Posts Tagged ‘baking cookies’
Best Thing
It was a farrier day on the ranch yesterday. That is when the horses get the 8-10 week growth of their hooves trimmed back. One of the best things about farrier day is that Cyndie always wants to serve treats to the farrier and the two folks from This Old Horse who show up to facilitate the process. That meant I took off my “horse wrangler” hat for a couple of hours in order to wear my “baker’s assistant” hat in the kitchen.
The aromas in Cyndie’s kitchen when she is baking cookies always beats the aromas wafting around down at the barn.
Imagine, if you will, the smell of the ginger biscuit cookies, mingling with the almond spritz, and the chai spritz cookies fresh out of the hot oven. Really, the cookies aren’t the best thing as much as the aroma of the cookies is the best thing. Anticipation usually beats out a real event when it comes to our perceptions.
The satisfying crunch and the explosion of sweet flavors certainly deserve plenty of votes for the best thing, but that aroma is tops. Maybe it’s because the delicious smells show up first and hang around longer than it takes to finish baking them.
I was able to receive a moment of satisfaction after putting my “horse wrangler” hat back on, upon successfully getting halters on all four horses before the crew showed up at the appointed hour. I started with Swings but ended up leaving her until last when she made it clear she wasn’t interested. The other three accepted their halters without hesitation, much to my relief. Swings required my patient persistence before she finally stayed still long enough for me to get a strap over her nose and another one over the back of her neck to slide through the buckle.
She just needs to flaunt her bad self several times until she can convey that she’s choosing to wear the halter on her terms, not ours. There’s probably a term for humans who behave that way but I hesitate to assign any such labels to our mares, especially since Swings is the oldest.
She’s probably earned the right to demand a little extra respect.
I could argue that the best thing about the day was that the farrier succeeded in hitting all 16 hooves within the hour she had available because it might be the first time one of the horses (can you say, Light?) didn’t pitch a fit and lose trimming privileges on one or more feet by the end of the session.
Granted, Light did end up receiving only rudimentary filing on her fronts, but none of the horses’ hooves required much more than that this time around so we are calling yesterday’s session a victory.
Plus, there are cookies left over for John and Cyndie to enjoy. That’s just the best, don’t you think?
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Cookie Help
A couple of Santa’s Helpers stopped by for a visit yesterday and cheerfully volunteered to assist Cyndie with baking some Christmas cookies. Sara and Althea did a heroic amount of the legwork getting loaded cookie sheets into and out of our double oven. That’s a lot of squats since the bottom oven is at about floor level.
My legs were getting tired just standing around helping with occasional cleanup. I think they baked almost ten different kinds of cookies. It seemed like that’s how many I test-tasted. Cyndie had prepared much of the dough in advance and refrigerated it overnight.
Each oven was set at a different temperature and the multiple varieties of cookies needed different baking times so it was quite a challenge for four people to keep track of pertinent details. I worked on the jigsaw puzzle while using the timer on my phone to track baking times.
Not that Sara really needed help with that. At one point, she asked me how much time was left and when I looked there was 1 second left on the timer. Her intuition was spot on. She also demonstrated a good sense of when the suggested baking time wasn’t enough. Several of the kinds of cookies took a little longer in our oven to reach the desired golden brown.
I learned that the inside light blinks on when the oven reaches the set temperature. It also emits a little tune, but I already knew about that. Sara conducted most of the orchestrations of the baking while Cyndie consulted recipes and prepped the different doughs for the cookie sheets with Althea’s support in cutting, sprinkling and spritzing.
At about the time maximum baking was being accomplished, I slipped out to feed horses and discovered a gorgeous moon illuminating the early evening. Once the horses were taken care of, I strolled down to pick up the mail. This is an activity that used to always include Delilah and it feels strange to walk down there alone.
Along the way, I took note of a variety of tracks in the snow from a prowling cat and either a fox or coyote. I could see where the snow along the driveway is getting peed on. I wonder if the local animals are noticing that Delilah is no longer marking this territory.
As a punctuation to this thought, last night our motion-sensing light popped on over the deck and I looked out to find a fox on the top step of our deck. We never saw any fox on our deck when Delilah was alive. As soon as I spotted it, it noticed me, did a hasty about-face, and “noped” outta there.
Not long after that, a pack of coyotes started howling up a noise storm from very close proximity. Maybe they were howling at the moon.
Thinking about it, that moon looked a lot like one of Cyndie’s fresh-baked Russian tea cake cookies.
Howl-worthy, indeed.
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Relative Something 