Waffle Cookies

It would be hard for me to choose my favorite cookie between chocolate chip and waffle cookies. Ha ha...warm chocolate chip cookies with milk are like food for the soul. But I do love me a waffle cookie, which are also best served warm with milk. :)

Our recipe comes from the 10th Ward Cook's Corner cookbook that my ward put together in 1981. We've made them in my family since I can remember. In high school, a friend and I ruined my mom's waffle iron by trying to cook chocolate chip cookies in it. Since then I've stayed with the tried and true and it really can't be beat.

Waffle Cookies

Melt 1 cube margarine and add:
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
4 tsp cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour

Mix all the ingredients together. Cook on pre-heated waffle iron on medium heat by dropping one spoonful of batter on each square. Cook for 3-4 minutes. Frost while warm. This recipe makes about 16-20 cookies, depending on how small they are. I usually double it when I make them.

Frosting:
powdered sugar
cocoa
vanilla
milk
butter or margarine

I don't have measurements because I just dump in the bowl and mix. It used to drive all of us crazy that my mom couldn't give us the actual measurements, but we must have learned well because now my sisters and I make frosting the way mom does. :)

A few notes:
Butter can be used instead of margarine, but the taste changes slightly, of course. I've also tried baking chocolate squares when I was out of cocoa and they make a rich chocolate flavor, but change the texture of the cookie slightly. And finally, I prefer homemade frosting instead of store bought kinds. The frosting melts a bit because you put it on the warm cookie and store bought frosting seems to change a bit when it sets back up.

YUM!!!

Perfect moments

Do you ever have that perfect moment? The one where everything is peaceful and worries and stress disappear, and for that small moment in time you are perfectly happy.  I had one this summer and I was thinking about it the other day.  I was in Sweden at Anna’s summer home.  It was mid-morning and the sky was blue and the birds were out. The sun was shining and warm. The sea was close, although I couldn’t see it through the bushes and trees. I was lying on my back on the grass next to my sister and we were finding shapes in the clouds.

I cherish moments like those.

Sometimes I have perfect moments in the middle of noisy family gatherings, or snuggled in a blanket with hot chocolate watching the snow fall.

 

Whatever your perfect moment is, I hope you have one soon.

Fun weekend

I got to spend last weekend with a friend from Alabama. She stayed at my house and we spent Friday in Park City. Oddly enough, I had never been to the Olympic Park so we spent a little time there watching some people free-style ski into the pool. It was pretty fun. Then we walked over to the bobsled course and watched a few bobsleds come down. Ha ha... I wish I was brave enough to try it.

Then we spent some time on Saturday morning in Logan canyon and hiked the Crimson Trail. I haven't hiked that trail in a lot of years. It is so dry this year, but I still find the mountains beautiful in a rugged sort of way.

My Vacation - Part 2

Denmark

I must admit that Copenhagen was a bit of a disappointment to me. After Stockholm, it just didn’t have the ease of getting around and was dirty. Not that I haven’t been in dirty cities before (and the US isn’t exactly clean) but there was seriously trash all over in Stroget one morning.  We did stay at a nice hotel near Nyhavn, which was very fun. If I’m ever there again, I will rent a bike to get around the city. They have fantastic bike lanes and of course I’d get a lot further than walking.

It was overcast and rained quite a bit in Copenhagen, and actually the entire trip. We were prepared and didn’t let the rain bother us most of the time.

No trip to Copenhagen is complete without seeing The Little Mermaid statue. We went just because you have to, right? There are better things to see in the city. J

Nyhavn is one of the most famous streets and packed with tourists, even on rainy days.

Frederiksberg Park was beautiful. I liked that area of the city the most, I think.

And my favorite part of Denmark was taking a train to Helsingor and seeing Kronborg Slot, aka Hamlet’s Castle, which it should be noted, has burned and been rebuilt a few times so even if Hamlet wasn’t a fictional character, he wouldn’t have lived in this particular castle. J It’s also unlikely that Shakespeare himself ever saw it. It rained like crazy and we were wet and tired but it was still fun to walk around. The casements were almost completely unlit and they let you run around in the dark. That would be a great place for Halloween. And it has a moat. Every castle should have a moat! J

Anyway, it was a great trip overall. I knocked 2 more spots off my list and now I’m happily at home sleeping in my own bed and full of possibilities for the next trip, where ever it may be.

Vacation - Part 1

Sweden

Sweden is a beautiful country and Stockholm was so easy to get around with the metro system and trams and buses they have. Flying in, the view from the airplane was a lot like flying to Charlotte, NC. I went to Stockholm because my sister decided to run the Jubilee Marathon, which is the 100^th anniversary of when Stockholm hosted the summer Olympics in 1912. We had a great time seeing the city and the race was exciting.

Stockholm highlights for me: cheering on my sister at the race. I’m not a runner but being in the stands with a bunch of cheering people can be very fun. I’ll stick with the cheering and not the running. This race was especially fun because of all the different people from different countries there to run. And listening to the Olympic anthem as the runners entered the stadium is probably the closest I’ll ever get to an Olympic event. J

The canal tour around Djurgarden was nice. It was fun to get on the water. We just didn’t have time to get a ferry boat out to the archipelago but maybe someday we’ll get back there.

We also had a great time at the Vasa museum, where a 1628 era restored warship sits, and Skansen, which is an open air museum with houses from all era of Swedish history.



After we left Stockholm, we took the train to southern Sweden where we stayed with our old exchange student. They have a summer home on the Baltic Sea and it was so fun to be with Anna and her family and the countryside there is so beautiful.

Above is the home we stayed in and the path to the sea.  Below is a picture I took during a bike ride.

It pays to pack light

I had a great time with my sister in Sweden and Denmark. I’ll post more on the trip later.

My co-workers, random stranger in the airport, and even my Swedish friend were amazed that my sister and I can do a trip like that with just a carryon suitcase.

I used to be a huge over-packer. I make lists and I try to plan for every contingency. I refuse to get stuck somewhere without the things I need.  But I have learned over the past couple years to pack a little lighter. I spent most of 2010 and 2011 traveling for my job and nothing gets old faster than pulling around a suitcase, no matter how small it is. And over the years since I started traveling outside the USA for vacations, I have drastically cut down my packing.

The Sweden trip was the second one with a carryon and I’ll never go back to larger luggage if I can help it. Even this trip, I packed a thing or 2 that I didn’t use. I’m learning to make do with less. And when we ended up trekking across Copenhagen to catch a train at 4:40 AM because the metro broke down, I'm so glad I didn't have to drag a larger suitcase. Of course, now that I'm home, I'm so happy to be surrounded by my stuff and have more choices on clothes and makeup.

I’m currently reading a book about travelers backpacking through Guatemala and I must say I’m not sure I’ll ever get that adventurous. I think I’d be willing to try traveling with a backpack but I have a hard enough time living out of a suitcase, I’m not sure I could do a backpack. But who knows, maybe one day I’ll try it and never go back to a carryon. J

July 4th and Homemade Jam

I had a great 4^th of July holiday. It included helping mom pull weeds in the garden and picking apricots. Then we made apricot-pineapple freezer jam. Yummy!

Making freezer jam is very easy. But in general, with my mom’s kitchen aid, it’s so much easier than when I was a kid and we had to crank that old Victoria strainer by hand.

We added the sugar to the apricot/pineapple mixture and then added the pectin.

Then we put it into containers to set up.

Now it’s in the freezer ready to be taken out and eaten.  I think I need to make some bread. There are not many things better than fresh, hot homemade bread with homemade jam. J