Category Archives: Recipes

Firstly: read this post about Stir-Up Sunday over at WDPTRS.

Having done that, forage and gather:

• 1/3 cup clarified butter sent in by a great benefactor against all my protestations
• 1 cup brown sugar, with the cane shipped to you by friends in Louisiana
• 1 freshly laid egg, with hen still cooing about it
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup non-bleached flour
• No baking powder, no baking soda, no salt, but instead, 1/4 once of active dry yeast
• 3/4 cup rolled oats (though a full cup might be O.K. with the clarified butter)

Preheat discarded rectangular food service food warmer trough directly on top of wood stove to 350 degrees.

Now then. Toss in a handful of non-galvanized, non-coated nails into the that trough on the stove. That’ll keep your cookie tray just off the direct heat.

O.K. Now, smash butter and sugars together in a bucket with a stick. Crack open the freshly laid egg over this, preferrably with one hand. Give shells back to the chickens who will love you for it. Splatter in the vanilla. Get a good consistency with the yeast. Grind in the oats. Make three big cookies and arrange on baking tin, which you’ll now put over the nails inside your discarded food warmer trough. Cover. Roast until done, enjoying the fire.

Observations: Takes quite a while. That’s great, because the aromas coming from the baking cookies bring back the most pleasant memories.

Result: Mmmmmmmmm good! The yeast makes it taste great! I’ll have to patent the recipe. Why? Because the yeast also makes me want to drink a beer. Imagine, cookies that taste great with beer! But, alas! No beer in the hermitage, even though Saint Benedict said that an ale a day for the brothers was the way to go. But I could make beer as well, and sell that with the cookies. Now what would a good label be for a beer made by a hermit at Holy Souls Hermitage, a hermitage for priests? Any ideas? One day I might be able to get all the required business and charity numbers and set up shop! Hmmm… Let me think…

Comment: Even barbaric attempts are part of celebrations. Catholics know how to celebrate.