cookies - the edible kind ;-p

     I did 'some' baking a week ago last Thursday. 'Some'? Okay, I did a LOT of baking that Thursday. I'll explain.
     Insert here -> Notice I did not say I'll " 'splain". That's because this time, this 'Lucy' isn't in any trouble what-so-ever o:-}.   Hey, it's not that uncommon 8-/ ....
    That Wed. evening, I had returned a phone call to Paula H. (our church secretary). She wanted to know if I was available and willing to help her with the meal the church was providing for Pastor Gordon's family between the two visitation times that Friday. Yes.
    She had also voiced concern, hoping that people would rise to the occasion with donating cookies for during the visitation times, and how they were expecting about one thousand (yes - 1,000) people total to attend them. She had only heard definitely from a couple of people ... but hopefully many more would just bring them.
    That Thursday morning I got up rather early and headed to GFS. I was going to bake up a lot of cookies. If they ended up not needing them, no problem. We are doing the food for the middle school snow camp now next weekend and could just tuck some of them away till then. And Byron had called while I was in the midst of baking, and he's r-e-a-l-l-y hoping a whole bunch of them would be left so they could head his way. And the 'in house boys' were hoping certain ones would never even leave here. 'Too many cookies' wouldn't be a problem.
    I called Brian that Thursday evening, shortly before the first visitation was to start. Brandon had stopped by and before he headed off again, was wondering if I needed anything run out to 'dad'.
    Brian had forgot to take nicer clothes with him, when he had left the house very early that afternoon and was glad Brandon had offered. A-l-s-o, 'did you get any of that baking done yet? Because there was only about six or seven plates of them in the kitchen last time I checked, probably not even enough to make it through tonight.'
    Yup, I had cookies done. I quickly loaded them up into containers and sent them off.
    "Okay Lord, what other kinds can I make out of what I have on hand?" I had choc. chips on hand, but didn't really want to use them for this, so-o many people usually send that type.
    And the ideas came.
    I had already made oatmeal butterscotch chip ones, and oatmeal raisin ones. Then the idea came to make my chocolate chip recipe, but instead of adding chocolate chips, use both the whole and particle institutional sized containers of sprinkles we had on hand, which had been left over from doing ice cream from something. They turned out oh so pretty!!!
    And then an idea came for another type. But I'll tell you more about them in a minute.

    I have often wished I had a large rolling rack like the caterers and camp have in their kitchens. But there is absolutely no room for such an item in this house. Not at all. So for years now, I have improvised. This is a wooden bench my family was given many years ago by the elderly lady whom had lived beside us in our first MI home. Years later my parents gave it to me. We use it at our table. Many times it's occupants have squeezed together to get one more person at the table! As you can see, it also makes a wonderful baking rack!!! Across the top is for pans waiting to go in. Once they come out of the oven, they go on the bottom. After there are four pans cooling on the bottom, the two cooler pans are then emptied onto {stacked onto} my wire cooling racks.

 

     The racks are meant to be stack-able. But sometimes, well, the legs just aren't long enough to actually be stack-able. ;-p (The racks sit on the counter, I just moved them to the bench for picture taking)

      So what are the 'green' cookies? Brian asked the same question when he came through the door that night. This is the note I handed him.

     He busted up so-o-o hard, and then said, "Well, I guess that explains that ;-p. Care to explain any further? ;-b "
     See, it went like this. I wanted to make Laurie W.'s recipe for butter/sugar cookies which I like so much. But they require three hours of refrigerating after mixing the batter together. But I needed to get them done that night, and it was already 8:30. So I improvised. Added a bit more of this, a bit less of that, tested the batter, it tasted fine. Okay, these should bake up all right. But I hadn't wanted them just plain white. And I had these various small bottles of colored sugars left over from buying them to get one particular color. {You know, back before I learned that Michael's carries larger sized bottles which they sell individually. Also back before I read 'Tightwad' Mary's posting of how to make it yourself .} So I had added them in place of some of the white sugar. I had added two bottles of the green and one of the blue. At first it looked exactly like I had imagined. Greenish dough with dark blue specks here and there. Pretty. But by the time I had finished mixing in all of the other ingredients, the blue specks had completely disappeared. :-{ So I just added a small bit of leftover multicolored sprinkles. And then, while the cookies did bake up good, they didn't flatten out at all! I had thought they would. Probably should have added a bit less of ... but you can't go back in and remove it! So there, that explains the green cookies.
    For the record, the cookies you saw stacked on the wire racks - well, those did not include the ones I had already sent on to church. Honest. In-fact, the picture only shows just under half of the total amount I baked that day. The total number? Seven hundred and sixty. Yup, 760.
    No, they did not all get used for the visitations. In-fact, hardly any did. Most people just brought their cookies with them when they came for the visitation time. True, they did arrive a bit earlier than the scheduled time for it to start ....
    So we had l-o-t-s of cookies left. Served some for a luncheon that next Monday. Don't tell Byron, but yes, some will be heading his and Cyndi's way (yes, I DO expect him to share ;-p). And next weekends middle school snow camp will be getting some. And ya just never know what else I might decide to do with some. o;-}

     Oh, and the reason I didn't need to 'splain all of this? Because Brian says he takes full credit/blame for it. And yes, he has admitted it to others too. ;-p

I 'plan on' linking this particular posting to:
~ "Tempt My Tummy Tuesday('s)", hosted by Lisa, at 'Blessed with Grace' (http://blessedwithgrace.blogspot.com).
~ "Save Room For Dessert Wednesday('s)", hosted by Joy, at 'tHe KrAzY kItChEn' (http://www.thekrazykitchen.blogspot.com/).

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