Kindness with Cookies

Our Girl Scout troop had it's big holiday party last night, which also doubled as part of their Bronze Award for community service.  We've been learning about food insecurity in our town (one of the priests who organizes the soup kitchen visited and talked to them, wonderfully, about the issue) and prepping to help the local interfaith soup kitchen at their annual Christmas celebration.  Each girl baked at least four dozen nut-free, chocolate-free cookies and brought them to last night's party, where we packaged them up with some candy canes, a homemade card, and  an angel ornament they made a few weeks ago.  This morning, I delivered the containers to the church (with extras going to the teachers' lounge at school) and, tomorrow night, the girls will help out and maybe do some caroling, which they practiced karaoke-style to an old VHS Disney show my co-leader had.   Like the priest kindly said, and I paraphrase, the girls are doing kind and good work which is the best way to face difficult issues.  We'll help again in February for Valentine's Day to complete our Bronze Award hours.

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Aunt Banana's Punch, Adapted
2 liters of Sprite
8 zinger tea bags--I had a combo of Wild Berry and Raspberry (Red works great, too)
2 containers raspberry sorbet

Put 4 tea bags in each Sprite bottle, re-cap, and refrigerate.
Serve hours later, with sorbet.

Snickerdoodles (with cinnamon on outside of cookie)
yields 6-7 dozen

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening (or coconut oil)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

For cinnamon-sugar:  1/2 cup sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon (if desired, use colored sugar; Sis used red and green, splitting the mix)

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the shortening and sugar till smooth, then beat in the eggs, again beating till smooth.

Beat in the vanilla, cinnamon baking powder, then add the flour, mixing slowly till combined.

Place about 1/2 cup cinnamon-sugar in an 8" or 9" round cake pan or in a zippered bag.

Drop the soft dough by teaspoonfuls into the pan with the sugar, about 6 to 8 balls at a time. Gently shake the pan to coat the dough balls with sugar. Place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet, leaving about 1 1/2 inches between them. Using the bottom of a glass, flatten each cookie till it's about 1/2-inch thick. Repeat till you've used up all the dough.

Bake the snickerdoodles in a preheated 400°F oven for 8-11 minutes.  They'll be set and just starting to turn golden. Remove the cookies from the oven, and cool them on a rack.

adapted from King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion 

Mark it with a "T"

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time for sharing; though between it and Christmas, perhaps too many of our charitable activities are scrunched up here in a 4+ week period, when organizations and the people whom they serve need help all year round.

Still, it's a good teachable moment and I'm grateful for the opportunities the kiddos have to serve, from making fringed fleece blankets for hospice patients to collecting bags of cookie-making supplies for the food pantry.    I give some thought to the projects they do, not wanting projects which in my mind reinforce notions of privilege, like upper middle-class children alighting on a soup kitchen for an hour or so to serve the "deserving poor."  This puts poverty on parade and makes service a spectacle, while also reinforcing "us" and "them," at least without some context and discussion of socio-economic privilege.  And since that can easily go over the head of a third grader, I find other projects perhaps work better.  But, I also don't want the project just to be money Mommy used to buy something, with the kiddo only carrying the cans of food to school.  Food drives are great, and we bought lots of cans of green beans and corn this year, but I want more than that.  

Like today, when our church's youth service team (now isn't that a great idea?) made more than a dozen pies for a local shelter.  Apple, pumpkin, and enticing apple butter pumpkin, all with from-scratch pie crusts!  The adult team advisors had it all down to a science--a table for making dough, a table for measuring out spices in little paper cups, a table for opening all the cans, a table for cracking eggs into waiting bowls, a Cuisinart table for mixing the custard fillings together. a table for filling the pies.  They even used the extra dough trimmings, slathered with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, for their snack, baking them in pinwheel shapes in muffin tins.  Yum!

Sis and Bud had a good time and were apparently pretty helpful--Bud can crack eggs like a pro and Sis can handle any baking task besides actually using the oven.  So I know who will be helping with our pumpkin and pecan pies this Thanksgiving!

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Church Pie Crust
Makes 2 crusts

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup or 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1/3 + 1 tablespoon ice water

from Joy of Cooking


Apple Butter Pumpkin Pie
1 cup apple butter
1 cup fresh or canned pumpkin
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
3 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
Sweetened whipped cream, for garnish

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine apple butter, pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices in a bowl. Stir in eggs. Gradually add milk and mix well. Pour into pie shell. Bake for about 40 minutes or until set.

Paula Deen

It's Cookie Time!

No, not quite cookie-baking or swapping time.

It's Cookie-Time Bag donation time.

Yes, my Brownie troop is collecting self-contained bags of cookie-baking materials to donate to the local food pantries to sweeten the holidays of the people they serve.  It's similar to our Birthday-in-a-Bag donations in celebration of Juliette Gordon Low's birthday.

