How was your Easter?

How was your Easter Sunday?  I am so thankful that God sent His only Son to pay for our sins and raised him up from the dead. 

We had a nice dinner with our family.  We had ham, potato salad, rolls, beets, asparagus and green salad and cranberry sauce.  For dessert we had blackberry shortcake.  Dinner was good, and the company was great.

We had a total of 15 at the table.  I should say tables, as we had a small table for the 4 older girls. 

My baby sister and my nephew are here for a visit.  They drove down from Bellingham Washington on Saturday.  I haven't had a chance to visit much with them yet.  We have so many here at once it is rather noisy and several conversations going on at once.......that is just the way it is when so many of us are gathered in one place.  : )  Kristy and Patrick will be here for several more days, so I am sure we will get a chance to visit in that time.

On Saturday I was doing some prep cooking for Easter dinner.  Those of you who read this blog know that we get a lot of eggs each day from our poultry.  Most of the time it is right at 3.5 dozen a day.  Gathered in a nice bucket, set in the fridge until I have time to clean them and put them in the cartons.  Well this is what happened on Saturday.......(see photo below.)

Yep!  I was rearranging the fridge and pushed the entire bucket of eggs out on the floor.  It hit with such force that raw egg splashed up the side of my leg and I had to change pants as I was dripping with egg!  The only eggs out of the entire bucket that didn't break were a couple of duck eggs.  Do you know how much fun that was to clean up?  LOL!  I used the dust pan to scoop up the most of it.  Then had to use rags to clean the rest. 

Ed brought that same bucket in last night full of eggs and said to me, "there ya go, another bucket of eggs!"  I managed to get them into the fridge without breaking any. 

More big news is Sally has lost two teeth now.  Here is a  couple of photos of her proudly displaying the empty spots.

We can already see the new teeth coming in.

These are cookies we made from a recipe in my old cookbook.  The name of the book is Farm Journal's Homemade Pies, Cookies and Breads.

They called them dishpan cookies, as it makes such a large batch they used their dishpans to mix them up.  They are actually made with molasses and rolled oats.  I baked 4 dozen and still had this much in the bowl.  (I have very large stainless steel bowls, so I didn't need to use a dishpan.)  : )

I ended up forming the left over dough into two logs, wrapping them in foil and putting in the fridge.  A few days later I sliced them and baked a batch.  I did this on two different days.  I am thinking of mixing up a bunch of this dough and putting the logs in the freezer for baking a batch of cookies when the mood strikes without making the mess of mixing all the dough.  Besides then we aren't tempted to eat too many at once. 

Here is the recipe if you would like to give it a try.  I have made changes to the recipe to adapt to our way of eating.  I put those in ( ).

 OATMEAL/MOLASSES COOKIES

8 1/2 cups sifted flour (I used fresh ground soft white wheat flour)

1 TBSP salt

2 TBSP baking soda

8 cups quick oats (I used old fashioned oats)

2 1/2 cup sugar (I used 1 cup honey)

1 TBSP ground ginger

2 cups melted shortening (I used melted coconut oil)

2 cups light molasses (I used old fashioned molasses)

4 eggs beaten

1/4 cup hot water (I omitted the water to make up for the liquid of the honey)

3 cups raisins (I didn't have any so I used chopped dates)

2 cups ground black or English walnuts (I used almonds as I didn't have any walnuts cracked)

sugar for tops (I omitted this)

Reserve 1/2 cup flour.  Sift together 8 c. flour, salt and baking soda.  In a very large bowl or dishpan, mix rolled oats, sugar and ginger.  (If using honey instead mix the honey with the beaten eggs.) Stir in shortening, molasses, eggs, hot water (remember to omit water if using honey), sifted dry ingredients, raisin and nuts.  Work dough with hands until well mixed.  (Too messy for me, I used a wooden spoon.)  Add the reserved 1/2 c. flour is needed to make dough workable.  (I found I needed to use it because of the honey.) 

Roll dough to 1/4" thick and cut with 3 1/2" cutter.  (I just scooped about a tablespoon into my hands and shaped into a disc.  Kind of like making a hamburger patty.)  Place 2" apart on a greesed cookie sheet.  Brush with water and sprinkle with sugar.  (I omitted this step)

Bake in a moderate oven (375degrees) 8-10 minutes.  Remove cookies to a rack to cool.  Makes 6 dozen.  (They must have made huge cookies to only get 6 dozen.  I made more like 8 dozen from this recipe.)

I am thinking of making up another recipe kind of like this using maybe some applesauce instead of molasses.  Maybe another batch with cocoa powder and peanut butter for part of the shortening.  The possibilities are endless..............  I don't like making cookies, as I am too impatient to bake them.  I want to make something put it in the oven and be done with it.  Not keep fooling around putting them in and out of the oven every ten minutes.  : )  So if I had this all mixed up and in the logs/rolls I wouldn't mind baking a batch or two at a time.  My family would be so pleased with this idea.  : )

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