One Month Down...

Looking for rain, same as Tucson...

...three to go.

It seems utterly impossible that we’re a quarter way through our cabin stay.  I have this visual of me grasping a large rope with my heels dug in hard, but being pulled along in spite of my best efforts.  The days reel by, evaporating hour by hour, to the point that I sometimes feel I must have fallen asleep for some of it (and we do take the occasional nap) -- how can it be 4 PM?  

How we spend our time:

Projects and Reading

Now that we are mostly sorted out and stowed away, less work and more play becomes a reality.  Or projects that veer away from being chores and are more like fun -- like forest clearing for my husband, or sewing projects for me.  And there’s always a stack of books to be read, and we’re doing quite well at that.  My two favorites of the half dozen or so I’ve read so far were Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell (fanciful and fascinating) and a real knock-out by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham (for The Hours), By Nightfall.  We are now card-carrying members of the Rampart District Libraries -- their card has a panorama view of Pike’s Peak -- and can use either of the libraries, a smaller one in Florissant and a big one in Woodland Park.  And get this...we are of an age that we have “earned the right to be late” and pay no fines.  Nice, especially since it’s the better part of a hour to get to the library and we’d never make a special trip just to return books.

We love the local libraries -- and these two books especially!

Family and Friends (and hiking and beer making)

Happy Birthday Marc!

We had our third set of house guests.  Our friends from Tucson who moved to Colorado Springs four years ago, and who’ve hooked us up with everything from our dog (a rescue) to storage and hauling of our cabin things, came up recently for an overnight.  They’d come up in their Range Rover New Year’s Eve for the night (not that any of us were up to ring in the New Year) for sub-zero weather and a foot of snow on the ground (dedicated friends).  This time the weather was lovely, which was a good thing as it was Marc’s birthday.  We ate all our meals outside and took a long hike with the dogs; then Marc and my husband brewed beer, an ESB.  They filled us in on their Search and Rescue work before heading home for a few hours sleep before reporting for duty up at 11K+ feet on Pike’s Peak for some crazy car race called the Hill Climb (just in case someone went OFF Pike’s Peak).  An hour and half or so away, we’ll see lots of them this summer.

Can we see the cabin from here?

Shady chat during a hike rest

Taking the dogs to water along Little Turkey Creek

Even with everyone having five acres up here, neighbors are a big part of cabin life.  Most folks don’t have phones, so we’re never surprised by drop-in visitors.  Just taking a long walk here is a social experience if you don’t head straight into Pike National Forest.  We’re planning to walk all the roads here, roads named by my husband’s father, Fred, before summer is over.  We got a good start on that yesterday, hiking a mile to one of the highest roads around here.  It was a warm day, over 80 degrees (sorry Tucson friends; I heard about your 112s), and our dog found a trickling stream on the outer reaches (she has a whole lake near the cabin) of the hike.  She disappeared into the willows a brown and white dog and emerged a black dog.  She suffered her first bath in frigid well water when she got home.  But the steep hikes through the 800 acres here are well worth it.  The views are so varied from different places in the community, and it’s interesting to put names with lots, trailers, “shed” homes, and cabins.  

For the handful of us that are here for months at a time, getting together is becoming routine.  Every Wednesday night we gather, usually at someone’s cabin for games.  Yes.  Games.  Mostly we’ve played dominoes -- new fangled dominos for me, white with colored dots -- a game called Mexican Train (I don’t understand the reference and it can’t be P.C., but it’s right on the box).  It really is a hoot.  Last week we played Farckle, sort of a poker type game, but with dice and a lot more luck than skill.  Still, it’s fun to egg people on into risking their points by appealing to their greedy natures.  It’s a nice low key evening that combines catching-up with some friendly trash-talking competition.  It feels a little pre-TV (most folks don’t bother with that up here), or Little House on the Prairie, but I like it.

Trips to “Town”

Town refer to the little hamlet of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Florissant, a Florissant/Divide combo, Woodland Park, or the Big Adventure of going to Colorado Springs.  No matter which we do, we look forward to Buckin’ Blues (blueberry buckwheat pancakes) at the Hungry Bear, some quite good Chinese at the May Flower (both in Woodland Park), or some exceptional North Carolina style barbeque at a little old log cabin in Divide.  I will confess to enjoying the familiarity of the hot dog/soda combo at Costco for $1.50 if we go to the Springs.  

