Tasty Thursday: Paul's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies

My Dad passed away 3 years ago, about a week before his birthday, which is today.  Every year since then on his birthday  I have made his cookies to honor his memory. I also make them for our Christmas Eve visit to his grave. And of course whenever I feel like eating some.

He spent a lot of time perfecting this cookie recipe over the years. We in my family think this is a really fantastic classic chocolate chip cookie.
Big, thick, sometimes somewhat doughy bakery style cookies are all the rage right now, made with a ball of dough the size of a baseball.
These cookies are not those cookies. These are lightly crispy, and golden on the outside and chewy on the inside.
I thought I had put this recipe on here already but apparently not.
Every time I post about these cookies elsewhere, I get requests for the recipe.
So here it is.

Paul’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Paul Bartholomew)

Preheat oven to 350

Cream together:

 4 eggs

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups white sugar 

1 ½ cups shortening

Slowly mix in:

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

4 cups flour (put in ½ cup at a time)

1 TBSP vanilla

Add 12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Roll into walnut size balls. Place on un-greased cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. Bake @ 350 for 10-12 minutes. Cookies will be just light golden around the edges and may look slightly raw in the middle when it’s time to take them out. Cool on the cookie sheet. Makes about 4 to 6 dozen cookies.

Personal Update

I thought it might be time for another update, since it has been a few months.
We took a trip to Utah this summer for a family reunion over the 4th of July holiday.
When we got back home, my husband suggested that maybe it was time for a change. He proposed moving up to Utah to be near my family. He was fairly certain he could get a job in the Lehi area (Silicon Slopes as they are calling it).
After prayerful consideration, it felt like the right thing to do. Telling the kids was hard. Our older 2 had made good friends and went to really good schools. There were a lot of tears and refusals to move. Eventually they all came around more or less.
 We gave our 30 day notice on the house we were renting and started the house and job hunt in Utah.
We packed up and headed to Utah on Sunday the 23rd of August. We arrive Monday at my parents house and stayed with them for a few days while we found a house. We had planned on living up in North Utah County but none of the home we looked at felt right. A last ditch hunt in Spanish Fork, where most of my family lives (and was not even on our list of cities), brought us to a great little house that we were able to rent.
Triston went back to CA to finish out his job there, and I got us settled and got the kids into school.
He spent about 2 weeks away and then came back on the 12th of September. We were all very happy to have him back.
He started his new job yesterday and so far so good.
It has been nice being by family and the transition for me was easier since this is my hometown and I more or less know where everything is, even though the town has grown tremendously since I last lived here. Had we moved farther north, it would have been more difficult.

I have sewn a little bit and made a few cards since we have been here. It is really nice that I have space in this house to leave my sewing machine set up.
 We still have tons of stuff boxed up and various useful items are still missing, so I try to spend a little time each week unpacking and sorting.
Today though, after a quick snooze, I think I will be cutting fabric for a pouch class I am taking with my daughter and mom at a local quilt show in Payson on Saturday. We cut my daughter's fabric first, so she is set.

I think that is all for now. Have a  great day!

A little of my home life: Cub scouts

Last night J had his first Blue and Gold Banquet which was combined with the Pinewood Derby. He was finally awarded his Bobcat that he earned back in December as well as his hiking and tennis belt loops. It was a lot of fun. For dinner they served enormous pizzas (probably at least 30 inches), with salad and lemonade. For dessert they had Car/Driving themed treats: cupcakes and peanut butter bars decorated with MnM stop lights, and little candy bars with teddy graham drivers and MnM wheels.)

Text reads:

J had his first pinewood derby.

He named his car razor after the dog we used to have and the scooter brand.

He won 2 races and took second in one race which gave him second place overall.

Crib Bumper Pad Makeover

My Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law are expecting their 3rd boy in March. Last week my Sister-in-law asked me to help her make over the crib bumper pads for the new baby. She sent me a tutorial link with photos of what she was looking for. It was really cute and looked pretty simple, even though the tutorial was not terribly clear.
We went fabric shopping at Jo-Ann's Friday, then spent yesterday pressing, measuring, cutting and sewing. It really was easy, once we figured out that all the sections of the bumper measured a little bit different. Once the sections are pieced, just sew them into a big tube, leave the center section open on one side (this was my Sister-in-law's brilliant idea, rather than use the end and have a long tedious stuffing session) pin the ties in place and sew it up. Put the old bumper minus the ties inside, match up the old seams with the new ones and pin to secure them. Then stitch the opening shut. Then she secured each section with a little bit of stitching in the center of each seam to keep it from twisting in the wash. I think it turned out fantastic and she did a great job! (She claims to be bad at sewing but she did fine.)

Here are the before and after photos.
(Sorry about the weird colors in the after shots. We had daylight for the before shots, but after dark, the lights in my house give everything a yellow cast.)

Crib Bumper Before

Crib Bumper After

 

Everyone has been sharing about their Thanksgiving so I decided to share mine too. This is the post from my private family blog.


