The choices are endless.  Each year the cooking magazines and plethora of on-line sites proudly present 100's of new cookie recipes to try.  But I'm a bit of a traditionalist.  My favorites from childhood are simple cut-out cookies, dressed up with creative shapes and frosting, and white mice (also known as Mexican wedding cakes). 

Last time Husband and I made cookies we did the cut-out cookies.  It was the first time he had ever made this kind of cookie.  Alone I would have probably pumped them out rather quickly and had a few dozen generically designed cookies.  But with Husband helping, we had an amazing amount of fun spending hours and hours individually designing each and every cookie!  But that's a lot of work (and mess!) - I'm not sure I'm up to it this year. 

The white mice are my personal favorite.  Small rounds of dough with chopped walnuts inside coated with confectionary sugar on the outside.  Bite-sized treasures - yum!

So the question is which should I make?  Or should I try a new type?  I guess its time to actually look at all of the cookies in the December issues of the cooking magazines and see if any are more tempting than my traditional favorites.  Or if any of you have suggestions or votes as to what I should make please let me know!  I'll be baking this weekend and report back early next week on the choice and outcome...

Yet another diner

We did find one restaurant that we really enjoyed. The restaurant, Jake’s, located in The Midnight Star in Deadwood, SD is owned by Kevin Costner.  I can't recall what we had but I remember enjoying the meal very much.  We also had great service and enjoyed the view looking down on to the tourist filled street including a mock gun fight.  This isn't a hidden small town America gem, however, because it’s not the kind of restaurant small town American would eat at.  This is a fine dining restaurant with high quality food.  The only reason this restaurant is in Deadwood is because of the mostly out-of-state, gambling, tourists that visit.  So, while we enjoyed it, it didn't fit the undiscovered small town restaurant we sought.

I really wanted to find some great small town food.  Even though we didn't find good food in any of the towns we continued to search in each new place we went.  But after three weeks of eating greasy, mushy, and mostly tasteless or just plain bad tasting food I have to ask: Do hidden small town American restaurant gems really exist anywhere?  I hope so, but at the end of our trip I had such a large craving for good food that I cooked non-stop for weeks.  I'm sure the next time we take a road trip we'll try to find the hidden gems but right now I'm not looking forward to it...

But first, why do this?  I've read about lots of people who set out to taste such-and-such in every state or do such-and-such in every country.  For example, the person who wants to go to every Starbucks on the planet or the couple we met while traveling who wants to golf in every state in the United States.  That is not what we did; it just happened.  One day while having an iced latte we thought hmm this latte is much better than the one yesterday; at which point we realized we'd been tasting lattes at each place we stopped. After that we simply had to keep trying lattes everywhere we went. Well almost everywhere, we only tasted lattes in places that were full service coffee houses. We also restricted ourselves to local coffee houses; we did not go to national chains.

The result? We had a clear and highly superior favorite which I will describe in a bit but first let me tell you about our general impressions and experience.  The taste of the coffee was definitely the most important criteria but we also checked out the atmosphere, service, and environment of the coffee house.  Now, it may have been because we were primarily in small towns but most of the places were very quiet with few other people present.  The lack of customers may also have been because we were at the edges of national parks or other summer tourist locations at the beginning of June before school had let out.  Whatever the reason, the environment in the places we tasted was overall very quite. 

Atmosphere varied considerably ranging from small crowded shops to somewhat large shops and from very comfy couches to hard uncomfortable chairs at small useless tables.  Most places had something we could read, generally a local newspaper, but not all.  Service also varied greatly ranging from very personalized and engaging to the totally uninterested almost non-present teen. 

Tasting iced cafe lattes at 12 or so different places in 3 weeks was lots of fun.  It gave us a time to relax, reflect on the day's activities, and it introduced us to parts of small town America we otherwise would not have seen.  For example, in one shop after we ordered our coffee the clerk realized she had no small bills for change.  She didn't know what to do so she called the owner who told her to go to the bank.  She turned to us and said "I need to go to the bank can you watch the store for me?".  We had been car camping for 2 plus weeks so we probably had not showered in days and we certainly did not look our best and had never met her before.  Yet, she proceeded to leave the store with us in charge for about 10 minutes.  No one came in but it might have been fun to try and make them a coffee!  It was a pleasant surprise to see that some small towns in the US have not lost that special charm .

I could probably tell you something about each of the 12 or so places we tried but I'll stop here and just tell you about our favorite.  The shop is called Morning Glory Coffee and it is located in West Yellowstone, Mt.  They roast their own coffee, have a great atmosphere, interact with their customers, and of course make outstanding cafe lattes.  The preparation was unique.  Much like a bartender shakes a cocktail, the barista shook our lattes with ice and filtered them before pouring them over fresh ice.  While I don't know exactly how that improves the flavor it was fun to watch and was consistent with the fun tone of Morning Glory Coffee.  They have a large store with lots of comfy spots to sit, interesting decorations, and a steady stream of regulars visiting for their Java fix.  After three weeks of trying Iced Cafe Lattes and different places nearly everyday Morning Glory was clearly the best.  So, while I'm not sure I'll ever head back to Yellowstone I know I'll order more of Morning Glory's Coffee - too bad I can't mail order some iced cafe latte as well!

The first year we cooked a Thanksgiving Turkey in our current house we ran into a "size" problem.  As we prepared the Turkey, Husband says with strong conviction: "it’s not going to fit".  Their was no question - the bird was not going to fit into the oven.  It looked like a standard oven size and although we had lived in the house 9 months it never occurred to us the oven was small.   Yet for some reason the inside of the oven was not tall enough.  We never even thought of this as a potential problem until we were about to put the turkey in the oven. Of course this is not what I wanted to hear but Husband had a solution saying "I'll just remove the broiler coil".  It sounded simple but, not surprisingly, it led to trouble.  He actually got the coil out with only a bit of trouble and the Turkey cooked fine making a great meal.  Unfortunately, the broiler coil came out easier than it went back in.  In fact, it never went back in - seems broiler coils and finger grease don't mix.  So we now remember that event as the Thanksgiving the turkey killed the broiler. I'll leave it to you to decide if the bird or Husband was the turkey.

The very next Thanksgiving the oven was ready for us!  We, or as I like to think of it, the Turkey had killed the oven's broiler and the oven was now going to kill our Thanksgiving.  Dinner was progressing nicely until about halfway through the cooking when we noticed something was amiss.  While the Turkey was initially cooking, we no longer had aromas, juice, or ... heat!  Yup the oven died.  Husband says I'll try to fix it.  Now he is very handy but he is not an oven repairer.  I made the decision it was time to call for help.  Fortunately, our next door neighbor had a double oven.  I'm still eternally grateful to Janet for letting us cook our Turkey in her oven even though her family was visiting from out of town and even though we basted the Turkey throughout the cooking.  Thanks to Janet, although dinner was late, and although our oven was dead, our bird was cooked and Thanksgiving turned out great.

I hope that this Thanksgiving will bring many cherished memories.  But upon reflecting on the many issues we've had over the years, I also hope this years memories are of family and fine food rather than issues with the bird, the oven or anything else both for my Thanksgiving and yours!  Happy Thanksgiving!