honeymoon cookies

Back in September of 1992, Rick and I moved from Gardnerville, Nevada to Seattle, Washington, with three kids and a truck full of stuff. By January 1st we had gotten married, gotten the kids settle in school, and opened a little bake-at-home pizza shop. We had a really hard time coming up with a name for the place, and "tried on" darn near everything we could think of. While we were on our brief little honeymoon in Victoria, B.C., we spent one rainy afternoon in a pub, drinking beer and tossing around more names for the shop. We agreed from the start that three kids between us was plenty, thank you, and so the pizza shop was "our baby". We needed a good name for it. There we were, looking out the window and turning everything we saw into a business name... Cloudy Day Pizza, Red Car Pizza, Spikey Shoes Pizza, Another Beer Pizza... and at some point, one of us, we can't remember who (but I think it was me), said - How about Honeymoon Pizza? And that was that.

A couple of years into it, we had built a pretty nice customer base and were always adding new pizzas to the menu. Then we decided we needed salads and our own dressings. Poof! The Bag O'Salad was born, along with Lemon-Pesto Vinaigrette and Pinenut-Blue Cheese dressings. Another hit! Soon we realized that the only thing missing was dessert. Having a tiny and limited kitchen, we couldn't even bake the pizzas - hence the "bake-at-home" part of the deal. So we needed a dessert that fit in with the whole "cook it where you eat it" scheme of things. Cookie dough! Duh!

I spent a lot of time going over recipes, trying things out, and having minimal success with a dough that could be chilled and baked into something miraculous later. We were looking for something way better than poppin'fresh, if you know what I mean. Eventually I ended up taking several recipes apart and combining them into a new one all my own. The result was Honeymoon Cookies, and they sold like crazy.

I've recently started making them again, with Rick taking his lunch to work every day, and people looking at the house fairly frequently (I leave cookies out for the Lookers, like they all were Santa Claus or something). Once again, poppin'fresh just won't do. And now, today, my Lauren's Graduation Gift to you, so you'll have something fun and tasty to occupy you while I'm celebrating with my kid over the weekend... I'm going to share with you the...

World Famous, Top Secret, Honeymoon Cookie Recipe!

Preheat your oven to 350. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. I use PAM.

In a big bowl, mix up:
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
Give it a good spin with the mixer for a couple of minutes, until it's all nice and fluffy.

Then mix in 2 cups of flour.
I use whole wheat now, but we used white back in Seattle. Both work great. Don't over-mix at this point! They'll get tough and you'll wind up skipping them across the nearest lake. Just get the flour mixed in and put the mixer away.

Now stir in (by hand) 2-3 cups of anything else you like. I use coconut, chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, oatmeal, dried cranberries... whatever I have. The coconut makes them nice and moist and chewy. Oh! And those little mini-peppermint patties are terrific. Get them in the chocolate chip aisle.

Roll the dough into nice fat cookie-size balls and place them on the cookie sheet. Don't squash them down. They know what to do. Bake them at 350 for about 12 minutes or so. Don't over cook them. They're done when the edges are turning brown and the tops no longer look wet. Remove them from the cookie sheet right away. A metal spatula works best. I'll bet you and your helpers can eat 'em all up before they're even cooled off.

Enjoy!
I'm off to Albuquerque for the weekend!

Like it used to say on our Honeymoon Pizza T-Shirts...
Good Things Are Cookin' At Home Tonight!

in print

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from High Country News, asking my permission to use a photo from my blog in an upcoming article about Mud Season. Of course I said yes. Not sure if I got photo credit in the magazine, but by my rules, this makes me a published photographer. I haven't actually seen it in print yet, but I found it online here. (It's in the May 12, 2008 issue.) They didn't include my picture in the web version, but I just happen to have it here, from a post a while back, called "walking the plank".



Also notably in print is my friend's beautiful earthship, in an article on Mike Reynolds in the gorgeous magazine, Culture + Travel. I might need to subscribe. It just takes me away... And what the heck is an earthship, you ask? It's a totally off-the-grid, self-sustaining house, built of tires and cans and bottles and mud, into the side of a hill. Google them. Read up on Mike Reynolds, the pioneer of earthshipism. And when you visit Taos, drive out there across the Gorge Bridge to the wide open mesa and visit the one that's open to the public, or even rent one to stay in for a few nights. Lucky me - I get to visit my friend's ship (friendship!) any time I want. It's just at the other end of town from where we live, but it's really like going to a whole other world... or planet.

bowling

I don't think I've ever mentioned my love of bowls here. I love bowls unreasonably, and I can always justify buying new ones. After all, they're useful, and I really do use all the ones I have. Everything from tiny little things that are meant to catch a soggy tea bag to the big, glorious green and pink bowl Rick carried home for me on a plane, back from a business trip to D.C. when we first met. I had never mentioned my thing for bowls, but somehow he just knew... isn't that romantic?