 We have had a fun, busy week. The kids had the entire week off school.
Monday was just a hang out, relax, read and watch movies day.
Tuesday, some wonderful friends offered to take us to Legoland on their buddy passes so the boys and K and I went and spent most of the day there with our friends and the kids' cousins and Aunt. (M had a Young Women's activity at her leader's house so she chose to do that instead of Legoland.)
 

K and C check out San Fransisco.

San Fransisco has some beautiful houses!

T, J and K meet some aliens.

A dragon, a dragon, I swear I saw a dragon!

Joust on Sir J!

K has a flower souvenir from Legoland.

K was telling me the colors on the turkey J made at school.

Wednesday I spent the day making pies and rolls and things and trying to keep kids out from underfoot (and being cranky as all get out). Normally I let them help with feast-y preparations, but this time I was doing 2 new pie recipes, French Silk and Pumpkin that required a lot of attention to detail, so I nixed the helpers this year. The kids played and read and watched more movies. (I got to leave in the evening to watch Robin and the Seven Hoods with my girl friends, which helped a little with my irritability.)

Pumpkin Pie (Cooks Country)

French Silk Pie (Cooks Country)

 
Thursday, I was still ornery, so I put the turkey in, and then hid in my room until time for Thanksgiving dinner.
Our feast was delicious and the company was great.

After a while, we had some more friends join us for pie night and games.

12 Pie Night pies

The pies we had were Banana Cream, French Silk, Lemon Meringue, Cherry, 3 Dutch Apple, Cherry Cream, 2 Pecan, Buttermilk, and Pumpkin. We also had Pumpkin cake and little pumpkin tartlets, plus ice cream and whipped cream on the side. The kids played and then watched Tangled, and the grown-ups played a bunch of games. It was a very fun evening.


This morning (Friday) we did NOT hit Black Friday sales, just stayed home and relaxed and ate leftovers. This afternoon we went out to the tide pools to do some exploring. We saw quite a few Sea Stars, and a couple of crabs and Daddio even got to see a small octopus (that is not him holding it in the picture). K fell in one of the deeper pools and was drenched. She didn't seem to mind much after a while even though the wind was chilly.

Anemones

Sea Star hiding under the rock.

Sea Star who did not want to let go! (Those are rocks it is holding)

Crab

Four Sea Stars, (the kids said it was a family.)

You can see how big they were.

K thought this tiny Sea Star was a spider when I showed it to her and stomped on it. I think it was okay though.

  

The little octopus

Tonight Daddio is going to play games with the guys and we are going to bed.

Halloween pictures

Baby likes the Halloween pillowcase/treat-bag and her Abby book.



The big kids showing off their spooky costumes and ready for some treats.





On the hayride.

It's me again

I have spent a lot of time on the computer lately, mostly because I'm too brain fried to sew a straight line. By the time the kids are home from school, fed, homework done, bathed, prayers said and tucked in, I'm ready to be tucked in too. But I don't like being idle that early to a certain degree, although if I have to choose between staring at a wall and cleaning something, most days I would pick staring. So to do something productive I have been doing scrapbooking.

To me scrapbooking is not necessarily making a scrapbook page, though it is that too a lot, it is also documenting history in a way that can be easily shared. Via blog for example. I blog here to record my creative efforts, I keep a private family blog to document the kids and our adventures, I also head up a private extended family blog that takes in family from one side of the U.S. to the other, and I have a public, kind of skeletal family/personal blog that I share mostly with former classmates from High School.
Another way I scrapbook is taking photographs and scans of documents and old photos and kids' art or school work and awards.

Now to the point of this rambling post, I remembered that tucked away in my closet is an antique quilt. My mom had asked me to send her a picture of it last year and I just barely got around to documenting it. So I wanted to share a bit of it with you.

If reproduction fabrics are accurate, then I think I can date this quilt from the 30's. Of course, I really have no clue, but since it belonged to my Great-Grandmother on my mother's father's side, that seems like it could be about right, but it may be older. I just realized I don't even know her name! She made a lot of quilts, I hear, but unfortunately they have all disappeared except this one. I have no idea how I got it, but I am not letting it go. It is in pretty bad shape, a major stain, pieces missing,permanent creases, backing seams coming apart, binding completely worn away in places. But is is still so beautiful! I can't imagine hand piecing and quilting an entire quilt. It absolutely boggles me.

Here are a few pictures of my treasure for you. It has some really great fabrics in it. I wish I could show you all the pieces! But this will have to do.
Enjoy!

** UPDATE - I had the quilt looked at by a textile historian who dated it between the 1930's-40's.

June is here!

Yesterday was a great day. We had family pictures taken (for free!) and had a fun time with my in-laws swimming, grilling, and even a little sewing. I finally have my fabric for my Sherbet quilt, again thanks to my mother in law donating from her stash. I couldn't have found a better match in the store. I have plans to do strips with a random block here and there for fun. I may re-name the quilt in her honor since ALL the fabric came from her stash and she cut or helped me cut most of it. I also borrowed her small quilting frame, so as soon as I get the backing done and buy some batting I can get busy quilting. I guess I need to start thinking about what design to use on it.