No guesses?

No guesses were even made! Texas Ranger cookies! (get it huh huh huh? Chuck Norris =Texas Ranger???)
Anyhooooo - recipes for a similar cookie started appearing in cookbooks and magazines in the 1930's! They have also been known as Cowboy cookies. You'll make them and call them what I want in the cookie jar cookies!
The close up is to give you an idea of the texture - I love a chewy crispy cookie and these meet my requirements big time.

Texas Ranger Cookies

yield - at least 5 dozen
1 stick softened butter

1/2 cup Crisco

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon bakng powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups oatmeal (I used regular but some recipes call for quick cooking oats)

2 cups cornflakes

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup shredded coconut

Using a power mixer, cream together the butter, Crisco, sugars and eggs. Turn off the mixer and add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set the mixer on low and combine dry ingredients with the creamed mixture. Add vanilla and mix in. Add oats, cornflakes, pecans and coconut. Put spoonfuls onto a baking sheet (not greased) Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes.

I had to fiddle with the baking time a while - we have a convection oven and I'd set the temp at 350 - found it took at least 8 and a half minutes to be properly done. Don't make these too big - they don't get done in the middle before being overcooked on the edges. I wish I'd chopped my pecans smaller - just did a rough chop with a big cleaver and the dough would have been better with smaller nut pieces.

I read enough variations on the recipe to know that some heretics use rice krispies in place of corn flakes - a dangerous bit of blasphemy and not nearly so good -trust me on this.

We are experiencing sugar and fat overload at the moment here on Buhlaland - I think high protein and a plain veggie will be a good choice for supper tonight (right after I eat that broken cookie I just spied on the platter! can't have broken cookies leaking their calories all over the countertop) . Likelihood of posting tomorrow - high with moderate allowance for interruptions due to housecleaning and/or hurricane related power issues. What's coming? You know the chocolate cake PioneerWoman makes and we all love? I have a white cake version of it - oh so cleverly named - White Texas Sheet Cake.

Perhaps you should be planning a bake sale or freezing ahead for the holidays? You can do what I did and take a ziploc bag of cookies to your acupuncturist!

Beautiful warm fall day on Buhlaland and it is good.

Eating my words will be easier than my bread

I'll make something else. I made a loaf of pannier - which I must assume is a fancy word for moist and heavy cakey bread. So I won't be posting a pannier recipe here. Here is a picture of the loaf - little green specks are bits of chopped fresh rosemary. The shape of the loaf is unfortunate, it might have looked better baked in slightly smaller pan but as we say around Buhlaland - that's the way the pannier crumbles.

Here is a hint on what I will be doing as a substitute, correct guess could be a stretch for most of you but maybe it is enough hint. NO it isn't ham!

Love to keep you guessing - we'll be cooking and posting soon here on Buhlaland. Right now we are praying for those in the path of Hurricane Ike which includes us. Ike should be a tropical storm or just a very heavy rain and wind when it reaches North Texas but still preparing for possibility of electrical outages.

Keeping it real here on Buhlaland and enjoying the results of a day spent cleaning the kitchen (Murphy's Oil Soap smells SOOOOO good). Next I attack the master bath and bedroom - woo hoo! Housecleaning is my life (that is sooooo not true).

Upon reflection

You've heard that in movies - some character says "upon reflection, we will be able to offer you a better settlement" or whatever stuffy statement they make. I think the phrase is supposed to make viewers think - doggone - those folks are DEEP.

Not deep here -only reflection is me taking a picture of our water trough in the goat pen about an hour ago. Hiya y'all! How blatantly silly is this? Pretty much all the way up the scale. I think I'm about to make something to eat - not sure what yet but if it turns out well - will be posting recipe and pictures. Rainy almost dreary day - OH word to the wise - don't go walking in the woods in North Texas during prolonged rainy spells . All this rain makes fire ants VERY mobile and more nasty tempered than usual. She speaks the truth here on Buhlaland - and can't wear a shoe for a day or so!

A potpourri of images

pot·pour·ri - a noun - apparently from the French in the mid 1700's- pot pourri - literally meaning rotten pot ( you can honestly say reading my blog is educational ,I don't always set a good example so I'll just have to serve as a horrible lesson.)
1 : a mixture of flowers, herbs, and spices that is usually kept in a jar and used for scent
2 : a miscellaneous collection
We're going the potpourri #2 - collection rather than smellocybervision because it doesn't work - you could sniff your computer screen all day long and not even get a hint of life on Buhlaland (unless your computer screen is quite dusty - very dusty - then you'd have a sniff of most of my house - I'm keeping it real here folks!) Also need to point out - I'm apparently possessed by an parentheses demon because you'll be subjected to many improperly positioned thoughts excused by parenthetical insertion (in other words - my brain isn't functioning on the grammatical syntactical level today- said she parenthetically).

The moon photo was taken with a view of our back porch one early evening last week.I accidentally (translation of accidentally is: didn't look in the viewfinder just clicked some pictures) included the gutter and side of our house. Kind of cool how the camera caught the deep purple hues - which can make you begin to hum Deep Purple if you listened to popular music in the early 1960's (yep - I'm OLD). You can take a moment and listen to the immortal sounds of Nino Tempo and April Stevens if you are so inclined.





Last Tuesday hurricane Gustav had blown inland and these beautiful clouds were scurrying across the North Texas skies. We were blessed with all the cooling effect and beauty without the destruction and fear parts of a hurricane. I roamed the campus of Tarrant County Junior College last Tuesday, camera at the ready. The lake is man made and the campus is along it's eastern side .

Pink flower - sweet surprise reminder from my late great MIL. She got the plant as a gift from her other son and his wife this spring. Ethel and I agreed neither of us wanted to tend another houseplant so she set it outside in our little garden. When I dug up a big clump of hosta last week I found the little plant had survived the summer heat and was about to bud out. So even almost two months after she went to heaven, we are still getting sweet surprises from Ethel.


It is good to be a cat on Buhlaland. Moe cat is a good mouser, loyal friend and usually the ruler of Buhlaporch Kingdom.

Last but definitely not least in this hodge podge pot of photos are the goat citizens of Buhlaland - they come running when we walk up to the fence. Our goats are anticipating something good is about to come their way - usually hoping for a snack but a scratching is acceptable. Makes me feel wanted even if just for my pockets of goat feed or useful scratching tools (fingernails) . Their persistent enthusiasm for us is a good reminder of how we are welcomed by our Heavenly Father





Psalm 146
1 Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2 I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— the LORD, who remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free,
8 the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
10 The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.

Yes - it was time to do some praising here on Buhlaland and it is GOOD.