More (questionable) life lessons from Father Dave…

Sunday was super windy and probably not the best day for my 11-year-old son Jacob and me to head to the batting cage.  We did however give it a try and after thirty minutes as the sun was setting, we headed back to the car.

Crossing the empty parking lot, I recalled a fond memory.  When I was growing up in Battle Creek, Michigan, there was a pedestrian mall through the center of businesses and larger buildings downtown.  If the wind was blowing in just the right direction, it would create a sort of wind tunnel through the mall.  Taking full advantage of the wind, you could spit into the air and watch it travel a good twenty-plus feet (completely flawed estimate based on a teenage memory, but I bet it is a pretty good guess).

As Jacob walked beside me, I turned so that the wind blew straight into my back and proudly said, “Watch this.”  Mustering a quantity of spit that only a man of flawed character can truly appreciate, I tilted my head back at a 45 degree angle and let it fly.  Magic!  That spittle took flight!  Across the parking lot it flew and landed an impressive wind aided distance from us.  It took me two tries until Jacob fully appreciated the amazing spectacle taking place before him and he decided to join in.

Now, you are asking yourself, “What is the life lesson?”  Well, always be on the lookout for an opportunity to have spontaneous fun.  Also, always spit with the wind.

In the years I have left, I consider it my moral obligation to pass along my vast amount of somewhat useless information to my children.  As a result, I was almost giddy, when I saw my 11-year-old son “push” on a door that needed to be “pulled.”

“Do you know what you are now?”  I asked my beloved child.  Not waiting for an answer, I exclaimed, “A Doork!”

Thank you, Rich Hall.  A sniglet from the past (the only one I remember), now fresh as a daisy.

PUFF PASTRY COOKIES

“These delightful cookies are simple to make and are very similar in texture and taste to a chocolate croissant.  Need I say more to get your mouth watering?”

17¼ ounce package of Frozen Puff Pastry Dough

8 ounce package of Cream Cheese

3 Tablespoons Sugar

2 cups Milk Chocolate Chips

Soften cream cheese.

Thaw puff pastry dough, per instructions on package.

Combine the cream cheese and sugar.

Place one 10”x14” sheet of puffed pastry dough onto a floured surface.

Spread half of the cream cheese mixture onto the puffed pastry dough, while leaving a one inch wide strip along one 14” long side without any cream cheese.

Sprinkle half of the chocolate chips onto the cream cheese.

Using a finger dipped in water, wet the long side that does not contain any cream cheese.

Starting with the long side covered with cream cheese, roll up the dough.

Seal the edge by applying more water, if necessary.

Repeat for the remaining ingredients and make one more roll.

Place both rolls onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet and chill for one hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut the rolls widthwise into 1” wide slices.

Place slices onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Let stand for 2 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes about 20 puff pastry cookies.

Revised Source:  “Cream Cheese-Chocolate Chip Pastry Cookies” from Nestle Toll House’s “Best-Loved Cookies.”

Did you see it?  Did you see it happen?  The unlikely site of a house rising up from the ground.  That’s right, the Paulsen family picked out some items for the annual Church rummage sale.  Bin after bin carried down from the attic or up from the basement filled with long forgotten treasurers.  Now, our home freed from these Earthly burdens has risen a good foot from the ground, forever changing the neighborhood skyline.

For some cleaning clutter can be liberating.  For others it is downright painful.  Sadly, I fall in the latter category with my somewhat repressed hoarder tendencies.  What other explanation is acceptable for a man that still owns an unopened box of Pete Rose microwave popcorn from the mid-1980s?  Sad.  Just plain sad.  Plus, I see it occasionally in my kids, as this morning I needed to pluck from the bustling rummage sale an old long forgotten and underplayed with toy that they were having tearful second thoughts about selling.

Spring cleaning.  Liberation and pain all rolled into one.  A slightly lighter house rising into the early morning sun.

PS – You still have until 1PM this afternoon to purchase some of the Paulsen Family treasures at Bethel Lutheran Church (411 Becker Avenue SW, Willmar, Minnesota).  Hurry, before we have any more second thoughts.

Getting ready for this evening’s post, I looked around for my 11-year-old son Jacob’s socks.  They weren’t on his feet.  They weren’t on the dining room table.  They weren’t on, beside, inside, or under the couch.  Growing desperate and fearing that they had been abducted, I looked in the most unlikely place.  The last place I would ever expect to find Jacob’s footwear and there they were…  inside the hamper!  (Collective gasp!)

That’s right, they were inside the hamper!  In a strange way, all is right with the world, but somehow this order seems out of order.  Right, but so wrong.

Sleep well socks.  Welcome to your new home.

“Hamper meet Jacob’s socks.  Jacob’s socks meet the hamper.”

This morning, I woke up to a desperate plea from my 8-year-old son Sam, “I cannot find my Encyclopedia Brown book.”  As a point of clarification, I have never read an Encyclopedia Brown book, but I have seen them around the house and in the library, so I feel qualified to speak about them.  That being said, I put my fine-tuned detective skills to work.  “Where did you last see the book?”  “Jacob (Sam’s older brother) was reading it in the basement.”  “Well, why don’t you look in the basement?”  What do you know?  The book was in the basement.  Case closed or should I say, “The Case of the Brotherly Borrowed Book” was closed?

These detective skills later came in handy at work.  A signed document was sent via interoffice mail.  The document was nowhere to be found.  Entering the mailroom, I looked at my empty mail slot and wondered, “Could it have been misplaced?  Perhaps, accidently placed in the wrong mail slot.”  Bordering on some type of interoffice mail privacy breach, I bravely opened the envelope in the mail slot below mine.  A mail slot belonging to another man, who is also named Dave.  Sure enough, the document had accidently been placed in the other Dave’s mail slot.  “The Case of the Dual Dave” was solved.  I was on fire!

