at least one egg dinner (like this tart, or this zucchini-crusted pizza, or rice and beans with a fried egg) into our weeks. I have two ceramic egg-holders in the fridge-- the front one is for fresh eggs, and in the back one, I "age" eggs in order to use them for hard-boiled applications. Because nothing, nothing is harder to peel than a fresh-from-the-chicken egg. They need a week at least, maybe two. Then it's egg salad wraps, deviled eggs, kale and potatoes with chopped hard-boiled egg (tonight!). But my favorite way to deal with extra eggs is to make pasta.
I've had a pasta-maker attachment for my stand mixer for... probably five years, and I think I only used it three times in its first three years. But lately it has been making infrequent but regular appearances on the counter, for those times when I need to kill a handful of eggs and I have the time to roll the pasta. Really it doesn't take much time. With a savvy eye for when the dough is not too dry and not too wet, kneading it, letting it rest, and rolling it out before slicing it and running it through the rollers takes not much time at all. And lasagna is an absolute snap.
Our eggs make meals where the only purchased ingredients are olive oil and salt. I like that a lot.

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September kitchen

Everyday there is at least one basket, sometimes more. 
This time of year, I have the odd feeling of a baseball outfielder, standing under a high pop fly ball, thinking, I... GOT it! I think I got it! Oh lord, what if I don't got it? Except I'm "fielding" these baskets of goodness, figuring out if it's ultimately going in cans or freezer bags or root cellar or directly into my mouth, then putting it there, one little step at a time.
I have decided that next September, and every September thereafter, will be declared a Project-Free Zone. No house renovations, no house painting, no nothing except food preservation. No furniture overhauls. I just want to be able to focus on that fielding feeling, on taking in the harvest and doing it right. 
Seems logical, right?
My new kitchen is handing the onslaught just wonderfully, it must be said. Having extra counter for my vat of fermenting hot sauce, and for cooling canning jars, and for those baskets, is so lovely. The top of the half-wall behind the stove is coming in SO handy for tomatoes and for when I buy peaches or nectarines-- somehow they look more appetizing lined up like that rather than in a bowl. Of course, my whole "grand vision" of the half-wall was to use it for curated display-- maybe just a big vase at one end-- and not piles of cookbooks and rows of tomatoes, but, y'know. Life and all that. Especially September life, when things are at their craziest and you just hold on and keep riding that crazy train. It will end soon. Soon it will be over and the whole world out there will be frozen and barren. So you hold on, and you holler, and you ache a little. But, by god, it's worth it. 

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Hello, lover.

There is only one proper way to greet a 'mater sammich, and it is this way, Carrie Bradshaw-style: "Hello, lover." Especially when it contains fresh basil, and an egg that is oozing onto your plate. 
I feel like every over-committed moment of my summer has gently been building towards this sandwich. Do you ever feel that way about a sandwich? Without even realizing it, as I assembled the parts and pieces for this beauteous creature before lunch yesterday, I began mulling over my general dissatisfaction with this summer, and thinking, slowly, hey, it's not so bad, because I get to eat this sandwich. As if one tomato sandwich could take a ho-hum summer to new heights.
It did.
I took one bite and all was right with the world.
I had done summer up right, finally, I realized. That was all it took.
Should you find yourself in the midst of a ho-hum summer yourself, well, don't delay! Toast two slices of soft bread (this is not the time or place for crusty baguette). Fry an egg. Leave the yolk a bit runny if that is your bag. When you flip it, add a few shards of cheddar cheese. Slice into a fresh homegrown tomato, and pluck a few basil leaves. Smear a little bit of mayo or butter on the toast. Pile it up: toast, egg, tomato, basil, toast. Then give it a good firm smash with the side of your hand, just enough to break the yolk and release those heavenly tomato juices. Eat. Feel unfettered bliss.

