Month of Letters and Outdoor Wednesday

It's #lettermo!

The month of letters, in which if we feel so called to take up the challenge, we are to mail a letter, postcard, note-card each day of this month. Excluding Sundays and Presidents Day, so that means we have to mail 24 days this month.

24 things.

My friend Shelly exclaimed TWENTY-FOUR!  That's a lot!

I didn't feel it was too bad.

In fact, I tend to 'overload' because I like to write letters anyway.

February 1st - 2 postcards

February 2nd -- 2 letters and one Thinking of you card

February 3rd-- 1 notecard, 5 letters.

I should pace myself, huh?

I just love real old-fashioned letter writing.

I think I've told this story before, but my daughter-in-law was holding meeting one time, and in that meeting there was a mother (senior citizen) and a daughter (middle aged), and the mother  was talking and said  "I got a letter from Nelva yesterday..." and the daughter looked annoyed and said,  "MOM, you live next door to Nelva!"

BUT, I want to be those weird old ladies.

When I get old that is!

Right now I just want to send YOU a letter.  

Seriously!   If you want a letter, email me your address, I'll do it.

I love  #lettermo

Something fun to do in this bleak, dark COLD dreary Mid-winter.

On Wednesdays I'll sometimes join A Southern Daydreamer and her Outdoor Wednesday meme to share some pictures.

Stop by and check out other great photos of the outdoors!

Just thought I'd share a couple of pictures that I need right now.

I live in the desert. I love the desert. I'm a desert rat, but I also grew up here. (look up)  (up on the screen silly---if you are looking at the ceiling right now, well,that's just weird!)

I spent my summers running wild--back when you could run wild without parental supervision--at this lake.

And I really need it right now.

I need to rejuvenate!

The desert is ugly in winter

AND  it's cold and I'm tired of winter.

I need a good GREEN spring at the lake!

We went up to our family cabin in May last year and it was green, Green GREEN!

This place has my heart!

A Month of Letters recap, Spiced Pavlova and FRIENDS!

Warning: This is a very random post.

I am still reading It.

The Handyman is making his world famous burritos for supper.

We have another basketball game to go to.

This is my friend Theda.
(  She's going to kill me, I know.

But look at this great picture, circa 1975.  That's my bedroom by the way. Very blue, with Holly Hobby Posters on my wall.  I don't  know what phase I was going thru, the year before it was plastered with pictures of David  Cassidy and Bobby Sherman. The year before that,  flower power baby!!)

Theda.
We've been friends since we were 15 or 16, but we've known each other since we were in Jr. High--about  12 years old.
I  have always liked to say  that we've been friends since we were in Jr. High, but she corrects me and says  we "knew" each other, but we weren't friends in Jr. High.

It's true.

We weren't friends until the end of our freshman year of high school, when she walked across the library and said sat at my table and said,  'lets be friends."
I SWEAR she said that.  In my mind I think it goes like this:  "you're a nerd, you need a friend, I'm here for you."
I know she didn't say those words, but I SWEAR she said 'lets be friends.' 
And here we are today,  39 years later.
Still friends.

Here is a picture of Theda at her daugther's wedding a few years ago:

and here is a picture of Theda and I at a cooking class we took in Reno about a year before that.  We met there  and did things we love to do.
Had lunch at a tea parlor
Gambled  (she likes to play the penny machines.  I just would sit and talk to her)
went to a lecture by the author of the Kite Flyer
took a cooking class
had chocolate souffle` at the El Dorado

She sends me stuff sometimes... Lots of letters over the years...she is a letter writer, one of the best.    Once in a while tho, she'll just send me something random.
Like this:

Star anise
a cinnamon stick
a vanilla bean
and a recipe for Pavlova.

