LiveSTRONG with lots of cookies

I've been having a really hard time deciding what to write in this post.  For the past several years, I've participated in LiveSTRONG Day by posting a yellow dessert and telling you all about how cancer has touched my life.  I don't really want to go back over the same ground, but I still appreciate the chance to share something with you.  First is these cookies.  I generally associate yellow with lemon, so it's really not a surprise that I've got another lemon recipe for you this year.  These simple cookies are flavored with lemon zest.  Since the cookies themselves aren't that yellow, I also made some lemon curd to go with them.  The other thing that I want to share is something that I posted on Facebook earlier this year, in remembrance of my first husband Nate, who lost his battle with cancer in 1996:

"People speak of you less often now. The things you did are being done by others. I no longer notice your lingering presence in every room. Then an old friend calls and we tell forgotten tales, or I find a place not yet emptied by my grieving. And I am touched by the reality of you once more, and quietly I celebrate your continuance." 

The verdict on the cookies?  I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the girls loved these cookies.  I'm partial to pretty much anything lemon, but they often think things are too tart.  That's the nice thing about these lemon wafers--they have more of a hint of lemon, rather than hitting you over the head with it.  If you want a big lemon punch, add the lemon curd.  This recipe of Alice Medrich's is one of the tartest I've made, I think.  You can find the recipe for the lemon curd in her book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.  The Lemon Goldies are in there, too, but you can also find that recipe online here.  (A bit of advice--just put the lemon curd on top of a cookie & eat it, don't try to make sandwiches.  The lemon curd all comes out the sides when you try to bite the sandwich...)

There isn't an official LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow event this year, but Barbara has a post up with links to the events from past years.  You can read more about LiveSTRONG Day 2011 here.  And the quotation is from Safe Passage: Words to Help the Grieving by Molly Fumia, a book of meditations on grief.

LiveSTRONG with a little heart

Today is LiveSTRONG Day 2010.  October 2, 1996 was the day that Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer, at the age of 25.  I can empathize a bit.  For me, 1996 was the worst year of my life.  On January 22nd, my husband Nate died of cancer.  On February 21st, I turned 25 years old.  It sometimes seems like, in a heartbeat, my life was turned upside down.  I think that's the case for most people whose lives are touched by cancer.  Whether you're the one with the disease or the one on the sidelines, life will never be the same, even if you manage to beat it.  So the question is, how do you deal with it?

I was lucky enough to have a couple of very good friends living nearby in Seattle (where Nate and I lived at the time).  But even so, I'm not the sort of person who usually shares a lot of my feelings with people.  It was hard talk to my friends, to deal with the grief.  So I pretty much didn't.  I had myself convinced that I was fine.  Up until the point where I had no choice but to accept that I was anything but fine.  It pretty much took getting physically ill myself before I realized that I couldn't deal with everything on my own.  

During the eight or nine months when I thought I was doing okay, a grief counselor from the hospice contacted me periodically.  I told her that I was fine, more than once.  But she kept calling every so often.  And ultimately, I'm really glad she didn't give up on me.  Because when I really needed someone to talk to, I remembered her calls.  And the fact that one of the things she'd told me about was a support group for young widowed people (now part of The Healing Center).  It was incredibly hard to get myself to go the first time.  But it was so worth it.  It was so difficult to talk to my friends and family about how I was feeling that I didn't realize it might be easier to talk to strangers.  Because they might have been strangers at first, but they had all been through similar losses.  They got it.  And they helped me get through it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whether you're a family member or the one with cancer, it's okay to admit that you might need some help.  And that the support doesn't have to come from the ones closest to you.  When Nate was going through treatment, he didn't talk to me about a lot of his feelings.  But I knew that he was talking to other people.  I was hurt by that.  I didn't understand until much later that it was probably too hard for him to talk to me about everything, that it was easier for him to talk to people with a little more distance from the situation.  

Help can come from a lot of places.  One of them is the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  

This post is my contribution to the LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow event organized by Barbara of winos and foodies.  This is the fourth year she's hosted this event, and the third time I've participated.  You can find my previous entries here (Nate's story) and here.  Each year, one of the requirements is to include a yellow food in your post.  This year, Barbara also requested that we include a heart.  So I made  heart-shaped lemon shortbread cookies, decorated with yellow sugar.  I definitely recommend that you read Barbara's post for today.  She'll also have a round-up of Taste of Yellow posts sometime in the next week or two.  