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Grouty

In hopes of being done with the dirty-towel-countertop-protection-system by the end of this week, I set myself the goal of finishing tiling and grouting the area to the left of the sink and behind the stove. 
Yesterday, I learned how to use a tile grinder. I also learned how to remove the blade guard from the tile grinder. And THEN I learned how to wear my balaclava, in addition to safety glasses, to protect myself from tile shrapnel. And this morning, I grouted. Yay. I wish grouting took as long as cutting tile: it's one of those ta-da! kinds of projects that takes a thing from totally unfinished and kinda ugly to shiny and pretty, and it's usually pretty easy. Less easy on a wall, but still. Fairly easy.
This weekend I am looking forward to CHILLING. It's Friday night, P has a gig, and I might even stay home from the bar. Imagine that. I did that last night: lounged on the lawn with Pete and Del, talked to my mom while chopping peppers, and drank a mojito in bed. Kristina's ideal August Thursday night. So glamorous. 
Enjoy your weekend, friends!
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Putting up

The burning-the-candle-at-both-ends summering continues! Weekends are supposed to be restorative, but I feel like I did a triathlon. 
I did not watch Orange is the New Black. I did not drink a gin and tonic in bed. (I drank a mojito with my neighbor Zena in our backyard during which we both got tippled and started scheming a collective takeover of the general store.) I did go to the fair with friends and ride the bumper cars. I did attend a father-daughter cello performance and stay out until 11pm last night carousing with other friends. 
But during daylight hours, I worked. Patrick had an all-day festival on Saturday, and for about the first four hours I thoroughly enjoyed my This American Life-fueled canning and freezing marathon. I had raspberries, blueberries, peaches, zucchini, broccoli, herbs. Thank goodness the green beans are still in the process of rebounding from deer, otherwise I would've had to deal with them, too. 
I made five half-pints of blueberry jam, eight half-pints of raspberry jam, a blueberry coffee cake, eight half-pints of peach salsa, a gallon of peach slices for the freezer, a gallon of broccoli for the freezer, a quart each of dried sage and basil, a quart of hot sauce, and a batch of curry paste. (I use the paste method from this recipe, subbing in the zest of a lemon for the lemon grass, and a small onion for the shallot. It's one of my favorite things to make when I have fresh herbs, and it keeps so well in the freezer.)
With a freezer full of amazing produce, and a cellar full of condiments and tomato sauce and jams, all we need to buy at the grocery store is flour, sugar, salt, oats. Spices, of course, and cheese, and butter. Tortillas. Peanut butter. Yeast. Tofu. We probably spend about $60 a month on food. Is it enough in savings to pay me an hourly wage for the food preservation and garden growing work I do? Well, no. But having a hobby that saves us money feels terrific. 
This is the kind of setup I wanted before we moved to Gilbertsville, the kind of near-self-reliance, at least for food, on our land. And baby, we're doing it. Deer notwithstanding, we've arrived. I'm not sure the thrill of that will ever get old. 

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They're HERE!!

COUNTERS!!! 

Beautiful, incredible, glorious COUNTERS!!

Oh my. Oh lovely. You really can't understand what it's like to be without counters until you ARE without counters for almost a month. Nowhere to PUT STUFF, man. You gotta have someplace to put stuff. And now I do. 

We ended up going with bluestone-- locally sourced and milled-- and I couldn't be happier with the decision. It fits, y'know? It jives. Though it looks practically black in these photos, in real life it's pretty close to the floor color-- sort of a deep moody blue-gray. 
The hardware has also been put into place-- and lemme tell you, it's amazing what a difference that makes. Funny. We ended up going with these bin pulls and these simple handles, from Amazon. They are solid brass, and, at $2.95 each, I thought that was a terrific deal. (Restoration Hardware versions run $14 each.) But while the pulls and handles were terrific, hefty and polished and nice, the screws kept snapping, snapping, snapping. So we ended up swapping most of them for solid brass screws... caveat emptor, as they say. 

Whew. We are down to the very last things here, people! Obviously tiling the whole wall above the sink with subway tile will be a big job-- and that tile is going to continue along the little half-wall behind the stove, which you can see here:

...to make a backsplash. Then the wall above the sink is going to get chunky walnut-stained open shelving. I need to paint the toe kicks. I need to cut and nail our baseboards and our door frame back into place, and caulk and paint. There are two lights above the peninsula we haven't installed yet. And, of course we need to put our appliances in place and finally put our house back together. WOO! We're that close. Still really far away, but the daunting stuff is behind us. 
Now, ahem, if you'll excuse me, I have a big whopping party to host in 28 hours. And some cleaning must be done.
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Beaming

They say this will be the last day they're working here-- we say, hooray! The giant, giant beam (which is really three ginormous pieces sandwiched together) went up yesterday, and today they'll do more to reinforce each end of the thing, and take all the temporary studding (I think it's a called a coffer wall?) away, and be done. Oh, and then bill us, and then be done. As per our agreement, we are handling all the finish work ourselves, to save money, and to allow us time to think and get creative. The giant beam is going to be enclosed by a header made of drywall, and we are planning for some recessed lights and maybe also an exhaust fan (not a full-blown range hood) for above the stove. 
The whole size and shape of the header is completely open for debate. None of the walls are plumb, and the ceiling is far from level (see that skinny wedge-shaped space along the top of the beam in the top picture? The beam is level. The ceiling ain't.) And on top of that, there's a 6-inch difference in ceiling height between the dining room and kitchen which we're going to have to account for. Ohhh, it'll be interesting, all right.

