More animal tracks in the Maine Snow Photo

Winter Sky Photo

No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Not Your Mama’s Recipe!

I have reworked the original recipe that called for 2 cups of sugar. Make these with the best quality ingredients. This recipe contains Peanut Butter.

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan combine and stir together:

1 cup sugar (Update – I am currently using less than 2/3 cup of sugar)
Pinch of salt
3 Tbls. butter
1/2 cup milk

Bring to a boil and cook a minute or so then add:

1 oz. chocolate
1/2 cup Peanut butter

Stir as the chocolate and peanut butter melts.

Bring back to a boil then turn off the heat and add:

1 tsp. Vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups Oatmeal flakes

Stir in quickly until the Oatmeal is fully coated. Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper and cool. Very hot! Think molten lava! Let them cool and set. Makes 2 dozen.

Animal trail in Maine Snow

I have altered this photo to try and enhance the prints in the snow.

You can see that this trail is used by different animals over different periods of time.

Animal Tracks in Maine Snow

While walking Sam through the underbrush of the old Pine trees, we find…

I was born in a hallway…

You were born in a hallway.

What?

Your Mom told me that you were born in a hallway.

Why have I never heard of this before?

He shrugged and said with a laugh,

You know your Mom…

I followed this up a few days later while I was wrapping gifts with Mom,

What’s this about me being born in a hallway?

Mom tilted her head and had a quizzical look on her face. Used to repeating everything for Mom to hear, I asked again, louder this time,

What’s this about me being born in a hallway?

Mom’s head swung back to center. She took a breath while considering my question…

You were born in a corridor. You weren’t born on a holiday.

Butter Cream Frosting Recipe

Butter. Sugar. Cream. Vanilla…How can it get any better? By using the freshest, best quality ingredients available. If you are going to all the effort to make a cake, then cover it with the best tasting frosting. Guests will be eyeing a second piece of cake before they have finished the first!

I get ingredients from King Arthur Flour. Glazing Sugar. Vanilla. Check them out!

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 pound (1 bag or 4 cups) Glazing sugar

1 Tbl. Vanilla extract

1 Tbl. Cream

Pinch of salt (preferably Fleur de Sel)

Beat all the ingredients on low in your mixer, slowly increasing the speed to medium. Beat until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl a couple of times. Do not over beat.

This is great on the Feathery Fudge Cake.

French bread recipe

The wind in howling. The heavy, wet snow slaps against the clapboards and windows…

It is a perfect day for baking French bread…

Measure into a bread machine pan on a tared scale or using dry measuring cups and spoons-

1 pound of water (2 cups)

1 pound 6.5 oz. of King Arthur Organic All Purpose Flour or All Purpose Flour (5 cups)

2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 1/4 teaspoons SAF Instant Yeast

Begin the dough setting and walk away. It’s about 1  1/2 hours to complete the dough setting.

When the bread machine is finished, remove the dough and shape into 2 to 4 baguettes. Set aside to rise under a damp tea towel. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F, preferably with an oven stone. Allow the oven to heat and the dough to rise for one hour.

Slash the baguettes and bake for 25 minutes. You may use a water sprayer to add humidity to the oven in the first half of baking if you want a crispier crust.

Let the bread cool before tearing into it and slathering it with fresh butter.

This is my rendition of Julia Child’s recipe from Baking With Julia.

It’s easy! Go make some great bread!

Return of the blogging witch

I’ve been away from my blog for a couple weeks, and it feels good to get back to it. I appreciate that you have continued to check in with my site though nothing new has been added.
I’m still a bit shocked that we are in the middle of November and the holidays are approaching fast.
I have a lot of photos still in my camera to upload and lots to write about.
It seems I also have some blog housekeeping to do. A few of the photos have been removed – not intended – and I will have the site fully functioning as soon as possible. Thank you for visiting Five Element Arts!

1817 House On The Corner

Our house was built in 1817…an amazing time in history, being the year after ‘The Year Without a Summer’. The people who built and moved into this white house on the corner, as well as those who came later, remodeling the structure from the roof line to the main staircase, make me wonder…

Many families have lived in this house and it stood as a dairy farm through generations. One ell, the summer kitchen of the original U-shaped house, burned down in a fire in 1959.

Hay was being stacked in the three storey barn when a light bulb burst and ignited the hay dust  in the air and blew the top of the barn clear off. Until this year, it was the worst fire in Eliot history. Everything was lost in the barn, including a few of the cows. A new barn was built on another piece of the property, and the dozed barnyard grew into a lawn speckled with granite from the barn foundation.

Over the years since I have been here, we have found cow bones and glass bottles. The bottles have somehow withstood the years to find their way to a shelf inside this house, unbroken.

The ghosts of inhabitants of the near 200 years seem to breathe and influence my daily life in these rooms. The house itself seems to emit a fear of fire, and still carries the scars of burned beams beneath the plaster and paint. People have been born and died within these walls. I hear the laughter and the sobs, and feel the unseen watching us in our time in this home. I hear phantom footsteps on the stairs…

They say the crystaline structure of Granite holds recordings of the past and I feel myself becoming more than an individual in a house but a part of the whole that has evolved this home from hearts that beat with love, fear, longing. A part of the whole that stands when I can not.