Over the weekend I went to friends Dean and Abby's open studios. Dean Pulver makes the most beautiful wooden furniture I've ever seen. Honestly. It's simple and quirky and elegant and solid and graceful. It makes my eyes happy, and it's wonderful to see it in person because touching it is as much fun as looking at it. One day I will own a piece. I promise.



Dean and Abby share a big territorial-style studio building that's larger than their home. Because Dean does wood and Abby does clay, there's a wall between the work spaces, but it's still a cozy and lovely set-up, where they can be together and alone just as much as they need to. I spent most of my visit on Abby's side. Abby Salsbury is the artist behind Butterpie Productions.



I had seen her work around town before, but had never been out to the studio. I made the trip specifically to buy bowls and I wasn't disappointed. The room was crowded with playful dances of color and form. It took a long time just to let my eyes wander through and see it all. There's magic in the simplicity of clean lines and bold color. And so I eventually settled on four small bowls in pink, orange, yellow, and red. They're a perfect size for all sorts of things. I've used them every day since I brought them home... The pink one full of cottage cheese sitting next to the orange one filled with Fritos... Seafood bisque in the pink one, on a turquoise Fiestaware plate with a grilled many-cheese-and-walnut sandwich... Even a humble bowl of cereal takes on new meaning in a truly good bowl...

Am I conveying how much I love these bowls? I won't even put them away in the cupboard. They live on the hand made tile (Jill Rounds) countertop, where I can smile at them when I'm not eating out of them.



And see those cookies in the jar on the left? Those are my own secret recipe, invented back when we had the pizza shop in Seattle. It was romantically called Honeymoon Pizza, and so... these are Honeymoon Cookies. Yes, I will share the recipe. But not today.

four years already?

It's just about time to stand up tall and be a Very Proud Parent. My baby, Lauren, will graduate from UNM in Albuquerque on Friday. If I had buttons, they'd be busting. She's a little less than excited at the moment because it's still Finals Week and she has two more tests to go. But in a few short days she'll be able to catch her breath, celebrate four years of hard work paying off, and then leap into action again as she moves out of Kappa and into her first shared house with a couple of friends. She's really ready to be out on her own. Of course she still needs to find a job, but I'm hoping that graduation gifts will tide her over for a couple of weeks until she can get organized. Remember being that young? We all made it somehow, and I know she will too. In fact, I know she'll be just fabulous!

Rick and Julia and I are heading down on Friday morning. Can't wait. This is a big deal, and besides, it's always nice to get out of town, if only for one night. And the other happy thing about the trip is that we're picking Heidi up and bringing her home with us. For keeps! So Lauren's moving out, but we'll have a new "baby" in the house. Nothing like a funny little dog to ease the empty nest blues.

I'll have a full report and pictures when we get back. And if anyone would like to send my girl a card or personal greeting, I'll be happy to forward them to her. Email me and I'll send you my address.

no regrets

So here it is, the morning after, and you know what? No regrets Coyote! Not that regrets ever did anyone any good, but how nice it was to look in the mirror this morning and go, YES. I feel like one of those guys who grew his hair long in high school and then forgot to cut it for 30 years. You know the guys. When they finally free themselves of the fur, they become whole new people. That's how I feel. New. Looking down at that pile of hair on the floor yesterday, all I could do was wonder why on earth I had been carrying that stuff around on my head all this time.

I had some fun help in this whole process. Lots of looking around at pictures until I finally stumbled across DailyMakeover.com.It's a virtual makeover site, where you can pop in your own picture, and then try on thousands of different hairstyles, as well as makeup, jewelry, glasses, and other accessories. I'm now fairly confident that I would not look better blond, and that Amy Winehouse's look really only works on Amy herself...



