Grandma Hedden’s Sour Cream Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup sour cream
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs
3-1/2 cups sifted flour
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup raisins (light or dark)
1 teaspoon vanilla
dash salt

Cream butter, sugar, salt, vanilla and nutmeg until very fluffy. Add 1 egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add baking soda to sour cream and stir. Add baking powder to flower and mix well. Add flour and sour cream alternately to butter/egg mixture. Stir in raisins and nuts. Drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheet leaving room between cookies as they will spread. Bake at 350 until cookies are pale blonde with slightly darker edges. Cool on racks.

Submitted by Louise Chambers Krueger, designer Walter Knoll Florist, LaSalle location. Thanks Louise, we can’t wait to try them!

Need a nice sleigh to display your holiday cookies? I think they’d look great in our Joy Ride Sleigh Bouquet, after the flowers and greens are gone of course! Best of all, this bouquet is on sale if you order it from our website this week!

And speaking of our web site – have you seen the photo contest? It’s a Holiday Fun photo contest and we would love to see your pics! Just register and then upload a jpg format file of your favorite fun holiday photo…but hurry, contest ends December 22!

register here: Holiday Fun Photo Contest

I can’t make pies without making extra crust to make these cookies and on special occasions I even make pie crust just for these cookies.

Make your favorite pie crust recipe; (my favorite is half lard and half butter for the fat) roll out disks approximately 8 inches in diameter. Paint with softened butter and then sprinkle heavily with cinnamon and sugar.

Cut the disk into 8 or 10 wedges (pizza cutter works great here) and roll the wedges up starting with the wide end.

Bake at 425 to 450 for 8 to 10 minutes until just browned – removed from cookie sheet immediately and cool on cooling racks – Don’t worry about how long they keep, because they’ll be gone as soon as they are cool! But if you do have some to store, they keep well in waxed paper in an airtight tin.

Tulips will be here for the upcoming holiday season! “Hello Myrtle” our flower buyer tells me we will have red, pink and white this year!

Home Made Marshmallows

If you’ve got a stand mixer and a candy thermometer you can make the most delicious homemade marshmallows!

3 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
¼ tsp salt
1 tbl pure vanilla extract
Powdered sugar for dusting

Combine the gelatin and one-half cup of cold water in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and allow to sit while you make the syrup mixture.

In a medium saucepan combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt and one-half cup water – cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to high and cook until the mixture reaches soft ball stage – 240 degrees. Stir often, this takes about 10 minutes.

With the mixer on low speed slowly pour the sugar syrup mixture into the dissolved gelatin. Crank the speed to high and mix until the mixture is very thick, about 15 minutes. Add the vanilla and mix it in thoroughly.

Generously dust a half sheet pan (or 8 x 12 baking dish) with powdered sugar. Pour marshmallow mixture into the pan and smooth the top spreading the mixture to the sides with a dampened spatula. Dust with more powdered sugar. Allow to stand uncovered overnight until it dries out.

Turn the marshmallows out onto a board, cut them with cookie cutters that have been dusted with powdered sugar into fun thanksgiving turkey or feather or whatever shapes for topping your sweet potatoes! Or cut them into squares. Dust the cut shapes in more powdered sugar. Take the scraps to work for your co-workers to devour! The quantity of marshmallows will depend on the pan you set them up in. An 8 X 12-inch baking dish will give you anywhere from 20 to 30 depending on the size you cut them to. I like to use the baking sheet for thin half-inch thick marshmallows.

My Chicago buddy, Rob Rausch, comes through St Louis on his way to his family Thanksgiving in Kansas City every year. He’s quick to put the apron on and run a sink full of soapy water to clean up as I cook, all he charges is his own little pan of W H A T E V E R we’re cooking up! Write me, I’ll get you his contact information.

NOTES:
Knox gelatin comes in boxes of 4 envelopes. One of these days I’m going to figure out this recipe using the 4 envelopes! Check the expiration date on the gelatin box!

Nielsen-Massen Vanillas, Inc make a Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean Paste which I used this year – a full tablespoon – the marshmallows have all those wonderful dots of vanilla bean seeds!