We look forward to our town trips, about one every week, which can include a trip to Waste Management to get rid of trash and recycling, Goodwill for a treasure hunt (plaid long-sleeved Nautica shirts for $4 for my hubby), various groceries (Costco if we go all the way to the springs), the hardware store, sometimes the feed store for fresh eggs and bird seed, and always the library and the Florissant Post Office.  We’re happy to go, but even more happy to get out of civilization and hit the dirt road on the way home. 

It was odd to have our normal 18 days at the cabin time-frame pass by and here we still are.  For so long the past six years we scrambled for every day we could get here, and now we have this four month embarrassment of riches.  The “we’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” racket is quieting down in our brains and we’re beginning to relax into our second home, its unique routines, and are thinking about some day trips (other than to town).  There are several ghost or semi-ghost towns in the area, all involving beautiful drives.  We want to go see the eagles that hang out in the next town west of us, Lake George.  The Nature Conservancy has a preserve nearby, the High Creek Fen, a continually boggy area similar to a cienega in southern Arizona, and similarly loaded with birds.  There are a lifetime of special places to see in this area of Colorado, and we plan to see most of them.

  

Feeling Kneady

All of us have experienced loss.  For long-time cooks, loss often takes the form of an old favorite recipe, mysteriously gone from the collection of index cards or the shoebox of favorites clipped from magazines.  In my life I have lost two that were old standards which I started baking in my 20s, coming up on 40 years ago.  One was for a truly spectacular lime chiffon pie with a crumb crust from Sunset  magazine; the other was for oatmeal bread which was part of a Christmas baking section from the Family Circle Encyclopedia of Cooking, each of the dozen-plus volumes collected week by week as a grocery store bonus.  Somewhere during the dozens of moves I’ve made in my life, some international, I parted with the encyclopedia set, but I swear I wrote that bread recipe down somewhere.  Alas, it seems good and lost.

The last time I lived (and baked) in the mountains it was in a funky cabin at around 6,000 feet in Descanso, outside of San Diego near Cuyamaca State Park.  I baked dozens of loaves of this bread in the old cabin stove, the kind that was raised a good foot and a half off the floor on metal legs.  There’s little better in life than good bread that has cooled as long as you can stand after taking it from the oven, spread with soft butter.  Staff of life and all that.  

We’ve been at our new cabin for a month now.  All the urgent tasks have been accomplished -- furnishing the loft, registering the old Arizona truck in Colorado, making curtains and hanging more artwork.  The essential guests have come and gone (for now).  The pattern of several hours of reading a day is established, the forest is being tended by my husband and his chainsaw, and the dog is on squirrel patrol near the bird feeders.  There’s time to relax, TRULY relax, and my mind seems to be looping back to cherished experiences that I can try to recreate for us...mostly involving food.  

We’re reminiscing on childhood favorites -- my husband’s all time, hands down, number one meal his mom made is boiled hotdogs, fried potatoes, and Van de Kamps (accept no substitute!) pork and beans.  Ohhhkaaaayyyyy.   My mind turns to my Grandma’s peach cobbler (definitely on the menu for this summer), creamy mashed potatoes (or crack potatoes as I call them, and we had them over the weekend...yum!), and even those split hotdogs stuffed with cheese (American no doubt) and wrapped in refrigerated crescent rolls my mom used to make, so good right out of the oven.  

We were running low on bread and I wasn’t up for another trip to town, so today I tried to replicate the oatmeal bread of the lost recipe.  I remembered that you poured boiling water over the oats in the bread bowl to soften them, adding a knob of butter and either honey or molasses and a little salt, leaving it for half an hour or so to meld and cool off a bit.  Once that time was nearly up I added two packets of dried yeast to some warm water, spiking it with a sprinkling of sugar to give the yeast something to eat, and walked away for a few more minutes, fearing that watched yeast would not swell and foam.  Trick worked, and I added the yeasty liquid to the softened oats and other goodies.

Now for the part requiring some muscle.  I added a cup of “high altitude” flour and stirred.  Another cup and stirred...it was harder.  The third cup of flour yielded a stiff dough and after another little sprinkling of flour I abandoned the spoon for my hands.  After working the dough into a ball I turned it out onto the floured countertop and started one of my favorite parts of bread baking -- kneading.

