Pumpkin cookies, just because

We had cookies for dinner tonight.

Sometimes the girls and I bake cookies just to have something to do. I wasn't even craving cookies (unusual for me) when we came across my friend Sarah's pumpkin cookie recipe today. Serendipitously, there was half a can of pumpkin puree in the fridge threatening to get moldy. And two sticks of butter, which is what this recipe calls for.

The recipe did not disappoint, and despite the fact that I wasn't craving cookies before we made them, I've now eaten about five of them. Awesome. Glad I ran for all of 25 minutes this morning. That should have taken care of one of the five.

I can't tell you how many photos I have that are similar to this one:

It's a scene that will never bore me.

I promise that if you are my friend and I bake cookies for some event at your house or function at the girls' school, I do oversee the hygiene issues. But when I know we're just going to consume them here at home, I let a lot of this slide:

Magpie is wearing the apron I sewed for Bo when she was about this age.

She doesn't know there'll be an apron sewn and wrapped up for her for her 2nd birthday in a few weeks.

Delicious. Thanks, Sarah. I didn't make the frosting, like you did. Figured I'd done enough damage already.

By the way, that Italian Deruta-style saucer has traveled with me from Portland, Ore., to Boston to Spokane over the last 10 years. I rescued it from a dumpster in the late '90s when I lived in an apartment across the street from a Torrefazione coffee shop that used them. Torrefaz was my living room back then, and a box of chipped saucers and cups caught my eye as I walked past the dumpster one day. One of my better junk finds.

On to the garden ... Almost a year ago to the day, I posted a shot of one of our last trips through the garden and what it yielded. I took a similar picture the other day after the girls and I gathered up the last big basket of veggies.