Recipe Friday: Lime Meltaways!

Makes approximately 10 dozen

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup confectioner's sugar

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice

Lime zest of two limes

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and about 1/3 of the confectioner's sugar until fluffy. 

2. Add the lime juice, zest, and vanilla extract and beat until fluffy again.

3. In a seperate bowl, whisk the flour and cornstarch together then add to the butter mixture. Beat on low speed until combined. 

4. Seperate the dough in equal halves and roll out into a large piece of parchment paper until you have two 1 inch diameter logs. Chill logs for an hour. 

5. Heat oven to 350. Remove parchment paper from logs and slice into 1/8 inch thick rounds. Place cookies on baking sheet about 1/2 inch apart. 

6. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes or until almost golden brown. Allow cookies to cool 10 minutes but you still want them slightly warm. Place the remaining confectioners sugar in a plastic bag and toss about 4-6 cookies at a time in the bag until they are coated in sugar. 

Store the cookies in an air tight bag or other container. You can freeze any remaining dough. These go really great with masala chai tea or an herbal green tea! Do you have any ideas as to a substitute for lime? Maybe something that isn't even a fruit juice but would maintain the consistency of these melt in your mouth cookies!

 "Num, num, num, COOKIES!"

"The Fierceness of Female"

For this blog post I wanted to share a portion of one of my favorite Anne Sexton poems:

The Fierceness of Female

I am spinning,

I am spinning on the lips,

they remove my shadow,

my phantom from my past,

they invented a timetable of tongues,

that take up all my attention.

Wherein there is no room.

No bed.

The clock does not tick

except where it vibrates my 4000 pulses,

and where all was absent,

all is two,

touching like a choir of butterflies,

and like the ocean,

pushing toward land

and receding

and pushing

with a need that gallops

all over my skin,

yelling at the reefs.

~

I was having a conversation with a friend a few months ago that has burned itself in my brain. This conversation had to do with my constant need to change, find something new to learn, do, hear, see, and so on. Mind you, my friend is very much my opposite and we often discuss our differences in conversations filled with laughter and a bit of loving criticism. It seems my creative mind cannot accept practical consistency although it very much exist in my friend and my friend cannot seem to grasp the concept of never wanting to stand still. 

Its hard to describe the yearning that eats at you when you want so much to have a million abilities to do more than daily life allows for you to do. So this poem describes it for me. Anne Sexton's book of poems called "45 Mercy Street" has many sexual overtones and one could pull that from this poem but you have to look further. The fierceness of a woman, to me, is the epitome of this yearning. The fierceness a woman possesses knows no bounds, it reaches constantly, never satisfied. 

So I urge you, never be satisfied. Always reach, stretch, leap for and to whatever is calling to you. 

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