See on the end of the beam, where there's a popped-out bit of wall that conceals some pipes? We're figuring on building the edge of the header so it's even with the edge of the popped-out part, and probably putting the lights in there. 
So, first, building header. Then wiring for lights. Then installing lights. Then patching over where the old lights were, and painting the ceiling and header. Then, tiling the floor. Ohh. It'll be awhile, I think, before we get to the really fun stuff where things start to look pretty, but my dad has started building our new cabinets, so bit... by bit... they will begin moving into place. Someday. 
Happy Friday!
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Greens

Yesterday was the first day I was inside all day. The first day it was nasty enough, and cold enough outside to just cocoon into my space-heatered office, sweatpants, and late-afternoon tea, and let it pour. Come dinnertime, though, I needed ingredients, so I puled on my boots. It was shiverish out there in the gathering dark, to be sure, but thrilling: hacking off kale leaves as big as my head with a kitchen knife, feeling a little like someone forging a new trail through the "bush," from Kinshasa to some remote village. Pulling leaves from my cold frame full of spinach, and closing the lid, cutting a few tender fennel fronds that were spared by the freeze. Thinking to check for eggs--six!-- before heading back inside.
On the menu, one of my favorite soups, cooked as it grew fully dark all around. A good evening.
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Tomato's last hurrah

I pulled out my tomato plants this week, looping them like spent Christmas lights over my elbow. After piling them in the compost, I went back and walked over the beds where they grew all summer, with my harvest basket, scapping up fallen cherry tomatoes. Walking dazed towards the sweet lullaby of October I may be, I wasn't ready to give up on fresh tomato-based meals just yet.

We've been making this pizza ALL summer. For crust, use the recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver:

3 tsp yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water 

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups bread flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

The recipe makes enough for two ample crusts, which I love. I also love the partial whole-wheat character-- rustic but not too rustic.

Then, the truly amazing and mind-blowing sauce:

12 oz cherry tomatoes, stemmed

1 tbsp olive oil

2 minced garlic cloves

1/3 cup chopped basil leaves

1/2 tsp ground fennel seed

enough shredded mozzarella to cover, a little over 1 cup

Get the olive oil good and hot inside a cast-iron skillet, and toss the cherry tomatoes around in there until they blister and start to ooze. Then transfer them to a bowl, and mash them with the back of a spoon along with the garlic, basil, fennel, and a good sprinkling of salt.

Roll out the dough, spread out the sauce, top with cheese. Bake 20 minutes at 450 degrees, then lift off the baking pan using a pizza paddle and lay directly on the oven rack, as low as you can get over the element, for five minutes. That's optional, but it guarantees crisp crust.

Serve with green substance of your choice. We chose kale slaw.

There, now. Now it can be fall.

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A new vignette

I struggled with what to blog about today, and then I looked back through my posts for the past couple of weeks, and realized I was falling into an inevitable pattern: garden, garden, cat, garden, chicken, flowers, trees, garden, garden. Garden: close up; garden: from the upstairs window; garden: looking north; garden: looking west. You can tell my mind has been a bit one-track lately. The waffle-stomped clods of garden dirt on the dining room floor tell the same story. 

And so, instead of rushing outside to take more pictures of garden, flowers, and chicken, I photographed this little vignette I put together a few weeks back. I'd stepped into an antiques store a few days prior, and skipped out with the white rectangular planter and the little metal dish, and when I decided I was tired of my aqua McCoy planters-- which had sat atop the Hoosier cabinet since pre-move-in-- I gave my new friends a spot in the sun, alongside the seltzer bottle, pitcher, and basket I've owned for some time. The McCoy collection moved into the dining room.