So I made the Pavlova. 
I need to try it again.   I think I will love it.  Theda loved it with the spiced blackberries and pears and apples, poached in Marsala wine.  And those lovely spices she sent me.
I need to work on the Pavlova.  I think it was dry on the edges  (as you can tell) but chewy on the inside.  I'm not sure how it's supposed to turn out. The meringue  part I mean.  (so  you only get one picture)

The Pavlova was from the Cooking Channel, recipe here. The Simply Baking Show with Lorraine Pascale.  I should probably watch it and see exactly how to make it.

Anyway....
I love her for things like that. I wish I could be as spontaneous and thoughtful. I aways think of things like that 'after' the fact.   I'm always saying I 'should' have gotten that  for so and so.
I love her for thinking of me so often.  (one time it was a jar of salsa that she likes...and the chips to go with.  A big old box with a bag of chips and a jar of salsa arrived at my door.  I promptly sat down and at them)

You know who else will do stuff like that?  My friend Karen.   She'll just think of something that reminds her of me.  Or I'll mention something she's made that I would love to try, and the next thing you know,  I find it in my mail box!
And the funny/great/ awesome part is?  We've never met in person! 
It's a blog thing.

We've been friends for a few years.   I have no pictures to share---YET.  I say yet,  because someday I'm sure we'll meet in person.
One day,  she'll be driving thru town and she'll come to the Visitors Center where I work and that day I'll be cranky and have no make up on (I try very hard not to do this.. ~ Grins~)  but that will be the day... she might take one look at me being cranky and sneak out! 
HA---the very thought of that makes me  be nice to EVERYONE who comes thru the door of  my office.... Just for Karen's sake.

And since I'm speaking of friends---old and new--let me tell    you about Suey at  It's All About Books.   We met because of  of  the Month of Letters  (her post here is how I heard about it. )  I am a letter writer, so it just seemed like a cool thing to take part in.
I am a letter writer.  I do it all the time, so I thought this would be easy for me.  i mean, I have been known to mail  10 letters in one day.
Let me just say that I made my goal of  24 letters sent, BUT I didn't do a letter a day.  So I don't know if that counts or not.      I feel badly that I didn't interact with the Month of Letters People like I should have.  It was just a real hectic and quick month  (didn't you notice how it sped by?).


A couple of weeks ago, I got a postcard in the mail.  One of my favorite things---I collect them  (recall the line from above when my friend Theda calls me a nerd ), so I was very excited to see the postcard.  Only I couldn't figure out who it was from.  At first glance it looked like "shelly', but Shelly hadn't gone anywhere....and the only people I know from that neck of the woods (where the postcard came from)  are named Tomi and Megan...but the signature   started with an S.
Then it dawned on me!  Suey!  From  It's all about Books!  (it wasn't her handwriting, believe me--it was my fast glance )
She  had promised to send people, who commented on her post about a Month of Letters, a  note....and she kept her promise. 

Thanks Suey!   Thanks Karen!  Thanks Theda!

Chocolate Chip Cookie #4 and a Month of Letters

Let me just say--The PERFECT chocolate chip cookie is relative.    There really is no right or wrong chocolate chip cookie--we all have different tastes and different nostalgic feelings and memories about chocolate chip cookies.  It's all okay. Your favorite cookie is just perfect!    (there are some people out there who take their chocolate chip cookie way too serious.)

Take for instance the flatter chocolate chip cookie--some people think it's just not how a chocolate chip cookie should be...but that's how my mom's was.  Flatter, but not spread out and greasy--it was crispy and chewy.  Like when you bit into it, there was the teeniest tiniest resistance and a very very quiet crunch, and then the inside was soft and chewy.

(I borrowed this picture below from pinterest.  It's a chart of cookies.  I think the original pin came from this website... a great one...it's called  "the perfect chocolate chip cookie",   (they have some awesome stuff on there--it isn't that I don't like their site and recipes.  I do.  I just think that...)   and everything they say makes perfect sense to me. 
Until....I go home and smell my mom's cookies fresh out of the oven and take that first bite.  HEAVEN!   Like I said,  it's all relative.)