Coconut marshmallows are great also – Toast coconut in the oven until light brown, enough to coat the bottom of your pan at least twice! Use coconut flavoring instead of vanilla– but double the amount – 2 tablespoons will do – then spread the marshmallow mixture onto about half the toasted coconut and then top with the rest – press it into the mixture – later when you cut them, some of the coconut will come off – you can roll the cut sides into that – a little powdered sugar can also be added to the toasted coconut.

There is still time to order your Thanksgiving centerpiece or send ahead a pretty flower arrangement from Walter Knoll Florist! Mom’ll thank you for that! Have a great holiday! Check back soon, we’re having an employee holiday cookie contest and I’ll be posting the winning recipes!

THIS IS A MIGHTY FINE SUNDAY SUPPER DISH
and it’s great left over!

Grilled Chicken in Lemon Wine Caper Sauce
6 Half skinless boneless chicken breasts – butterflied and cut into
manageable pieces about 1/2 inch thick, marinate with below Marinade
for an hour or two, then grill briefly (til no pink meat) they continue
to cook in the sauce.

Marinade
3 TB freshly minced Rosemary
2 large cloves minced Garlic
1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons,
Juice of 1 lemon
Mix up in a Ziploc, add the chicken pieces and massage occasionally so that every piece of chicken is flavored.

Be sure to get the marinade on each piece of chicken

Sauce
8 oz sliced mushrooms
3 TB capers rinsed and chopped
3 TB freshly chopped Parsley
1 cup dry white wine (I used Mad Housewife Chardonnay)
1/2 cup (or more) chicken stock
juice of 1 or 2 lemons (about 1/4 cup)
3 TB cornstarch mixed with about 1/4 cup water
Butter

Here is the sauce before chicken broth is added.

Melt 2 TB butter in large skillet, add mushrooms, spread into 1 layer and don’t touch until they are browned, give them a stir and brown the other side. Remove mushrooms and set aside.

Set the mushrooms aside after browning with the capers until you are ready for them.

Into the same hot skillet melt another TB of butter, then add the white wine and 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, bring to a simmer stirring up any browned bits in the skillet. Add 1/2 cup chicken stock and reduce to about 2/3. Taste it, it should be lemony, winey and chickeny. Add the grilled chicken, reserved mushrooms and capers. Stir up the cornstarch slurry and add it – the sauce will thicken.

I still have fresh parsley and rosemary in my herb garden

Remove from heat, add freshly chopped parsley and serve. Great with rice or noodles and of course some broccoli!

– - – - – - – - – - – – - – - – - – - – - – V O I L A – - – - – - – - – - – – - – - – - – - – - –

This is a very “leaned” down Italian version of “French” style dish – usually served with veal cutlets or chicken cutlets pounded thin, lightly floured and fried in butter. You know the dish – sometimes called Francaise or more commonly Piccata. The rosemary and the garlic are unique to this grilled version – it can all be prepared ahead, reheat the sauce while you quickly grill the chicken –

How hard it is to quit smoking, Di is doing it

Saturday Country Drive

Decided to take the long way to the “moon road” and visit a farm I know of called Reckamp. Located in the Wright City area on OO between M and N hence the Moon Road. That’s my bud Karen (our fabulous flower buyer at Walter Knoll Florist) she was a bit nervous about my pulling over to shoot the sign. “Hurry Up!”

Reckamp sells frozen pork cuts and fresh produce from their farm. We got lucky today and my favorite third generation son took us for a tour into the birthing stalls. The first room we came to has a giant tractor that runs a machine which grinds up the feed for the pigs. A mixture of corn grown right there on the farm and noodles and fortune cookies – yes, noodles and fortune cookies, there is a big bucket of fortunes there in case you don’t believe it!

Yesterday’s piglets were all about 1 month old and just beginning to wean. I think we saw 8 or 10 sows with their precious little piglets, each sow gives birth to as many as 14 little ones, but the Reckamps will foster to other sows any more than 10 or 11 to be sure each piglet gets his share of mama. This one year-old sow is approximately 400 pounds. The babies go from birth to table in about five months – going to slaughter at around 250 pounds.

Reckamp is a small family farm, originally a family farm in Florissant, Mo it’s been about 3 generations out on the Moon Road, close to Wentzville and Wright City is where the Reckamp children go to school. We took the long way, heading out Highway 44 to 100 and then through Washington, Mo where we picked up 47 to cross the Missouri River. 47 took us to T and then to TT to M and finally to OO where the farm is, just about halfway between M and N. This will be a fantastic leaf peeping drive in a few weeks.

