Sunday's Child

But the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

A new daily entry. I hope you like it. I've been reorganizing and my children all know that when I reorganize everyone ducks. I've always liked ducks and expect to have a few later in life along with my geese who will live in my kitchen.

Kitchens are a wonderful place. Mine was built in 1830. It has a new brick floor that was put in by a special friend who came a few weeks before Christmas and spent a week caulking the place and fixing all the doors.

Kitchens are a marvelous place to work with children. Kids really like tastes and smells and gifts from the kitchen, so do men, but that's for another time. The whole project in feeding children is to balance nutrition with what they will eat.

Now Miss Molly's two boys are a hoot about food. William will eat linguine and clam sauce and his favorite is Cesar Salad - he's two. Jack takes a deep breath and he's full for a few hours. His diet you could write in large letters on the back of a business card.

Here are some of the things our kids gobble down at school. Aidan is the most interesting eater because his parents claim he is picky, but this child will eat anything for us including Cora in spaghetti sauce.

Here's a chocolate chip cookie recipe we use a lot:

1 cup of margarine (two sticks) - the cheap kind. Butter makes cookies oily. Crisco or white fat makes cookies tasteless. Soft margarine will make cookies cakey.

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar- you can use two cups white if you don't have brown. The cookies will be a little lighter in color and crisper.

1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 whole egg - you can sub two egg whites if you like.

Mix with a beater

Add:
2.5 - 3 cups good flour. Poor flour has reduced gluten for some reason. Always buy good flour.

Add chocolate chips last.

Additions that are to die for: mixed nuts, raisins, coconut, single nuts including peanuts, shelled candy like M&Ms, dates, peanut butter, granola, plain oats, cinnamon. Plain cookie dough with a thumb print will make good turban cookies.

If adding a dry ingredient, only add 2.5 cups flour.

Grab a handful of dough and roll into a snake and pull off equal parts of the batter. It's so much easier and so much faster than the spoon in the bowl ordeal.

Bake at 350 degrees in the center of your oven until they look like you want to eat them.