This coming week will be a busy one for me: I'm going to stuff all my work into four days, before waking up Friday morning to drive to the city, where, on Saturday, seven women will converge for a rip-roaring bachelorette party. The Museum of Natural History, and also a belly-dancing class, are planned. There's also a pot-luck to cook for, and our dogged siding-removal project, which is proceeding in earnest. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to check in here, but I will do my level best. Expect more garden pictures.

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Kale and breadcrumb-stuffed squash

I love delicata squash. Is anyone with me here? They taste butternut-like, with none of the graininess of acorn squash or the fibrous nature of spaghetti squash. And the skin is edible. Wonder squash.

This recipe gets made at least once each winter. It's incredibly cheap, incredibly delicious, and just fancy enough to feel special. It's good for one of those let's-open-a-bottle-for-the-heck-of-it kind of nights. Beans. Kale. Garlic. Breadcrumbs. A dusting of parmesan. It's alchemy. My favorite recipes are like that: humble ingredients coming together in just the right way to make delicious magic.

Kale and Breadcrumb Stuffed Delicata Squash

2 delicata squash, halved and seeded.

Rub with salt, pepper, and a little oil, and bake cut side up in a 350 degree oven for an hour.

Meanwhile...

I big clove garlic, sliced

4 packed cups chopped kale

1 can white beans, OR 3/4 dried white beans cooked with garlic until tender

1 tbsp minced fresh sage

Saute the garlic in a little oil until golden brown, then add the kale. Cover and cook until well-wilted, adding a little water if the pan seems dry. Stir in the beans and heat through to let the flavors mingle. Then add the sage and remove from the heat.

1/2 cup breadcrumbs, preferably homemade

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Combine in a small bowl. This time I got a little extra decadent and toasted the breadcrumbs in a tablespoon of butter before proceeding. Unnecessary, but delicious.

Mix half the breadcrumb mixture into the bean filling. Raise the oven temperature to 425. Pack the baked squash halves with filling, mounding it up in places, then sprinkle the remaining breadcrumb mixture over. Bake 15 minutes.

Enjoy! Makes four servings.

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Eggs-and-greens wraps with lemon herb sauce

I'm a greens person. I have to confess. There's nothing I love more than a pile a rich, silky greens cooked into submission, with lots of oil and garlic and preferably eggs, too. And if not eggs, cheese. Fortunately, this little garden of mine is cranking out the green goodness like that's its job, and I'm all too delighted to swoop in to gobble it up. Every night this week, dinner has started with a trip out to the garden, paring knife and salad spinner in hand, knowing that with a few key staples in the fridge (cooked beans, wraps, feta, eggs) I could turn out something reasonably delicious in under twenty minutes. This one, I thought, surpassed "reasonably delicious" and shot straight to "really delicious." So, I will share it with you. It's perfect for anyone growing a garden-- even if your garden is just a pot of fresh herbs by the back steps. The herbs are the best part. This comes together quickly and is endlessly adaptable.
Here's how I did mine.
Eggs-and-Greens Wraps with Lemon Herb Sauce
Sauce:1/2 cup assorted fresh herbs, minced. I used a mix of basil, dill, cilantro, sorrel, and parsley. 2 tbsp mayo1 tbsp lemon juice (or to taste)1 scallion, thinly sliced1/2 tsp dry mustard1 tbsp horseradish sauce (optional)salt and pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
Filling:Steamed kale or chard, or raw spinachChopped raw broccoli2 fried, poached, or hard-boiled eggs per wrap
Spread an ample quantity of sauce on a 10" wrap. Add a modest pile of vegetables, and top with eggs. Roll up and eat. 
Of course, you need not limit yourself to the vegetables listed above. Sauteed zucchini would work-- and you better believe I have zucchini on my brain this week, after carrying in five fat ones stacked like stovewood in my arms last night!-- as would steamed green beans or snap peas, and some slices of tomato. 
That's all for now, folks. I have a strong feeling the next several recipes I post will contain zucchini...
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Vegetarian for Beginners: Roasted Potatoes, Eggs, & Greens

Maybe it's because I've been meeting lots of new neighbors, but lately I've found myself explaining my husband's vegetarianism a lot. It's a practical conversation: what does he eat, they want to know. Don't I, a willing carnivore, get tired of dulling down my cooking to suit his taste? It's made me more mindful, and also a little proud, especially when the meal involves stuff from the garden. It's got me thinking.

