Back when I made that rhubarb pie, I said that the cream cheese pastry recipe would make more than you actually needed. I said there was a reason I was giving you a recipe that would cause you to end up with leftovers, but I didn’t tell you what that reason was. Now, a couple weeks later, I’m ready to tell you why.

Sunday confession: I do this to my kids all the time—order them to do things without giving them any reason. I tell them I’ll explain later, but I am not usually able to put them off for five minutes, let along a couple weeks, thanks to their vigorous pestering. You, on the other hand, have been everlastingly patient, and as a result I’m racked with guilt over how I’ve so brutishly abused your gentle natures.

I can just see it now: every time you open your refrigerator door you see the tightly wrapped disk of white dough sitting on your fridge shelf (because I know that every one of you made that pastry dough within two hours of me posting the recipe) and you suck your teeth, furrow your brow, give your heads a shake, and then reach passed the dough for the jar of grape jelly before softly shutting the door.

Such visions leave me feeling so forlorn… Let’s move on, shall we?

What you’re going to do with those pastry scraps is this: roll them flat, sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar, cut them into squares, and bake them in a hot oven. I’m not sure why it took me so long to tell you something that’s really that simple. I probably could’ve even twittered it ’cause that sentence was less than a hundred and forty characters. But now that I’ve gone and been long-winded, I’ll say a little more (because I like characters of all ilk—literary, human, cartoon…).

These pastry scraps bake up (in a literal sense—they rise like biscuits) into melt-in-your-mouth little bits of goodness. They are sweetly unassuming, tender and flaky and rich. Mr. Handsome and I kept saying, “Mmm, they taste like something … like … um … yum … not sure what … mmm.” It wasn’t until I had downed a goodly number of the treats that I realized what they tasted like: puff pastry! (At least I think they taste like puff pastry—I can’t remember when I last ate puff pastry, so I’m not sure how I know they taste like puff pastry. Still, I’m convinced that’s what they taste like.)

Cinnamon Tea Biscuits
Adapted from The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

It is of upmost importance that you fully bake these tea biscuits. If they are at all under-baked, they will be doughy in a very yucky and disappointing way; in other words, bake them as long as you possibly dare. When they are baked to perfection, they are flaky, crispy, and utterly irresistible.

These are best eaten the same day they are made. I suppose you could freeze them as soon as they’ve cooled, but I didn’t try that—we ate them up too quickly.

Leftover cream cheese pastry
4 tablespoons white sugar
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine the sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

Remove the leftover chilled pastry dough from the refrigerator (if you froze the leftover pastry, allow it to first thaw in the refrigerator) and let it sit at room temperature for about ten minutes. Roll it really thin, as you would for a pie crust.

Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar over the top of the pastry. Press the sugar into the dough using a rolling pin. Flip the pastry over, sprinkle the remainder of the cinnamon sugar over the pastry and press it into the dough with the rolling pin. Don’t worry if some of the sugar falls off—enough will stay sweetly stuck.

Cut the pastry into whatever geometric shapes you desire and scatter them about on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake the cookies at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

Cool and eat, or store them in an airtight container.

Things I want to talk about, not in any particular order:

*pastry cookies
*my crazy-busy aunt
*buttermilk pancakes
*body image
*compost
*ranch dressing
*peanut butter cup ice cream
*rhubarb tea
*chicken d-day

I think I’ll just start at the top of the list and work my way down. We’ll see how far I get.

But, before I start, just to let you know, it’s thundering outside. It’s sunny and hot, the breeze is picking up, thick cloud billows are steadily plodding across the sky, and every few minutes the sky grumbles in a cranky, ominous way. Makes me kind of edgy and distracted. That’s why I started with a list—I can’t focus with the sky growling at me, so I needed a clear plan to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Not that this blog has a straight and narrow.

I just unplugged the laptop and brought it out to the deck, all the better to keep an eye on the brewing storm. I see it down the valley, a deep blue cloud that’s slowly engulfing the mountain ridge, moving closer and closer. The sun is blistering hot—ooo, there’s another rumble—making me eager for this storm to hit.

