My brain is seriously scattered these days. I’m waiting for the second proof copy of my book so I can check on the new iteration of the cover art. I absolutely love the picture, and it is full of tiny details that make me laugh. Death Comes to the Science Fair needs to make its appearance!

I’m preparing for a trip to see family which will be great, but the place we are going is … new … and may present challenges.

Christmas is coming so fast that I can’t believe it and yet, at the same time, I must finish my preparations now, so that I’ll be ready when the family trip is over.

(One thing about that trip: when family time goes well it is like a little foretaste of Paradise, love and singing all around. We won’t consider the other possibility at this point.)

Converting the ideas in my head to words on a page creates one opportunity after another to make foolish mistakes. I can see the progress other writers have made as they learn to write better books, so I can hope for the same myself. But I have to say that the book I’m trying to publish right now, is at least in part an effort to stay in the same place as a writer, and not backslide! Having discovered that I could tell a story, I tried to take shortcuts in this new book and created a disaster. Which I have fixed. Yes, I have!

But the process was long and mixed with all sorts of family events. Sharing space in my head with graduations, ordinations, general growing grandchildren, bits of writing, and health problems, plus a novel, was enough to convince me I had dementia. Something was always getting forgotten.

Anyway, one more thing I did this week was to make cookies. I was given a huge and lovely tray of dried fruit, with apples, mangoes, pears, peaches, plums of at least two kinds, dates, two kinds of apricots, and kiwis. The tray is gorgeous, and did I say large? Because it is large. (And it had nuts as well.)

I used no dairy in the cookies and slipped an illegal piece to the dairy-free child.

I took five kinds of fruit, chopped them up, and used them as ‘raisins’ in the Quaker Oats oatmeal cookie recipe. I also used some amazing ’00’ wheat flour that I got from Barton Springs Mill, in Texas.
So
1 1/2 sticks of Wegmans’ “Buttery” butter substitute
2/3 cup of white sugar, 2/3 cup of brown sugar
Cream sugar and butter together in a mixer for five minutes.
Add 2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix the following dry ingredients and add to the above.
1 1/2 cups of Mediterranean wheat flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Splash of cinnamon

Then add
3 cups of oatmeal (I used Organic Trader Joe’s, so DIL won’t get upset)
1 1/2 cups of chopped dried fruit
3/4 cup of dark dairy-free chocolate chips,

Cook at 350º for 10 minutes. Cool. (They could be cooked for a slightly shorter time for a softer cookie…)

While I was chopping the fruit I sampled it, and I’ve got to say that those dried kiwi slices are nasty! I determined eventually that the outer portion of the kiwi was fine and the center with the seeds was not. So I cut the centers out and used the edges in the cookies. For this first batch I used one of the apricot varieties, pears, plums, and peaches.

I can make a whole new batch using the dates, apples, mango, and prunes that I didn’t use the first time. Very tempting. I’m also considering trying a dried fruit pie that I found in Fannie Farmer from the 1970’s. I think that might be better for dried apples. Oh! And I could add some cranberries that didn’t get used at Thanksgiving. Not too many but … We will See!

And we’d better see that book pretty soon…