The hardest thing about cooking vegetarian, I think, is the lack of a main character. Working with meat, it's a foregone conclusion that the chops or the roast or the steak is going to be the star of the show: everything else is just a side-plot. Building a vegetarian meal is more like picking a soccer team. You want a good striker, a good sweeper, a good goalie, and lots of strong and capable wing-people. This meal is like that: a trifecta of simple foods so comforting the absence of meat isn't noticeable.

We cook this a lot: in the summertime with fresh-from-the-garden chard or beet greens; in the wintertime with frozen spinach or kale. It'll work with escarole, collards, and just about any other dark leafy green you can name. Potatoes and fresh or frozen greens are always available, so the meal tastes good and in-season all year. 

The "Recipe"

Potatoes

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees while you cube as many potatoes as will fit in your biggest roasting pan. Keeping the potatoes spread out in a single layer will ensure crispness. Add one or two tablespoons of olive oil-- enough to keep things from sticking to the pan-- and a liberal sprinkle of salt, pepper, and maybe some dried rosemary or dill if you're feeling fancy. Roast, turning the potatoes every 10-15 minutes or so, until done, about thirty minutes.

Meanwhile...

Greens

Warm some olive oil in a big frying pan, and toss in a sliced clove of garlic. Add as much rinsed, stemmed, roughly chopped greens as will fit, and set the lid on the pan. Greens reduce, a lot, when they cook-- once the greens wilt down you can add more to the pan, if desired. Cook tender greens like spinach a mere two or three minutes, and tough kale ten minutes or longer. Splash a little balsamic vinegar over, salt, pepper, and serve.

Eggs

Cook two eggs per person, however you like 'em. If you cook them once-over easy, you can let the yolks break over the crispy roasted potatoes, which is about as close to heaven as it gets... just my humble opinion, of course.

Enjoy!

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Roasted Potatoes with chive pesto. And a fried egg.

Chives just don't let you down. I'd been watching mine needle up from their tidy clump for weeks, waiting for them to get big enough for the dinner table.

I'd schemed up this dinner sometime in mid-February. Chives were still a long way off then, but, I thought: come they will. And I'll need a way to eat them. I sat at the dining room table with a cup of tea and looked out at the snowdrifts, and I conjured up chive pesto. Tossed with the last of the winter potatoes and topped with an egg, it'll be the perfect springtime dinner.

And, I'm proud to report, it was.

I'm well into clean-out mode, in preparation for the move. I made pesto by dragging every remotely pesto-related ingredient out of the fridge, furrowing my brow, and tossing random things into the food processor. In the end, I had this:

1/4 cup roughly chopped chives

2-3 tbsp crumbled feta cheese

enough olive oil to make it pesto-y

liberal ground black pepper

a handful of green pumpkin seeds just for the heck of it

The verdict: chives and feta, surprisingly good. This is not a pesto to eat before a job interview. Or a date. But to dress up some roasted potatoes, or mild fish, or even to eat with butter on bread (call me crazy) it's pretty darn good.

Another recent clean-out related score: Irish Soda Bread muffins. One empty dried currants box out of the pantry and into the recycling bin: check!

Happy Friday!

            

Kitchen plans

Remember our kitchen?

That's a view from last August, before we painted and moved things around. But the general idea is the same. To the right there, there's a window. The window looks like this.

When you take a step closer and peer out the window on a sunny February day, you see this.

And all that is well and good on its own. That's enough, really, to make me happy. But the even better part is, if you turn to the right from the window, what you have is this.

This is where the dryer used to live. Soon, I hope, this is where my pantry will live. Can you see it? Wide yellow pine shelves lined with mason jars full of dried beans? A few rows of canned tomatoes? Maybe even a braid of garlic hanging from a nail? (And it goes without saying: new flooring that isn't grungy vinyl, and a patch over the dryer vent opening.) I am so very excited to get started on this project.

I'm still tossing around some ideas for the space. Since it's very deep, and we don't want to make what's at the back of the shelves inaccessible, I'm toying with the idea of having some shelves on runners, so they slide out. Maybe just the lower ones. Maybe I'll scrap that and have bins on the lower level instead-- bins for potatoes and onions, or bins for recycling, or bins for cat and dog food. What are your thoughts? How would you use this space?

