St George Utah & Zion National Park

Monique, James, Emmaline, Elliot & I just paid a visit to St George and nearby Zion National Park in southern Utah. You'll definitely want to check it out when you visit! Here's some shots from Zion National Park...








And some photos from St George...

Blog Details

Now for a little blog housekeeping... Our blog is hosted on blogger.com and we can have up to 100 authors. We currently have nine: Dad, Mom, Bill, John, me, Monique, Allison, Nathan and Cy. Allan's been invited to be an author. Just let me know if you or someone else wants to be an author.

When a blog is posted, a copy of the posting can be emailed to up to 10 people. This is a lame limitation - we want to spam as many people as possible. Right now the list of 10 includes all the authors plus Allan. This means that you must forward any posting to your significant other, child, buddy, etc.

When I was a child I spent a lot of time in the car. Grammie was big on running errands and just generally getting out of the house. Her best friend was her sister and Fred and I would get to get out of the car when we visited Auntie Kay on Windsor Street in Haverhill.

Auntie Kay was classy! She was older than Grammie, very smart and she was someone Grammie really respected. I learned all that later, but what I remember about when I was young was that I liked to visit her because we were allowed to go in to her kitchen and get a cookie. My mother was a good baker, but Auntie Kay could bake also and I loved her cookies that had almond flavoring. I don’t ever remember my mother making those cookies.

Sometime after Auntie Kay passed away I tried to find that almond cookie recipe. Polly gave me one of her mother’s cookbooks and I even got to go through her recipes. No luck.

Last December, a woman at the library was saying she was going home to start making all her Christmas cookies and that was impressive because she is probably well into her 80’s. Just to make conversation I asked her what her favorite ones were and she told me about her Almond Lace Cookies and they sounded similar to the ones I enjoyed well over fifty years ago. The woman wrote out the recipe for me and even brought in a sample, and although they don’t look like Auntie Kay’s cookies they sure taste like them to me.

Almond Lace Cookies

Important!—must be baked on silicone mats, non-stick aluminum foil or parchment paper.

1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup granulated sugar
2 Tabl flour
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder
1 whole egg, slightly beaten
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
½ tsp each pure vanilla and pure almond extract
1 cup sliced or chopped almonds

Combine the oats, sugar, flour, salt and baking powder. In a separate bowl whisk the melted butter with the egg and extract. Add the dry ingredients and nuts. Stir until evenly mixed.

Line the cookie sheet and drop level teaspoons of dough 3” apart. They spread out as they bake.
Bake at 325 for 9-11 minutes until golden brown. Watch them closely. Let cool before peeling off foil.

If you prefer pecans you can make Pecan Lace Cookies—use chopped pecans and 1 tsp vanilla extract.

The woman that gave me the recipe said, “These are addictive so I often double the batch at one time! Doubling the batch can make 80-90 cookies”.

Enjoy!