Kneading dough is one of the best cooking experiences you can have.  Let’s face it -- food is a sensualist’s dream.  You look at it, the beauty of the form and color.  You smell it, the savory smell of a roast in the oven or the cinnamon scent of snickerdoodle cookies.  You hear it, the sizzle of bacon in a cast iron skillet.     You taste it, salty, sweet, bitter, sour.  And you feel it, the mouth-feel when you eat it, and with your hands when you prepare it.  And bread making is very hands on.

When first turned out of the bowl, the dough is still a bit crumbly with bits of unincorporated flour clinging to the lumpy surface.  Kneading works in the last of the flour and as you work the dough -- push away, rotate a quarter turn, fold toward you, repeat -- the glutens in the dough begin to form and turn the dough elastic and smooth.  When the dough no longer sticks to your hands and is as smooth and soft as a baby’s backside, you’re done.  Forming the dough into a ball by turning it in on itself, place it top side down in the washed and buttered bread bowl and turn it over.  Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and place it in a warm draft-free place for a couple of hours.  Punch down, divide, form into loaves and place in bread pans.  Bake until the loaves are browned and sound hollow when thumped.  Turn out onto a cooling rack.  Brush with soft butter.  And wait for it to cool; probably the hardest part of baking bread.

Deb’s Lost Oatmeal Bread

1 cup dry oatmeal (I use Coach’s Oats)

1/4 powdered milk

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup honey or molasses

generous teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 3/4 cup boiling water  

Combine above ingredients in large bowl, stir, leave for half an hour.

two envelopes dried yeast

1/4 cup warm water (105 - 115 degrees)

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine above ingredients, stir, and leave to rise and foam for 5 minutes or so -- then add to bread bowl with  lukewarm oatmeal mixture.

Mix in about three cups of flour, one at a time, until stiff dough forms.  Turn out onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic and no longer sticky.

Turn in buttered bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.  Punch down, divide, shape into loaves by turning in on itself, place in bread pans, and let rise halfway in pans.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes (start checking at 35) until bread is brown and sounds hollow to thumping.  Turn onto cooling rack and brush with soft butter.  Cool.  Enjoy!

Special Days

Everyday is special at the cabin, but some are more special than others.

Father’s Day

Oldest and youngest living generations, playing Angry Chicken on an iPhone

My husband’s son brought the grandsons back for a couple of days including Father’s Day.  It was great to see the three generations of the family so tied to this place together, the two older generations with a combined history here of over 80 years.  The boys have been coming since we put a trailer on the property, post-Hayman fire, six years ago.  That’s a lot of history, but there’s much more to come.  It was one of the primary reasons we built the cabin -- to let the family tradition and legacy carry on.

Into the woods...

There’s something special about the male gender, especially when they gather in numbers.  From playing Angry Chicken Birds [oh, did I take some ribbing on this error -- it's okay, I'm proud of not being up on all the latest video games] on an iPhone to target practice, it’s better if it’s loud and involves explosions.  I was happy to have some hammock reading time and to let the boys be boys.  

Not that there wasn’t a softer side -- forest wanders to look for bugs and the nine year old’s serious discussion with his “hammocked” grandpa regarding the theory of relativity (believe it).  My husband’s son brought up the fixin’s for a truly fabulous dinner.  A very accomplished cook, including extensive cooking classes and internships at high-end restaurants (his day job is a prosecuting attorney), it is always such a treat to have him cook for you.  He made us Colorado lamb chops, thick and succulent and the best-by-far lamb I’ve ever had.  He deglazed the pan with veal stock (he makes his own), wine, shallots, butter, and a sprig of fresh rosemary.  There were incredible scalloped potatoes and a wonderful arugula salad as well, and the most astonishing bottle of wine.  His meals are always “the best I’ve ever had,” and he certainly deserves the chef’s hat he got for Father’s Day -- along with a copy of The French Laundry.

A son's dinner for his dad on Father's Day

Father's Day presents included a well deserved chef's hat

A grandson initiated discussion about the Theory of Relativity (would I kid you?)

Casey, my second favorite dog (don't come to the cabin without him!)

Laundry Day

Okay, this is a chore even here, but the novelty of hanging the fragrant clean linens out in the middle of a forest (no poopy HOA rules here) to air dry in the dry crisp air of the Rockies brings a great deal of satisfaction.  

