Nonnie's Cookie Recipe

Nonnie’s Christmas Cookies

Dough
1 cup soft butter or margarine
3 cups of sifted all purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
2 Tbls warm water
3 egg yolks
1 cup dairy sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Nut Filling
4 cups walnuts food processed
Add 1 cup granulated sugar, 3 tsp vanilla, ½ cup milk. Mix well

Confectioner’s sugar to sprinkle on top when cookies are cooled


Cut butter into flour using stand mixer, until consistency of small bread crumbs forms. Soften yeast in 2 tblsp warm water. Add egg yolks, sour cream, vanilla and yeast mixture to flour mixture. Mix thoroughly. Then place dough in fridge for a few hours or over night. Roll dough out on a floured surface to 1/8 thickness. Cut in 3 inch squares. Put a little more then 1 tsp of filling into each square. Moisten edges, pinch up corners. Bake on ungreased 375 degree oven for 15 minutes. Cool and sprinkle. Makes about 3 dozen.

Great Nonnie's Cookies Post 2

Step 1: Girls mixing filling Step 2: Waiting to bake Step 3: fresh baked cookies

First of all, Happy New Year!!!!!! Wow, can't believe it's 2011!!!! Have you been on pins on needles waiting to see how the cookies came out??? Well, wait no longer.................I made them yesterday, and the girls said they were verrrrrrry good, after they gulped down several.

I will offer a tip if you are going to make these, when you get the dough from the fridge and are ready to roll it out, make sure your work surface is well floured, but not overed floured. The dough is very sticky, I think because of the sour cream. The recipe said to roll it out to 1/8 inch thick, but I rolled it a little thicker and then stretched out the dough squares by hand to make them thinner. Also don't worry about not having enough filling, because the recipe offers more then needed, I think - - - If I did everthing right. So you don't have to be frugal with the teaspoon of filling per cookie, you can use slightly more. I even let my girls help me fill the squares, they had a lot of fun with this.

I love the taste!!! They are like a little slice of nut filled pastry heaven from the past!!!! Enjoy, and if you make these, I would luv to read your comments!!!! next post has the recipe.

Great-Nonnie's Christmas Cookies

For New Year's Day I am going to make my great-grandmother's Christmas cookie recipe. My great-grandmother was from Italian-American, she was born in Italy and came over to America with her parents when she was a small child. She moved out to San Francisco, Ca. to follow her husband, who left her pregnant in Mississippi. Her parents told her she had to go find her husband in San Francisco and put her on a train out to Ca. By the way, this was an arranged marriage, didn't she have the luck! Back to the cookies, you may be thinking these are Italian cookies, but actually, as the story goes.........Great-Nonnie got the recipe from a neighbor who was Armanian. So they are not Italian in orgin at all, but they are not American either. The recipe supposedly came over from Armania with my Great-Nonnie's neighbor. Wherever the recipe came from it is GREAT, and totally reminds me of Christmas and New Years. Great-Nonnie would make a bunch of these cookies and have them at her house for Christmas Eve and she would also give each family a tin of these cookies to take home. Great Nonnie lived to be 104, and made these cookies up until the last few years of her life. I have made this recipe for only two Christmases after her death in 2003. The first time my husband had to come to my rescue and help me after I messed up the recipe and was in tears, after his aid, we managed to get it right (go easy on the amount of flour used when flouring the board and rolling pin. Too much flour messes up the dough). So this will be my third attempt to make these special cookies. Tonight I mixed the dough, so far so good. It came out light and fluffy, it has yeast in the recipe, so it makes the dough springy or fluffy. I put it the fridge, it requires a few hours in the fridge before you roll it out. Tommorrow morning while the parade is on, I will roll ot the dough and put the filling in and bake them. I will let you know how they came out tomorrow. I will also post a picture with the recipe. The best way to descibe them is, they are like a pastry with a yeast taste wrapped around a sweet nut filling, this combination is extremely yummy, you can never just eat one, although they are pretty filling!!!!

