I’ve been quiet. Too quiet. And the longer I stayed quiet the harder it seemed to become to sit down and write something, anything.

It started with being notified at work that I was in danger of a pay cut and the added stress that’s added to each work day since. I actually won’t know for another week or two if I’m going to get “hit.”

There was also our trip to Virginia – the days getting packed up ahead and the days recovering once we got home.

The bulk of it though has been emotional.

I’m not sure where Blade & Cauldron is going, I know that (as much as I enjoy sharing recipes) it was never intended to be a food blog. It was intended to be 2 things:

• a means of tracking and inspiring the journey toward creating the life we want
• a means of creating a home business to help us get there.

But, so far, I’ve done little on either front. But, I’m going to change that. I have to.

One thing Accolan & I took away from our weekend away is a reinforcement of our dreams. How to get from here to there is as yet unclear. How to make Blade & Cauldron what I know it both can and should be is also unclear.

But one thing IS clear. That Newton’s first law of motion is true. That an object as rest tends to stay at rest and I don’t want to be stuck here anymore.

Blessings

Jia

Next weekend the family and I are taking a road trip. We are leaving on Friday afternoon (after picking the kids up early from school and allowing me to work till 1 (getting 39 or my 40 hours for the week)) and coming back on Monday.

In the spirit of making it as frugal as possible I am making food for the trip down (8 hour drive).  This includes empanadas (Italian style instead of stuffing them with our vegetarian taco filling or herbed pork and mushrooms) and cookies.

Usually when I make homemade cookies I make drop cookies.  They’re quick and easy and require little in the way of fuss and muss.  The only time I make rolled cookies is when my friend Casey comes up the weekend before Christmas to do our holiday baking (when we bake multiple batches of about 12 kinds of cookies in 2 days).  I decided it was time to try it on my own.  I came across a recipe for Honey Cinnamon Cookies at Add a Pinch and decided that it fit the bill as a good nibble in the car kind of treat.

What I failed to foresee is that the dough would crumble on me so much as to only allow me to cut out 2 or 3 cookies at a time.  What I didn’t expect was that I would waste so much time constantly re-kneeding the dough (and trying all kinds of things to get it to be workable) that I would have to put off some of my cooking tasks (like the empanadas) to today. What I never could’ve predicted was that I would spend a couple of hours muttering and cursing while making them.

Part of the problem could’ve been that I made tweaks to the recipe right off the bat:

• I replaced 1 cup of all purpose flour with whole wheat flour
• I added 3 Tbsp of cocoa powder
• I doubled the cinnamon
• I added vanilla extract

Of course if I had checked my email, and found the reply to my comment on Robyn’s recipe, I probably would’ve had an easier time of it.  But who thinks of logical things like that when you are fighting the impulse to toss a bowl of cookie dough out of your back door.

My original plan was to ice them after baking, but I lost too much time.  So toward the end (as I got my rolling technique “down”) I started sprinkling come Easter shaped quins on the dough before the last pass of the rolling pin.  I think they came out cute.

The cookies are delicious and I will bake them again.  But, I will need to make a few more tweaks (adding a bit more honey or maybe a splash of milk) to make the dough more pliable before I will share my own recipe with you here.

Many thanks to Robyn for the original recipe.

Blessings

Jia