Yesterday’s produce selection included sweet potatoes, squash, okra, butternut squash, white and purple eggplant, peppers, decorative corn and squash and a few pumpkins. All grown right there on the farm!

Always there are farm fresh eggs from a neighboring farm and Amish Honey and Jams. Come October they’ll have a huge selection of pumpkins, and bales of hay or straw for sale. We were lucky yesterday to get a tour, like I said it’s a small family farm and there’s plenty of work to do on 185 acres – the Reckamps have an amazingly clean place, you will not smell a pig farm or pigs unless you get to go see the birthing stalls. The stalls are cleaned and drained and the collection is put into the ground and fertilizes the produce. Best sweet potatoes you’ll ever taste! And sweet potatoes or butternut squash is a perfect accompaniment to the frozen pork cuts you can purchase right there in the family home’s garage

I recommend you take along a cooler for your pork and egg purchases, ‘cause on the way home you might want to go back the same way but just before crossing the Missouri River into Washington you can get on Highway 94 and go a quarter mile into Dutzow, MO to the Blumenhof Vineyards. They have a wine tasting room where you can taste all their wines, buy a nice cold bottle and go sit out in the garden patio and have a little lunch – live musical entertainment on weekend afternoons, we enjoyed guitarist/singer Erik Brooks the “human jukebox” on our visit, he even pulled an old Marty Robbins request of mine out of his bag of songs – Down in El Paso.

We enjoyed some real German potato salad and bratwurst.

Another thing to bring along on this road trip are some wine glasses, you can buy some at $3 each, or rent them at $3 each or drink from plastic cups!

In a few weeks I hope to do a pumpkin post, so check back! But if you can’t get out for a fall drive, you can certainly enjoy the look of fall with an arrangement from our new fall lineup Autumn Flowers Reckamp doesn’t have a web site I can link you to, but they can be reached at 636 673-2734.

Wow, is this cooking-outside weather or what? Stopped at my local Schnucks Market on my way home from work yesterday and picked up a couple of beautiful steaks. (Way more money than this “florist” should spend for Friday night dinner, but it was an anniversary day!) These puppies were just over an inch thick! I’m a rib-eye girl and Denny’s a t-bone man, so no sharing for us.

set them out to room temp up and dressed them with sea salt, freshly cracked pepper and olive oil. Really only had a couple potatoes to go with, but then spied that basket of onions and remembered how Denny loves carmelized onions – so I grabbed a huge one, I bet it weighed a pound, it was certainly bigger than a softball, anyway I sliced it and put it in my favorite Martha Stewart pan I got at K-Mart – added some salt and pepper and just a bit of sugar and began to cook them – here they are after about 10 minutes -

I then grabbed a handful of fresh thyme and bundled it up and added it to the onions and cooked them another 20 minutes or so

About this time I decided to try that Mad Housewife Cabernet Sauvignon that’s been sitting on the counter next to the olive oil all week – tempting me, tempting me

So I pour myself a glassful – and hmmm, I wonder if I couldn’t make a nice cab sauce from the frond of the onions along with that thyme bundle – so I took the onions out of the pan and tossed about ½ cup of the Mad Housewife Cab into the pan along with the thyme bundle and reduced it to about half and then added about ¼ cup of chicken stock I had left over in the fridge along with a pat of butter and voila, delicious! yummy stuff! Great on the meat, great on the potatoes and great on the onions!

My grill chef cooked the steaks to perfect medium rare

Oh yeah, of course I know a nice green vegetable would have been a healthy addition, but I did use a nice sized bundle of thyme in the onions and Mad Housewife cab sauce!

Speaking of green, when checking on my bakers (which I rubbed with bacon grease and pretzel salt from the bottom of an empty bag of sticks) I burned my arm – actually think I left some skin on the upper rack in the oven,

but I grabbed and split a handy stem of an aloe vera plant and the burn looks pretty good today and it’s not sore at all – that’s good because today’s a good day to make some steak soup with the leftovers – if I can keep my hard workin’ handsome grill chef out them that is! Happy Anniversary Sweetie!

