rain rain soak on in. and cookies I love.

It is still raining in Baltimore, which is good I suppose as we were very dry. It has been several days, and the pumpkin carved like a cat on our porch had to be tossed to the compost as it molded in less than a week. ah rain. guess well have to carve another before halloween.
Its a nice light rain. In fact Ive just been out in the garden cutting bunches of greens and lettuce for a big salad and I didnt get very wet, though the greens needed extra washing for all the dirt that has splashed about for the last several days.
Im about to bake pumpking cookies, a family tradition and Im tempted to keep the recipe a secret, but sharing recipes is better than hording them especially when I cant share the tasty results online. We are taking our salad and cookies to a pot luck dinner that may involve board games - which seems to be the week's theme. Its a nice one.

note to the following recipe: it calls for shortening. this poses a small dilemma, I think this is the only thing I make for which I buy shortening, and though there is "transfat free" version of vegtable shortening, even though it says "0 transfat" the ingredients say "partially hydrogenated oils," which sneakilly means it isnt really perfecty transfat free. For these cookies I just look at the 0 transfat part and ignore the ingredient list, which is generally against my grain...let me know if you have any better ideas...

Very delicious pumpkin cookies:
2cups veg.shortning
2 cups sugar
1 can pumpkin (15 or 16 oz)
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
4 cups flour (i use 2 all purpose white and 2 whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp ground nutmeg
.5tsp salt
2tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp baking soda
dark chocolate chips
cream shortening and sugar + pumpkin, eggs and beat well
stir flour and all dry ingredients seperate from pumpkin mix, then add together
stir in chips (optional, but a great option)
350 degrees, I make big cookies (not quit full ice cream scoop), with this size they need about 17 minutes and makes about 4 dozen.