Pecan Pie? Heck Yes!!!

Yep, it sure is pecan season. We've been suffering a terrible drought all year, but that hasn't stopped our Texas pecan trees from producing nuts. Oliver and I picked a sack of pecans last weekend. Some of the lucky ones have already been cracked and turned into pecan pie.

Another Bread FAIL

Wheat bread just does not cooperate with me.  I blame it on the electric mixer.  My mother in law gave us a 1970s electric stand mixer that she bought at a garage sale.  It was not adequate.  The sticky wheat dough traveled up the mixing utensils and tried to escape from the bowl a number of times before Ollie and I gave up that idea.  Of course, using man-logic, Oliver had to push this new power tool to the max and tried mixing the dough full force until he would admit defeat.

I will trust in my own two trusty hands in the future.  My hands do so many great things for me.  They make me beautiful shawls and hats, nifty yarns, delicious edibles, keyboarding letters, and most recently beautiful mountain folk music.  I've started practicing a song called "In the Willow Gardens" which is played in waltz time.  It sounds so delicate and lovely despite the lyrics being about a young man who poisons his lover.  I think it's my favorite that I've learned yet.

I finished my Holden shawl just in time for Easter last weekend.  I keep reading articles about women aspiring to Biblical womanhood.  Some may take this as old fashioned, sexist or degrading.  I think the Proverbs 31 woman has great strength, responsibility and joy.  The proverb speaks in depth about such a woman's capable arms and hands:

"She selects wool and flax

and works with eager hands"13

"She considers a field and buys it;

out of her earnings she plants a vineyard" 16

"In her hand she holds the distaff

and grasps the spindle with her fingers" 19

"She opens her arms to the poor

and extends her hands to the needy" 20

Perhaps the best line of all:

"She is clothed with strength and dignity;

she can laugh at the days to come." 25

All too often these days the tasks of feeding and providing for one's family seem to be regarded as trivial and basically unimportant.  I think there has to be something special about a person using their capable hands to create homemade, homegrown, hearty foods and specially created handmade clothing and other items.  It seems so much more special to do things this way rather than merely earning money to buy generic store bought made-in-a-sweatshop things or waxy buckets of greasy chicken.

So many people work and work and work so they can buy things and things and things.   I swear I will try to do things differently.  Living an "old-fashioned", compassionate, simple way in which people are the greatest treasures in life.  Where the simple, loving actions made by dexterous hands can be esteemed and respected. 

Speculaas

Lately I have been completely obsessed with speculaas, Belgian spice cookies.  The cookie is utter perfection: crispy, lightly sweetened, delicately spiced, nutty.  I first made these cookies was a freshman in high school using the recipe that my great grandmother brought from Belgium when she immigrated.  Initially I did not like them much--didn't like the spices, didn't think they were sweet enough, did not bake them thin and crispy.  I suppose my tastes have changed--because I just ate about 12 of them.  Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 teaspoon clove
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup pecans, finely chopped 

 Directions:

1. Cream together the first four ingredients.
2. Sift together dry ingredients, pour into creamed ingredients.
3. Stir until blended, add pecans.
4. Form the dough into a long roll on wax paper and chill overnight.
5. Slice very thin.  I like them to be about 1/8 inch thick, maybe a little thinner.  They will only rise slightly in the oven.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes.

If you are totally impatient and cannot wait overnight, I recommend that you bake just a few immediately on the cookie sheet and press them very thin.  Roll the rest and have a sweet treat the next day--these cookies are wonderful with coffee or tea (and probably beer...the Belgians love their beer).  The above recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Bread fail (again)

Looks like a brick, and when I hit Oliver with it he said "ow".

Bread is always a fail for me.  I think I must offend the dough somehow, but at what part of the breadmaking process I have no clue.  Maybe I offend the dough during the kneading, when I put my hands in all of its little pudgy crevices.  Maybe during rising when I either shove it in the oven before the yeast has fully performed its duty, or leave it too long languishing in a hot room until it starts to fall, defeated.

Someday I will figure this out, and then I will be a bread MASTER.