Where does the time go?  This entire summer seems to be a blur.  I can’t believe it is August let alone mid-August!! The past two weeks have been extremely busy.  Getting ready for the start of school, harvesting my abundant tomato crop, admiring the beautiful flowers that continue to flourish, and making cookies to enter in the State Fair.

This year I did not enter jelly, only cookies in the State Fair – Old-Fashioned Sugar, Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, and Sugar Drops.  Every year I wonder why I enter the State Fair.  It does time a lot of time and energy to do all the baking, select 4 perfect cookies, type the recipes, attach the recipes to the entry tags, attach the entry tag and receipt to the paper plate, put everything in a Ziploc bag, and drive one hour and fifteen minutes to Springfield.  And all the way to Springfield I am thinking of everything that I did wrong while I was baking the cookies and that the 4 perfect cookies that I selected from each batch were not the ones that I should have chosen.  As I anxiously check the competition results and see the names of so many talented bakers and cooks from around the state, I think there is no way that I can compete with them.  And then I see my name –  3^rd Place – Sugar drop plain cookie!  I am so thrilled and proud whenever one of my entries places as the State Fair.  It makes all the work and anxiety worth it!!Read More »