Need an aloe vera plant?

How about a fancy meal delivered?

Well our Autumn Flowers category is up, there goes summer!

It seemed like a longer summer to me, I think because of setting the clocks for daylight savings time earlier this year – which was lucky since I had new gardens to dig. Well, what is summer after all if not for ane herb garden and a few tomato and hot pepper plants?

When I moved to Affton last fall I brought from my city garden

the lavender, rosemary, marjoram and some thyme.

Also dug up those crazy Indian “stink” lilies and Kent’s Yarrow.

Dug some quick holes and plunked them all in the first week of October last year. When we had those warm days in March I started digging, just got the little 3 X 6 foot patch under the back porch windows done before the freeze came back – luckily my precious transplants made it through that snap!

First there was the clearing of the sod to create the herb garden – have you ever dug a bed in a zoysia lawn? Oh my that’s some back breaking work –

When the end of April brought warm weather again I started digging in earnest . . . probably cleared a 10 x 12 foot patch which somehow came out in the shape of Missouri. Thank goodness my digging spade had just been sharpened!

Picked up a few herb plants at the wkf greenhouse and then hit some local herb society sales for some unusual herbs and hit some estate sales for some (ahem) unusual “things”.

The doll heads on the sticks keep me from poking my eyes out when I bend over to prune or sniff. The folks in the houses on either side of us wondered what kind of wackiness was going on until I explained.

A couple doses of Miracle Grow and before long you couldn’t see the toys for the fullness of the plants. My lemon grass got to 6 feet tall!

Finally, as we close in on the fall season, I have everything pruned back
and under control – soon I’ll be pulling the annuals out and giving everything
a good mulching and spend the next 4 or 5 months planning what shape I’ll
make the bed next year as I intend to make it at least twice as big. Perhaps
I should do Texas.

Ingredients:
3/4 pound linguini
Salt
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tin flat anchovies, drained, dried and chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbl fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dried)
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 (15-oz) can whole baby clams, with their juice
1/2 cup diced green pepper
1/2 cup chopped green olives
1/4 to 1/2 cup pasta water
1/4 to 1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add lots of salt just before adding
the linguini – boil until not quite done (al dente) as it will cook more in
the sauce – put a cup next to your strainer in the sink and save about a half cup of the pasta water.

While water is coming to a boil, prepare all your ingredients. Drain the clams reserving the liquid in a glass. Rinse the clams well to remove any lingering sand. Drain, blot on paper towels and chop the anchovies pretty small. (There is no taste of anchovy by the way in the finished dish and they “melt” in the cooking so you won’t see them either.) Pull the thyme leaves from their stems – give them a quick chop, mince the garlic, dice the green pepper and olives, chop the parsley.

In a large skillet (pic above has 2 servings taken out) over medium heat, add oil, anchovies, garlic, thyme and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring, until anchovies melt into the oil and disintegrate completely. Stir in the wine (I used Mad Housewife California chardonnay this time) then the green peppers and olives. Then add the clams and their juice, being careful not to pour in the sand that has settled at the bottom of the glass. Turn the heat up briefly to bring to a boil, then turn it back down to medium and add the drained pasta. Toss well and cook for 3 to 5 minutes – the linqini with absorb much of the juice, if it looks too dry add some of the pasta water. Add parsley and serve with some freshly grated parmesan to taste and a bit of warm crusty artisan bread.

Serves 4 or 5

NOTE: Mad Housewife Chardonnay is great in and along side this dish. This makes a lot of pasta, if you decide to cut the recipe in half, only cut the amount of pasta in half – it’ll be decadent and even yummier with half the noodles!

Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Tim Bippen, our co-worker, killed in a tragic accident on Saturday 8/25/07. Tim started here as holiday help a few Christmases ago and quickly signed on for full time. Always ready with a helping hand and sheepish grin – even answered to “Greg” – his brother’s name, Greg works here on his holidays from school.

Tall, handsome, charming, funny, sly, precious to many, you’ll be missed by all.

Get some good Angel shots for us, Tim!

Funeral service at KUTIS Affton Chapel, 10151 Gravois, Wed., Aug 29, 10 a.m. Visitation Tues., Aug 28, 3-9 p.m. Internment Sunset Cemetery.