Pumpkin Cookies and lost arts

The recipe that I am sharing comes from my friend Julie and is dedicated to Tina. She is in Colorado where the leaves change to beautiful colors in the fall and she sees the beauty of all seasons. If you ask her, she will tell you that if I come to visit her in the winter, it always snows if it is in the summer, the hail somehow finds me. I am a magnet for the unexpected. I hope you enjoy the cookies and the story of gifts my mother gave me.

Gluten Freen Pumpkin Chocolate Chips Cookies

***(If you do not need your cookies to be gluten free, use regular flour and don't use the xanthan gum)

Ingredients:
½ cup butter
1 cup white sugar
½ cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ½ cups white rice flour
3/4 cup tapioca starch


1 ¼ teaspoon xanthan gum
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup chocolate chips

Directions:
In large mixing bowl beat together butter and sugars; add eggs, pumpkin and vanilla. Mix until well blended.

In medium mixing bowl combine dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350F degrees for 12 minutes.

Those cookies smell wonderful cooking. Isn't it funny how you remember smells and little things that made you laugh? My mom grew up on a farm and she knew about working hard in the summer to prepare for winter. I started sewing and making quilts with her when I was five. I was about seven the first year she let me help with canning fruit. She also taught me to make relish and darn socks. I would take a chance and guess that most of you who read this have never done any of those things but for me, it was a special time. We did not live on a farm and the only tree we had was a maple that shed leaves in the fall and shaded our dog in the summmer. What we did have was a fruit market one block away. My mother made a deal with the owner that my brother would help the owner sort the fruit and he would pay Bill a little cash and give us all the bruised fruit that he could not sell. At the end of the season, the vegetables that had not been sold, we could have in return for cleaning up the lot until he returned later to sell Christmas Trees.

The peaches were very easily bruised by handling so we got more of them than anything else. Sometimes the bruise would be no bigger than my thumb (which on a seven year old is small) and sometimes the fruit would have started to rot. I wanted to throw those in the waste bucket but my mom would show me where there was still good spots and as a lesson, she did all the ones I did not want and I did the ones I thought were perfect. In the end, her bowl was much fuller than mine and when you looked at the two, you could not tell which was perfect and which was flawed. I learned something more than sorting fruit but I did not understand that then. We go to God and we see ourselves as not worth very much. We are flawed. Who would want us but God takes that part of us that is good and puts it with others who also have good in them and together, we make something valuable and sweet. I know I am spoiled. I have been accustomed to giving love and getting it back. That is not something we should take for granted because it does not always turn out that way. If we are loved and the good in us is accepted, that is something wonderful. We are all flawed and sometimes I have felt like there was more flaws that good. That left a hollow place in my heart which I am grateful that God is willing to fill up with His love and Grace; especially when I feel unworthy of either. He never turns me away.

Even when I, and sometimes others, only see the flaws, He sees something that is useful. I should be in the waste pile. I know that. I am glad He has a plan just as my mom did to use the part that has some good for His purpose. Philippians 1:6 He who began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Love,
Nana