Tide getting overlaid by the scent of pine

First Day of Summer

We’ve been here just over three weeks and I am already fretting about the time going to quickly.  My first thought was that by the time the season changes again in late September, we’d be getting ready to head south, back to Tucson.  And despite how much we love our lives there, it’s too new and too wonderful here to not want to slow our time at the cabin down.  True, we’ve been very busy since we arrived getting set up and provisioned, much of which will not have to be repeated every time we arrive for the summer.  That’s beginning to be less pressing, and hopefully soon we’ll experience more of what we can expect to experience in all our summer’s to come...more rambling.

Colorado columbines along our driveway

We took a long, slow wildflower walk on the first full day of summer.  The last full day of spring brought almost an inch of much needed rain, and with the warming temperatures -- meaning into the 70s most days -- the wildflowers are really coming into their own.  Here are some highlights:

Lady bug, lady bug...

New growth on spruce

Wild geraniums are everywhere

Down by our spring

A barely begun currant up on the saddle behind the cabin

Male broad-tailed hummingbird (yes, I was this close -- not telephotoed)

...and female

Sewing

Back in the sewing saddle...

In addition to cookie baking, I’m getting back in touch with something I’ve been away from for far longer -- sewing.

One of my first memories is standing next to my Grandma’s Singer treadle sewing machine, watching her make my annual birthday dress while I gathered ric-rac (I know I’m dating myself and I don’t care) onto a large sewing needle.  The dress was always some confection involving organdy and satin and tiny pastel colored buttons.  There would have been many, many hours involved in the selection of the pattern and fabric, of cutting out and sewing together the pieces, and hundreds of closely spaced hand-stitches in addition to the treadle time.  And I probably wore the dress exactly once for my birthday party in the back yard, my head festooned with a conical paper party hat and unhappy if I didn’t win at Pin the Tail on the Donkey (I have never liked kid’s birthday parties...brings out the brat in them).  This was well before the days of ordering up ponies, jumping castles, and Ringling Brothers, Barnum, & Baily for children’s birthday parties, but I certainly was better dressed than any party-going child now.  I have a vague recollection of the gauzy pale green, lavender, and blue dresses hanging eternally in my closet like ghosts of birthdays past.

I learned to sew for myself in junior high -- a red apron with an apple motif, complete with green border and embroidered apple pocket -- and with sewing being a big part of my personal culture, it stuck.  I made most of my clothes for the next 15 years, working in my room on a borrowed Singer portable (an electric foot pedal, not a treadle).  Sometime in my late 20s, while living in the Caribbean (not much needed in the way of clothes), I fell out of the habit.  

The cabin got me thinking about sewing again and I have been collecting vintage fabric for the past couple of years off Ebay and Etsy with the idea of making pillows and curtains.  I had my “new” sewing machine, a Kenmore bought in the 70s, serviced before leaving for the cabin.  I’d thought about getting a new machine -- Costco had a Singer for about twice the cost of the servicing of my old one -- but when I lifted up the new one it almost flew through the warehouse ceiling...it weighted almost nothing!  I can barely lift the old Kenmore, but I have confidence in it’s solidity and am certain it will be the last sewing machine I need (maybe I’ll get it serviced again in 35 years or so).

Your nap is ready...

The need for bedroom curtains trumped some other things on my list of to-do’s, and with the loft sorted out now I set myself up on my folding six foot table and got to work.  After the thousands of times I’ve filled bobbins and threaded a sewing machine, I sat there not quite sure how to do anything, hoping my body-memory would kick in.  It did eventually, but I backed it up by looking in the sewing machine’s manual -- a miracle to have kept track of that for almost four decades!  I really was a bit short on the fabric I wanted to use, a vintage piece of upholstery weight fabric with a wonderful funky design of espaliered pine boughs on a toasty background, complete with green needles on pine cones.  I’ve seen espaliered pear trees, but pines?  It was a little fiddle since I had to use a facing (a lovely vintage fine stripe of mellow gold and cream) instead of just turning under the pine fabric in order to have enough, but the effect made it quite special.  After I figured out the process on the first section, the second was much quicker.  And I’m cheating by using those suddenly trendy, but retro-feeling rings with the clips on them.  Two rectangles of the appropriate size and presto, you’ve got curtains.  