Here are the details, in case you'd like to try it with your service organization (but note that I'm not soliciting or collecting bags from people online):

We’re collecting

COOKIE-TIME BAGS

for local food pantries

What is a Cookie-Time Bag?  A Cookie-Time Bag is a self-contained bag with everything someone needs to make and decorate cookies during the holidays.

Who needs a Cookie-Time Bag?  Everyone likes to bake cookies, especially during the holidays!  However, sometimes circumstances occur that prevent this from happening.  A Cookie-Time Bag can sweeten the holidays.

Where will the Cookie-Time Bags go?  Each Cookie-Time Bag collected will be delivered to local food pantries, by December 13, to be distributed to the families they serve.

                                                                 

What goes in a Cookie Time Bag?

·         Dry mix for cut-out cookies, such as sugar cookie or gingerbread cookie mix  (no chocolate chip or peanut butter, refrigerated,  or frozen dough please)

·         Can or tubes of frosting

·         Sprinkles or other decorations

·         Cookie cutters (for example:  snowflake, snowman, gingerbread people, stars)

·         Disposable aluminum sheet for baking

·         Decorative bag to hold all the items

·         Optional:  napkins and plates for cookie party; cookie tin for storage

Be sure to include a note!  Suggested Text:

Happy Holidays from Girl Scout Troop #

Girl Scouts love cookies and we want to share them with you.  Inside you will find everything you need to make your own cookies for the holidays.  We wish you a happy new year!

Contact details:  If you would like to participate, e-mail your troop number, contact person and number of bags.  Bags must either be brought to the Adult Volunteer Meeting  or delivered to ____ by December 11.  Thank you!

Our Colonial Bit of Earth

Our Brownie troop planted a colonial-inspired herb garden at the historic house recently.  And they had such fun getting dirty, though they were oppressed by the heat. So now the house has a raised bed with several herbs in it:

• Costmary (chrysanthemum balsamita tanacetoides)  Gray-green serrated leaves used as bookmarks to repel bugs, hence nickname “Bible Leaf.”  Infusion also used to treat coughs.
• Lavender (Lavandula vera) Oil and dried flowers used for perfumes, sachets, and even baked goods.  Also used for pain and to repel mosquitoes.
• Marjoram, Sweet (Marjorana hortensis) Leaf used for flavoring many foods, in perfumes and sachets, and as an infusion for headaches.
• Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) Needle-like leaves used for flavoring teas and food.  Also used for digestive ailments and headaches, as well as to fight germs.
• Sage, Garden (Salvia officinalis) Gray-green leaves used for flavoring poultry stuffing, pork, or in making a medicinal tea to aid digestion.  Native Americans mixed it with bear grease to treat sore throats.
• Savory, Winter (Satureia Montana) Smooth and shiny leaves used for culinary purposes, or to relieve bee stings.
• Thyme (Thymus vulgaris or serpyllum) Leaves used to flavor foods and as a tea.  Oil of thyme is still the basis of a patent cough medicine.

Sis planted the thyme herself.  

My goal is to search out some more obscure herbs--like my favorite, costmary or "Bible Leaf," which we received as a gift from another local historic house.  My wish list includes feverfew, angelica, yarrow, tansy, comfrey, lovage, lemon balm, valerian, chamomile, and the like.  But that will be next year.

We hope to have the girls sign up to take a week to water/weed the garden and then we'll return in the fall to help with more gardening.  We're not the most talented gardeners--our house volunteer noted that the girls didn't know to weed out the dandelions!--but they are enthusiastic.  

It's great combining my two volunteer activities--the girls got to do a major community service project and the house now has an herb garden to share with visitors (which will include all the girls on their third-grade field trips next year!)  I'm not a great gardener,, as you know, but I'm very enthusiastic about an historical garden.  

Now if I could just translate that to our yard!

Reading For a Good Cause

The kiddos have rushed off to read tonight with more enthusiasm than they usually generate, and that's saying quite a lot because they love to read (and are frequently caught sneaking books in the dark . . . and sometimes in the morning before wake-up, though not since the time change!)  Today at our Unitarian Universalist (UU) church, they heard about a fundraiser to assist a little UU girl in the Phillippines who has to pay to attend school.  For three years now, the children of our congregation have helped raise money to pay for her school fees, supplies, uniform, and other expenses.  They also exchange letters with cultural information, aspects of being UU, and just friendly kid stuff.

So Sis and Bud are very excited to be participating in this fundraiser, especially via one of their favorite activities.  If you'd like to support them with either a one-time donation or a pledge-per-hour that they read between now and April 21 (they read between 30-60 minutes a day, give or take), please let me know.

Thanks!  And good luck, kiddos!