Creamy Squash Pasta

I'll admit, it might be the most glamorous thing imaginable, but it does go schlp, schlp when you squish it around on your plate. It's creamy and it's orange, it's really thrifty but somehow elegant at the same time, and it uses winter squash. It's like a very grown-up take on Kraft Mac-n-Cheese. In short, it's the perfect winter meal for a sick day, a snow day, or just a day when you feel like comfort food.

For me, the biggest plus was the incorporation of squash. I still have FOUR MASSIVE SQUASHES (butternuts) in my cellar, and it's January. Squash really starts to sound un-appealing this time of year, so I'm struggling to use these babies up. Heaven forbid some of that lovely, local, organic squash go to waste!

Oh, and before I forget, the best thing about this recipe? The abbreviation. Squashta. Try it, it's love at first sight.

Creamy Squash Pasta

2 tsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 oz cream cheese

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 cups pureed winter squash flesh (from approximately 1 medium baked squash)

1/2-3/4 cup toasted walnuts OR roasted salted pumpkin seeds

1 pound cooked pasta of your choice

Warm the oil in the bottom of a fairly large pot. Saute the garlic until lightly brown, then add the cream cheese and seasonings. Keep the heat fairly low to prevent scorching. Stir until the cream cheese is melted and smooth, then add the squash puree. If desired, add a splash of water, milk, or vegetable broth for a thinner sauce. Toss in the walnuts/pumpkin seeds and the pasta, stir, and serve. Makes four generous servings.

Variations: I'm not going to lie. I stole this idea from a Weight Watchers recipe I found online. I liked the idea of blending the squash into a pasta sauce, but scorned scorned scorned the idea of making a "cream sauce" from skim milk and FLOUR. That's what Weight Watchers decreed. And I said, Pah!, because one of my cardinal food rules is: cream sauces should contain cream. I don't have a lot of hard-and-fast food rules, but that one ain't budgin'.

I liked the cream cheese version very much-- it was creamy but still fairly virtuous--but if you'd like to try something different, I suppose a whole range of different dairy products would work. Greek yogurt springs to mind, though I bet nonfat yogurt would work, too (maybe simmered with a little flour to thicken it up). Whole milk would be fine, and of course if we really wanted to get decadent, heavy cream would be divine.

Between this recipe and a batch of "Pumpkin" Muffins (har har, what a fine and sneaky pumpkin-substitute squash makes!), I dispatched the largest of my cellar dwellers. Anyone have any brilliant disappearing-squash recipes out there for me to try?

Really good sugar cookies.

How's everyone out there in blogland? Are you having fun, flipping errantly back and forth between regular, domestic, cozy Sweetfern and Caulk-Gun Wielding Sweetfern? I feel pleasantly schizophrenic, myself. In Gilbertsville, it's like, LET'S GO! GET THINGS DONE! EAT CANDY BARS FOR LUNCH! I DON'T CARE! And back home, it's like, hey man, maybe I'll make some sugar cookies. Maybe I'll spend all evening with my tree, my kitchen, and my cat, just savoring the put-together-ness of our house. (And thinking, too, of how long it's going to be before Gilbertsville is anywhere near as organized and orchestrated.)

It's nice, in a way. I can be a badass caulk-gun wielder on weekends, busting out projects all Rosie the Riveter-like, and then come home to my kitchen and embrace my inner domestic diva. It's the best of both worlds.

So, yeah. Anyway. The cookies.

I think Pete has been missing us fiercely over the weekends we've been gone. He's a people cat. This is why he chose to sit next to my stand mixer and endure Christmas music in the coldest room of the house, watching interestedly as I mixed up the dough.

Anyone want the recipe? It's a ringer, I'll guarantee. Even if you're on the phone with your mom, yakking away about Christmas plans and presents, and burn the first two sheets, they still taste amazing.

Mom's Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

2 3/4 cups flour

Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer, while your curious gray cat looks on. Add the egg and vanilla, and beat until smooth. Meanwhile, whisk the flour and baking powder together in a small bowl. Add the flour in thirds, while the mixer churns away on low speed, allowing about thirty seconds between additions.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease up some cookie sheets.

Flour your counter and roll out the dough. Cut your shapes. I'm a snowflake girl, personally, but my mom's standbys were cows, pigs, and sheep.

Bake the cookies for 6-7 minutes. Carefully lift the cookies off the trays after about two minutes of cooling time, and transfer them to wire racks. Makes enough for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, plus some broken ones for you and your husband to eat with tea.

Do you have any can't-live-without-them Christmas cookie recipes?