Wednesday's Whimsical Word: Friend

The word friend brings so many thoughts to mind, it's hard to decide what to post today. So may fun adventures with friends come to mind, childhood memories and fun times in high school and college gush forth as I think about friends I've had in various stages of life. I've been blessed with many wonderful friends. Many of whom I don't see as often as I'd like, but their friendship still has great meaning in my life.

Then my thoughts turned to family. Often, sibling rivalry interferes with siblings becoming close as friends. But such was not the case for me. My sister Katie and I shared many friends and often played together during our growing up years. We even made it through the teen years without too many major disputes. in fact, we got in more trouble for laughing and being silly than we did for fighting. And the disagreements we did have usually ended in laughter anyway.

This brings me to the final friend-related subject of this post. My own kids. Unfortunately, the automatic friendship that I felt came so easily between Katie and me, hasn't developed between my kids; at least not yet. I often feel like my kids fight ALL DAY LONG! Am I doing something wrong? Is this one of those things that's different for boys than it is for girls? I hear some people say that their kids are best friends and it makes me wonder their secret.

If anyone reading this knows how to nurture friendship between siblings I'm all ears. I really want my kids to be friends. As I found out during my pregnancies that I was having boy after boy after boy, I was genuinely excited for another baby boy to come along every time. I hoped and imagined they would all be friends; little buddies. Hopefully it will still happen. I know they're all quite young which exaggerates their age differences and variety of interests. Hopefully as they grow they will realize what valuable assets they can be to each other and friendships will still develop among them.

As they get older they may have more things in common, which I've found helps dramatically. I made this discovery quite by accident today. Camden and Jace both needed new shoes. They both got the same style of shoe to replace their old shoes. And, amazingly, just having the same shoes has brought them a little closer. Jace actually included Camden in running around trying out their new shoes together. They can both run remarkably faster in the new shoes in case you were wondering...funny how that works.

Hopefully their friendship will continue to grow as they do. I would love to see that happen.

Wednesday's Whimsical Word: Egg

This is not something I usually post on my blog but I wanted to share a recipe. I made this recipe three times just before Christmas and LOVED it. Although it's not a healthy recipe by any means, it is really good, and easy because it has a few simple ingredients. And the presentation is fantastic.

Jam Filled Butter Cookies (recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup fruit preserves, any flavor

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and egg yolks. Mix in flour a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. If dough is too soft, refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes. Place balls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Use your finger or an instrument of similar size to make a well in the center of each cookie. Fill the hole with 1/2 teaspoon of preserves.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

That's the recipe as it was on allrecipes.com but I also added 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. If you like almond extract it would probably be good with a little of that instead. And instead of jam I used some pink grapefruit jelly. I loved the color and flavor this gave the cookies. Anything citrus is likely to be a hit for me, especially grapefruit. But I'm sure these cookies would be great with any kind of jam or jelly.

Let me know if you make them and what you think. I honestly couldn't stop eating them. Next time I make them it will have to be when I am planning to take cookies to someone so that there will be less of them around for me to eat. But I would love an excuse to make them again so if you want a plateful of these little gems, let me know and I'll whip up a batch. Really!

And just for fun I thought I'd add some pictures.

Here are the cookies rolled into balls before I filled them with jelly. I pressed holes in them with a clean chapstick lid dipped in flour. I put the jelly in a plastic bag and cut the corner off to make it easy to put jelly in the centers. And here is the finished product. it's hard to tell when they're done you have to look for slight browning around the bottom edges. These literally melt in your mouth.

Once they're cooled, I dust them with powdered sugar. But that's more for presentation than taste. They taste just as good without it. Enjoy!