Oh never mind. I think this is all the farther I’m going to get. I want to try out some of the new photography techniques I’ve been reading about—aperture, AF frames, ISO speeds… The pastry cookies will just have to wait till next time.

Let’s take a close look at this storm. I love summer storms. They are beautiful to watch, especially when I can see them approaching. Sometimes we hear the rain coming through the forest, rushing the trees before it dumps on us. This one appears to be coming from the north.

Or maybe it’s coming from the south-west.

Now it’s really coming. I can smell the rain. I can almost taste it.

And now it’s here!

You’d think Miss Becca Boo never saw rain before today.

The Baby Nickel keeps saying, “I scary,” meaning, I’m scared.

He acts as though he doesn’t like the thunder too well, but I think he’s actually delighted by it. He just doesn’t know it.

It’s over, just like that. And we are better off because of it.

I’ll try to get back to that list tomorrow, but no promises. You never know what might blow my way next…

We spent another evening in the garden last night. This is an amazing time of year. Everything needs to go in the garden right NOW, so we plant, plant, plant, and then plant some more. But this is simple compared to what will come later on in the season. At least it’s cool and breezy this time of year, and we’re all excited to be outside in the brand new green, kind of pleased with our freshly aching backs. An aching back feels almost good if it is a result of meaningful productivity. (“Meaningful productivity” is redundant, I suppose, but I’m leaving it because I need all the emphatic emphasis I can get when it comes to aching backs.)

I worked on potting my plants in the afternoon and then went inside to make a quick supper before we headed back out again. I made another batch of Swamp Monster Soup, except that this time I made some variations on the recipe. Molly’s recipe called for a half to three-quarters of a pound of green garlic, and while I have a nice little row of garlic in the garden, I wasn’t about to pull up a half dozen plants just to make that soup. So I minced three cloves of garlic instead and added a couple chunked potatoes to the broth to thicken the soup. It didn’t work. I ended up with a warm spinach puree that tasted about as good as it sounds. The stuff I made just a few hours earlier at lunch was notably better—that time around I used one green garlic, one garlic clove, and no potato. Apparently, you really need the green garlic for this recipe, which is probably why it’s called “Spinach and Green Garlic Soup”. Duh.

After the kids gagged down their bowls of bile—Yo-Yo came up with worse analogies; and Nickel was the only willing sludge slurper—I pulled out the last of the mint-chocolate chip ice cream and we had cones, as well as a nice little color theme going—too bad it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day. And then I pulled out granola bars. And later on that night I made a ginormous bowl of popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast, and after the kids were in bed, a miffed and hungry Mr. Handsome ate cornflakes.

This morning Mr. Handsome was still shaking his head over last night’s supper: “That’s gotta be one of your most pathetic meals yet.” And later, “Do you make that meal only after you cut the grass?” I have a feeling he’s working on a few more well-placed jabs.

Tonight we’re having hamburgers, potato salad, lettuce salad, brownies, and fruit smoothies. That should make sufficient amends, I think.

So anyway, back to last night, in the garden. A storm was brewing so we worked fast. I put a few more perennials and annuals in the ground, planted one kind of dry beans, and started working on the tomatoes. The kids ran hither and yon, fetching another bale of straw, the hoe, more compost, another flat of plants. Then a few drops of rain would fall and I would yell out more orders, peppered heavily with Move It Kids and Hurry-Hurries.

Mr. Handsome joined us after he finished washing the dishes and cleaning up the house. I patted the tomato seedlings into the ground and he followed along behind with cages and stakes. Yo-Yo and I threw straw all over the place and then we moved on to the basil, parsley, and peppers. The occasional spritz from the sky or rumble of thunder caused me to straighten up and bellow, “Come on! Let’s go, kids! MOVE!” immediately followed by, “Do NOT run in the garden!” We made the hills for the cucumbers and mulched around them but didn’t get them planted before the rumbles of thunder sent us hightailing for the house. I had just finished whipping the kids in and out of the tub when the sky burst open, the icing to our garden cake.

We did it.

(Only the Nicaraguan red beans and the cucumbers left to go. And maybe some more squashes if I feel like it.)