Our Day at the Phoenix Zoo

This is my favorite picture right now. It was taken at the Phoenix Zoo by my mother in Novemeber 2010. All three of my girls had fun that day

Did you know that if you go with a group of 15 or more people, you can get into the Phoenix zoo for a reduced price? We went with The Mom's Club of Casa Grande and got in for $5 per person, age 3 and up, kids under 3 are free. We also recieved a discounted price on carosal rides, Sting Ray Bay, and the Safari Train, I think we p[aid $1.50 per person for these. I am always looking for deals like this, being a family of five on one income we can not afford full price, but that doesn't stop as from getting out there and having fun, you just have to find the deals and the right price that your family can afford.
http://www.phoenixzoo.org/

Today my three-year-old had me rolling with the giggles!

She came up to me smiling and saying loudly(what sounded like to me - because she doesn't pronounce her 's's so well), "mommy, its peeing outside! mommy it's peeing outside! mommy it's peeing outside!" I asked her to say it again slowly and she replied, "Mommy! I said it's peeing outside!" So as I'm thinking in my head, is someone peeing outside our window and she is seeing this? Then I'm thinking how perverted if someone is! So I then quickly look out the window and there is nobody out there and nothing out of the ordinary. As I breath a sigh of relief, I turn back to my daughter, still very puzzled and then as she says it again this time pronouncing each word more distinctly, "Mommy it's pring outside!" - - - - the lightbulb goes off in my head and I realize she is saying, "it's spring outside!" not "it's peeing outside!"

I blame the mix up entirely on my mind being fuzzy from my pregnancy!

Andi's first joke

Today as my three-year-old and I were driving in our minivan to pick up Jenna from tumbling class, Andi asks me, "Mommy, why did the chicken cross the road with his shoes on?"
So with interest and a smile beginning to spread across my face, I replied, "Why?", expecting her to tell me the punchline.
Instead I was surprised when she said, "I'm not telling you mommy, you are supposed to guess."
With this response the smile that was beginning on my face turned into a full blown grin followed by a giggle. I then replied, but honey, I don't know why the chicken crossed the road with his shoes on."
She was not happy with this response and told me again, a little more sternly this time, "mommy you have to guess!"
So thinking I will teach her the proper way to tell a joke at a later date, and instead just share in the simple joy of her own special way of telling jokes. I responded with, "did he cross the road to get to the other side?" And that was the response she was looking for! With that she shouted, "yes!" and began to boil over with giggles.

The very first post

Hello out there . . . . .wow, writing the first entry has suddenly become just a little intimidating. Well best thing to do is just jump right in and begin!

I think I will start with a little introduction - - My name is Lisa, I am a 35 year old stay-at-home mom. I have been married for 7 years to my college sweetheart. We have two little girls who are just filled to the brim with spirit and spunk, as you could probably tell from the picture above! The oldest is Jenna, who just turned 6 this last weekend. The picture was taken on her birthday party at a gymnasium, the kids were able to run around and play on the equipment. Our girls had a great time! I hope all of the guests had a great time too! Our middle child is Andi, who is three. Our third and youngest princess isn't in the picture yet, because she is still baking in my belly. She is due to make her first appearance in this world in early June. I think I will have to put an ultra sound pic up soon of her.

Oh, and if you are wondering why I call her a laughing princess too, and she isn't even born yet?
Well, that's because every time her sisters are around my belly giggling she starts to kick and move, so I naturally assume she is laughing right along with them.

Does any one else have daughters that are close in age? Do they giggle like crazy together and whisper secrets in each others ears, looking up suddenly to see if any one has heard with a twinkle in their eyes and then burst out into long peels of laughter that are tough to recover from?

Their laughter is the sweet, magical music which we orchestrate our lives too. This blog is about the happy melody of family life with our three laughing princesses as they grow. So if you want to find out what happened today, then check back soon for the next post . . . . . . .until then, God Bless