Now onto life’s other mysteries, such as “The Case of the ‘Really?  Was that the best you could come up with for today’s blog post?’” was still unsolved, although I suspect that the alternate post, “The Case of ‘Why when I accidently drop two different peanuts on the office carpet do they both end up in the same spot on the floor by the power strip?’” did not hold much more promise.

Here at www.CookiesbyDave.com, we take great pride in the quality of our content.  Usually, I even proofread the posts.  “Wow, Dave!  That’s really going the extra mile.”  Yep, commitment to quality, that’s me.  Well, it sure sounds good.  Any who, I often try out my material on my family at the dinner table, before going straight to the blog.  In fact, our 8-year-old Sam has even begun asking, “Any stories?,” during dinner, which leaves me the perfect opening to try out new material.

Yesterday, I had what I thought was an interesting and humorous tale about me repeatedly bumping my leg into my keyboard at the office.  Each time that I would bump the keyboard, it would mysteriously type the symbols, “*/.”  Sometimes even in rapid succession, such as, “****///**//***,” or something to that effect.  The rest of the tale involved a jelly bean falling on the floor and a power strip in an unexpected place.  Well the moral of the story is that my family has saved you from the rest of this not-so-riveting tale, because as I finished the story, my beloved and usually non-sarcastic wife responded in a deadpan voice, “Fascinating.”  Shocked, I looked around the table and the rest of the family was equally bored.  My story had received a vote of no confidence.  It would die on the Editing Room floor.

Quality, that’s what we are all about at www.CookiesbyDave.com.  Oh yeah, that and sparing you from my most boring tales.

After spending plenty of time, I had given up.  Perhaps the dog ate it.  Perhaps we miscounted.  Perhaps someone moved it.  Perhaps it had been sucked into some rapture.  No matter the reason, we could not find one of our Easter eggs.  Not just any Easter egg, but one of the hardboiled variety.  Not a plastic one filled with chocolate or coins.  No, unfortunately the kind that would go stinky after a few days.

For the most part, we had moved on.  I was cleaning dishes from Easter dinner, when all of a sudden, it appeared!  Like a vision, all was made clear.  That egg had been within feet of us for most of the day.  Sitting out in the open, but yet invisible.

Gleefully, I called all of my boys into the kitchen to tell them the good news.  Still however, they all walked within inches of the egg without seeing it.  Then all of a sudden, it seemed to appear and they also saw it nestled in a plant’s leaves.

Informing them that we should all be checked for mild color blindness, 6-year-old Ben clarified the situation, “It was camouflaged!”  Yes, indeed.  Hypochondriac Daddy, step away from the ledge.  The boy is right.  That Easter Bunny sure knows how to hide them.

Green on green.  Clever little rabbit.

Yesterday was a big day for my blog, my baby, the one and only www.CookiesbyDave.com.  Yesterday was a big day, because I received (drum roll, please) my first hate mail!

Now normally, I would just ignore such an event, but in some strange way, I think this signifies that my little baby is starting to grow up.  For just over seven months, it has flourished in a sheltered and nurturing corner of the Internet, but now it has left the nest.  Fly little blog, fly beyond the idiots of the world, fly away!

So it happened yesterday, as I emptied my spam filter.  Now, the spam filter has been a reliable tool that catches about 99% of the junk comments and every now and then even snags a legitimate item or two.  Well, yesterday, I received the following in response to my recent ugly t-shirt giveaway event (which by the way was a major success), you be the judge…

“Absolutely not intresting article. How can you write this.” – signed (some idiot who I will not dignify with actual recognition) from (some sad and lonely blog about trending topics…  sad…  just sad)

Hey, buddy, how about this?  It’s called spell check.  Oh yeah, and how about this?  It’s called a question mark.  Use ‘em, Einstein.

That is all for now, as we return to our regularly scheduled cookie love fest.

EMPTY TOMB COOKIES

“Looking for an ‘Easter theme’ cookie, I was struck by the visual of the empty tomb.  This led my thoughts to Linzer Tart cookies, which are usually filled with jam.  What if they were left empty?  What if the only visual on the inside of the cookie was the angel’s bright light, which greeted those early visitors to the tomb on that first Easter morning?  You will find these Linzer Tarts lacking, but that’s the point.  They are empty, just like the tomb.  Celebrate the Risen Christ!  Find a fresh start in these Linzer Tart.”

1 cup Butter

½ cup Sugar

1 Egg

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 cups Flour

Cinnamon and Sugar mixture for coating

½ cup Powdered Sugar and 1 Tablespoon Milk for icing “glue”

Cream butter and sugar.

Mix in egg and vanilla extract.

Mix in flour.

Form dough into two disks and wrap each in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate for one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll dough on a floured surface to a thickness of approximately 1/8^th inch.

Using a 3” diameter round cookie cutter, cut out 15 circles of dough.

Cut out another 15 circles of dough and on these 15 cut out an interior circle 1” in diameter.  These disks will look like “zeroes.”

Place the cutout dough onto parchment paper lined baking sheets.

Sprinkle the “zeroes” with cinnamon and sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges begin to brown.

Once completely cool, place three drops of icing “glue” on opposite edges of each “non-zero” dough circles.

Place a corresponding “zero” dough circle onto each “non-zero” dough circle, with the cinnamon and sugar side facing out.

Makes 15 cookies.

Revised Source:  “Linzer Tarts” on www.food.com.