Try it out. I promise you'll have fun. You can use a lot of it for free, or pay a few bucks to access all the fun things in the dress-up box. I paid. And again, no regrets.

just call me shorty

OK, the Big News I promised yesterday, which might not be so big to you... I cut my hair today - or rather, I had it cut. Short. And I mean short. I went to see Kathleen Brennan - hair stylist, photographer, neighbor, friend - armed with a stack of photos and a well thought out description of what I did and did not want to have happen to my head today. She listened, took her time, and literally three haircuts later, gave me just what I wanted, a short but feminine haircut that makes me giggle and feel about seven years old... only a whole lot smarter.

Hair... we spend a lot of time, energy, and cash on our hair don't we? What curious creatures we are. I've wandered around for years with a mane of disobedient curls. Recently I began to realize that I was too identified, and still not happy with, all that hair. As we continue to weed our life here of things we don't want or need, I also find myself letting go of old thoughts and feelings, and old ways of seeing myself. It crept up on me gradually, but then I realized that my hair was just another Old Thing I no longer needed. Old and in the way. Time to let it go. I feel light and lit up. And I know better than to proclaim that I'll never have long hair again, but for now this shows on my outside how I feel on my inside.

So here you go... the Before...



And the After...

circling

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern this week - like a plane that's circling, circling, waiting for its turn to land. I can almost feel the spiraling energy up there above my head, ready to turn into Something New at any moment. Timing is everything, and Presentation is very important. There's little to report right now, so while you wait along with me - and thank you for that - here's a website I just ran across in my travels... TorsoPants. Even if you aren't a T-Shirt Person, you might enjoy this site. It's so well done. I wish I knew how to build something like this. If I could, I'd be sure to include talking fish for you. And know what? If you are a T-Shirt Person, and buy one through my link here (I recommend the one that says "let's fight some ballerinas"), they'll give me some money. How thoughtful of them. I post a lot of favorite websites here, but most of them don't do anything for me in return. This is a lovely change of pace. Win-win, Give-Give, Receive-Receive. A fine moment in time.



And actually... there is something rather big happening tomorrow, but I'm not telling you what it is yet. I don't really want anybody's two-cents-worth until after the fact... very mysterious of me, I know. If you'd like to speculate, go ahead and leave a comment here. If you're right, you won't win anything, but you'll feel pretty darn smart.

glasswing butterfly

A friend sent me some pictures of these wondrous creatures, saying they reminded her of my work. How very flattering!

But first, I want to note that I've recently decided not to call my work "work" anymore. I've decided if it's not play, I'm not doin' it. Might be hard to be taken seriously as an artist with that point of view, but that's always been a glitch for beadmakers anyway. So whatever... why take myself too seriously when simply playing with glass is a lot more fun?

And not, back to our presentation... these glasswing butterflies are pretty amazing, aren't they? You can Google-about if you want to know more about them. There are lots of pictures out there, and bits of useful information of you plan to do a report or something. I just really like the idea of these nearly transparent little beings, showing us more than just themselves, encouraging us to look closer and deeper at what might be on the other side... and if all that's too puzzling for you, here's a fun little jigsaw puzzle to keep your brain moving... Rainforest Fun - Glasswing Butterfly.

Shuffle things around. Look deeper. Remember to play.

There's a certain freedom that comes with a lousy economy. Sure, bead sales are down, plus everything costs more, so I'm actually taking a double hit from all this... paying more for necessities, and a cut in pay. What fun. And somehow... this is all sort of liberating. No, I have not been living in high altitude for too long. I have been working too hard for the wrong reasons for too long, but right now I don't have to. A sad fact of the current times is that regular people just aren't buying a lot of extra stuff. Me included. I can't afford stuff right now. But I still have my house and my sweetie, and the sky is blue and the hummingbirds are back. Slow bead sales aren't my fault, and I'm certainly not the only one working harder and making less than ever.

So what am I going to do about it? Well, nothing really. I'm going to keep making beads. At least for now. And the cool part is, I feel like I have "permission" from some Universal Boss to make all the messes I want, without any thoughts of "will somebody buy this?" Since it's out of my control, there's just no point in worrying about it, and that frees up a lot of imprisoned creativity to come out and play. Here's what came out a couple of days ago.




I wish you could see them moving in the light. They twinkle like snow-diamonds in the sun, and still have an organic look that's calm and soothing. Will anyone buy them? Who knows! Who cares! They please me, that's all. Maybe tomorrow I'll freak out and go into a tizzy over finances, but not today. Today I get to do whatever I want.