Hmmm...I’ve got this great old finely striped deep navy and cream for upstairs, or should I hunt for some reasonably priced Eames atomic patterned fabric?  Okay, not reasonably priced Eames atomic patterned fabric (no such thing), but maybe I’ll get lucky on Ebay.  

It’s sew (couldn’t help myself) good to connect with old skills.

And it Begins

Retired crime lab DNA guy makes the quick switch to lumberjack

We arrived at the cabin two weeks and three days ago today, right on schedule.  And almost problem free except for the last 100 yards.  After 890 miles, we were stopped within sight of the cabin by two trees across the driveway -- it had been incredibly windy -- but with two chainsaws in the trailer, my husband made short work of clearing the up-road.  Soon we were unlocking the door to the next four months of our lives.  

First order of business, getting rid
of the now illegal outhouse --
and no, I was not inside at this moment

Thinking about it, it’s a bit more than that.  With my husband freshly retired, we are starting a whole new life routine spending four months staying cool in the Rockies and the balance primarily in the Sonoran desert near Tucson.  We envision at least one additional trip to the cabin in late fall for sure, and additional trips when it suits our fancy, though we will leave time for other travels.  It feels like the whole world, or at least the American West, has become our playground.  We intend to make the most of it.

We were extremely busy the first week, trying to get settled in the cabin, figuring out how it works, where to put things, how to get organized.  At less than 900 square feet, it’s important to have a place for everything and keep most things in their place most of the time.  It’ll take the rest of the summer, figuring out what we do and don’t need, and we will doubtlessly be carrying back a few totes of superfluous stuff.  I seem to have enough bedding for an army and children’s books that my husband’s grandkids have aged out of.  There’s enough space for what we need plus some, but I don’t want to drive myself crazy keeping track of and taking care of a surfeit of possessions.  

Our dear friend Harry, delivering our "Harry Bears"

We also spent happy time reconnecting with some of our friends up here.  Harry surprised us early on with two of his coveted “Harry Bears” -- carved by chainsaw and hand from local downed trees.  We were thrilled and they now keep vigil outside our front door.  We had neighbors over for dinners and breakfast in order to catch up and make a small dent in repaying the hospitality they showed us when we were living in the trailer.  

Home sweet home

Busy as we were, we found time for tending to and watching “our” birds.  The hands-down most stunning bird we’ve seen, new to us here (or anywhere), is the Evening Grosbeak.  This spectacular bird is paint-by-number black white and yellow.  We saw a male early on near the seed feeder, but it was not until this morning we saw him again.  He fed from both seed feeders, sat on the window sill for a moment, and then drank out of the dog’s water bowl!  With a lake and a creek a stone’s throw down the hill, a spring a hundred yards in the opposite direction, we were surprised that he’d drink from our deck, but we are certainly going to put out a dish of water for the birds from now on.  There seem to be dozens of Broad-tailed Hummingbirds doing aerobatics around and between our two feeders.  They are sucking down about half a gallon of sugar water a day, and are so anxious to drink that they will sit on your finger at the feeder if that’s the only way to get to a port.  Check out the bird list in the margin -- I’ll add to it as we identify more birds.

But there's always time for hammock therapy

Working on the bird list,
and if I turn my head to the left...

I get a clear view of the feeder,
here being visited by a
bronze-headed cowbird

The days are settling into a pleasant ritual.  After a cool night under the quilt, listening to the wind sighing through the pines, I wake up to coffee made and my husband sitting in front of a fire in the wood-burning stove, reading.  

One of the grandsons on his first visit
to the completed cabin, testing his rock
hopping skills (and our nerves)