My mom's cookies looked like number 9.  I don't know if they tasted like this one,  but they looked like it.  With that crackle on top.  That little bit of crackle was the  resistance, revealing the chewy inside.   But critics say that that cookies was cooked in an oven set to a too low temperature.

Cookies being relative brings me to Chocolate Chip Cookie #4.  It looks to be similar to #3 in the chart/photo above, which was said to have too much flour.
The dough was very stiff when I made these.
It's not from the book, but from a recipe I've had in my collection for well over 20 years.

(cookies compared---Ch. chip cookie #3--from MY recipes--not the chart above-- and Ch. chip cookie #4)

Let me back track a bit--when my 3 sons were in elementary school, and I was the school librarian,  I would  baby-sit  3 other boys in the neighborhood during the summer.  They all played together all day long anyway, so it was really no problem.   Their mom would even pack their lunch to bring to my house.  She used to send these chocolate chip cookies--they were small and poofy and soft.  I asked her for the recipe, because they were good and my boys liked them too...but I don't remember ever making them.  
One day last week, I was  going thru my cookie notebook, pulling out every chocolate chip cookie recipe I own and  this recipe was one of them, so  I decided to make it right away and add to my   cookie search project.

They're a fine cookie --not my mom's tho.

When my son came over and saw them he said-- "THESE ARE MY FAVORITE COOKIE!!  I never thought I'd see them again!"
I said, 'you like them better than the ones last week?"
He said,  "like 100x better."
(see?  It's all relative)

Those  3 boys moved away, but in high school my son was friends with their cousin and he went to his house  (the cousin's) one day and there were the same cookies!    He was so excited... just as he was when he walked in my house the other day and there they were on the counter cooling.
It must be an old family recipe.




They are not my favorite, but The Handyman and my son LOVED them.
They are soft and poofy and small.    And very good.   Just not 'my' favorite.
(they don't even look like they've been cooked to me--they look just like when I put them on the cookie sheet )

Chocolate Chip Cookie #4
source:  The Maynick Family (exactly as it was written for me)

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
Beat butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat again. Add soda and salt.

1 tsp vanilla
beat in vanilla

3 eggs
3 cups sifted flour
alternately beat in eggs and flour.  It may be difficult to beat with the mixer by the time you get to the last cup of flour.

1 12oz package of mini chocolate chips
mix in by hand

Drop by spoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for about  10 minutes.

If you made it thru all that---well,  GOOD FOR YOU!   Stick  with me now and I'll ramble about  "a month of letters".    (hey--my mom finds my posts very interesting. )

Day #1
I wrote a letter to my friend Dorothy Minor.
But her letter is addressed to   "Mrs.  Dick Gootman Schmenkminor"  (a joke between friends--too boring for you)

Day #2
a birthday card and letter to my oldest son.  He'll be surprised as I never have written him a letter.

and now...day  #3
let me pull a letter  out of my bag, which needs to be answered by me.  And the winner is....
My friend Sally in Pennsylvania!!!

Letter writing is nothing new for me as you know...so this challenge is not hard. Well, to be honest, the  EVERY DAY part is challenging, but writing a letter is not.

I always think it strange when people say they have nothing to write about.
Just sit down and WRITE!
Write about things you did,  things you saw,  food you ate,  the weird lady at the grocery store, write about the Ottoman Empire (it's in a book I'm reading) ...seriously  YOU CAN write a good letter.   Try it!

A month of letters

So much for my New Year's resolution!

I just joined a challenge.

 I said I wasn't going to...I don't like the pressure.

But...but...this is  one I love.

see this post

and this one.

I've signed up for the  Month of Letters Challenge!!

I write at least 2x a week anyway, and I've wanted to write more.  There are so many people I want to keep in touch with--thru letters.

So--keep your fingers crossed for me as I write a letter a day for the month.

I would write more here Dear Reader, but it is 3:10pm, I just signed up for the challenge and I have to write a letter and get it to the post office before 5pm.

Until tomorrow....