After an hour (or two) watching the light change across the valley and the birds at the feeders, I make breakfast -- anything from peanut butter on whole grain toast to fresh local eggs, pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup -- and then we get on with our day.  For me that means continuing to sort out the cabin, maybe do a load or two of wash (the quest continues for clothes pins that can stand up to the Rocky Mountain breezes), always interrupted by checking out what’s at the bird feeders.  My husband has kept busy putting up shelves and mounting my antique hooks on boards to hang in the closet and being a good steward to the land which mainly means taking his chainsaw (you’ve heard of chainsaw therapy, right?) and clearing the deadwood from about 10 acres of the ponderosa pine/Douglas fir/juniper forest we live in.  Lunch is always a picnic on the front porch.  We’re not quite at our one hike a day quota, but we’re working on it, and every hike over the same trail yields new surprises in the wildflower department -- the best find so far were the pale pink shooting stars in a damp shady spot on our “round the block” (about 2 miles) walk.  Around 6 PM we have a beer or glass of wine on the shady side of the deck, watching the chipmunks and golden mantle ground squirrels scampering on the red rocks rearing up behind the cabin.  Dinner has been everything from roasted chicken to brats on the grill, and is always easy and relaxed.  If the evening is chilly we retreat to the couch, light a small fire and have hot cocoa; if the evening is mild we take a glass of wine and climb up to the swing on top of those red rocks with a view to the sunset and sit until we get too chilly to stay.  True dark comes late, about 9:30, but if we’re tired from our activities and the thin air found at 8,600 feet, we turn in at dusk with a book from our huge piles, and seldom get much reading done.

We really are filled with gratitude for this life, so special in so many ways, and are anxious to share it with our family and friends.

The Importance of Homemade Cookies at the Cabin

Peanut butter cookies crisscrossed with Grandma's fork

I haven’t made many cookies since my husband’s young grandsons left Tucson three years ago for Denver, so the obvious thing to do when they came for a first visit to the cabin last week was to get out the cookies sheets and bake some up.  I made a huge batch of oatmeal chocolate chip, and they were wonderful, if I do say so myself.  Almost like lace cookies, crisp and buttery.  

I find life at the cabin inspires old-fashioned cooking.  Like cookies.  People stop by and it’s nice to have some small treat to offer them.  We don’t snack up here for some reason -- maybe because we’re usually outside and away from the kitchen -- but we do enjoy our three square meals a day.  Breakfast comes when we’re done sitting around in the morning and before heading outside to do whatever strikes our fancy, be it hammocking or lumber-jacking.  When we hear the lunch gong over at the summer camp it’s Pavlovian...if we hadn’t been thinking of lunch before, we do then.  Dinner comes when we’re done with our late day hike or rouse ourselves from our books, and with sunset coming after 8 PM, we sometimes end up eating later than we intended.

Lunch is almost always simple fare, sandwiches and pickles and fruit on a cutting board eaten out of hand while sitting in the Adirondack chairs on our shady front porch overlooking the valley.  The binoculars usually make the trip out too as we invariable do some bird watching in between bites.

Eating Grandma's homemade cookies

After we’ve eaten but before we’re ready to rejoin our other activities, we like to draw out this time by having a little something sweet -- a homemade cookie.  Here on our mountainside where every little jaunt or wander is an exercise in the vertical, we can afford a cookie or two, especially if they’re really worth it.

Today I baked peanut butter cookies.  A favorite from childhood, I love their subtle sweetness and faint nuttiness.  Not the insipid paleness of a sugar cookie, their rich golden color is highlighted by the tire-tread markings of the crossed impressions of fork tines.  I chose the fork carefully -- our silverware drawer here is a crazy collection of old partial sets of cutlery-past -- and ended up with an old fork of my Grandmother’s, the silverplate wearing thin in places.  The tines are long and evenly spaced, perfect for flattening the cookies with the traditional cross-hatched pattern.

As I flattened the first sheet of cookie dough balls, careful to exert just the right amount of pressure to each so that all of the cookies would bake evenly, dipping the fork in flour if it threatened to pull away some dough, I remembered my Grandmother letting me do that task under her watchful, but trusting, eye.  It felt like an important job then, the last touch before baking.  The cookies would bear the mark of she who wielded the fork, and since we eat with our eyes before we eat with our mouths, it mattered.  Then and now.  

Later in the summer I’ll revisit some of the other recipes my Grandmother made for those she loved (me most of all, believe me...I know) -- fresh peach cobbler, lemon meringue pie, chocolate drop cookies joined bottom to bottom with vanilla frosting.  My Grandma lived with us for the first decade of my life, and it is she who taught me about unconditional love, something I hope I managed to teach my own daughter.  

Bake yourself a batch of these old favorites, and ask someone you love unconditionally to make the patterns with the perfect old fork.

Unconditional Love Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cup flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream the butter, peanut butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla.  Mix dry ingredients, and add, mixing well.  Make one inch balls (or use a small lever-release cookie scoop), place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Press twice with fork tines in cross pattern.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.  Cool on baking rack.