Lemon Shortbread

(adapted from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book)

16 tablespoons (2 sticks; about 225g) unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup (85g) powdered sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups (250g) unbleached all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, beat the butter until smooth, then beat in the sugar, lemon zest, vanilla and salt.  Stir in the flour.  The dough will come together in to a ball.  Flatten the dough into a disc, then wrap in plastic and chill for about an hour.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out until it is about 1/2 an inch thick.  Cut the dough into shapes with a small (about 2-inch) cutter.  Gather the scraps together and reroll the dough to cut additional cookies.  Place the cookies about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet.  Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the cookies are just beginning to brown.  Transfer them to a rack to cool.  

To glaze the cookies, whisk together a cup of powdered sugar (about 115g) and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice to make a thick glaze.  Spread the glaze on the cooled cookies using the back of a spoon.  Decorate with sprinkles or colored sugar if desired.  Allow the glaze to harden completely before storing the cookies, or they'll stick together.

Yields about 2 dozen cookies.

LiveSTRONG Day 2009

Just a reminder, today is LiveSTRONG Day 2009.  Be sure to check out the wonderful round-up for LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow, hosted by Barbara of Winos and Foodies.  You can find my contribution here.

LiveSTRONG with a taste of lemon

I was very happy to see that Barbara is hosting the LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow event again this year.  I participated last year, and very much enjoyed reading all the posts from everyone else who joined in to support the fight against cancer.

As I tried to decide what to write for this post, one thing in particular was on my mind.  Regular readers of my blog (and my baking friends on Twitter) will remember that my husband Jamie had his tonsils out back in June.  What I didn't talk about much at the time was the unexpected effect that his surgery had on me.  We've been together for 12 years, and that was the first time he ever had anything medical come up (aside from the usual colds, allergies etc).  I wasn't at all ready for the near-panic attack that hit me.

My first husband, Nate, died of cancer on January 22, 1996.  Over thirteen years ago.  And as I sat in the hospital, waiting for Jamie's surgery to be done, it felt like it was yesterday.  This was a totally different situation, and part of me understood that.  But another part of me remembered what it was like to sit in a hospital and feel totally helpless in the face of a terrible disease that was destroying someone I loved.  Cancer is so hard on the people who have it.  But it's also incredibly hard on the caregivers who know that there is only so much they can do to help.  The ones who go to the doctor appointments and wait through the tests and treatments.  The ones who help their loved ones do all the daily things that they can't do for themselves.  The ones who get annoyed sometimes and just want everything to be normal again and then feel guilty for feeling that way.  The ones who are strong because they have to be, but who cry in the shower because sometimes they can only let their feelings out when they are alone.  This post is dedicated to all those people...

For this year's event, I decided to make lemon bars.  This recipe is special to me because it's based on one that Nate got from his mom.  Luscious, very tart filling on top of a shortbread crust.  This time I decided to play around with the crust.  For something just a little different, I went with Dorie Greenspan's Sweet Tart Crust.  The filling I left alone, since it's fabulous as is.

Lemon Bars
(adapted from Laverne Morrison and Dorie Greenspan)

1 recipe Sweet Tart Dough

3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 oz) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (1 1/8 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice

powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Press the tart dough evenly into an 8" square pan (I use a Pyrex pan).  Prick the dough all over with a fork.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the dough is just starting to color around the edges.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling.  In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together.  Whisk in the flour, then whisk in the lemon juice.  When the crust is ready, remove the pan from the oven.  Pour the filling over the hot crust and return the pan to the oven.  Bake for an additional 20-25 minutes, until most of the filling is set.  There may be a small section in the middle that is still slightly jiggly.  That's okay, since the bars continue to cook for a bit after being removed from the oven.  Remove the pan from the oven and place on a rack.  Let cool completely.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

Be sure to check out the round-up on Barbara's blog.  She'll have it up on LiveSTRONG Day, October 2nd.  And to learn more about how you can join the fight against cancer, visit the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

LiveSTRONG with a taste of Dorie

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Florida Pie, selected by Dianne of Dianne's Dishes.  I love pie, but I had one problem with this particular recipe.  It has coconut.  Not a little coconut, that I could easily leave out (as in Bill's Big Carrot Cake).  Lots of coconut.  And I really can't stand coconut.  I thought about just trying to make the pie without the coconut, but it seemed like such an integral part of the recipe--after all, it's supposed to be Florida Pie, not Just Your Average Key Lime Pie.  So sadly, I'm going to pass on TWD this week.  (But I'm excited about next week--another excuse to buy new bakeware!)  Go take a look at the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll and check out all the fabulous pies!

Instead, I would like to highlight another recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours that I made a while back.  Click here for my post about Dorie's Lemon Sablés, which was my contribution to the LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow event hosted by Barbara at Winos and Foodies.  While you're at it, head over to her blog to check out the round-up for LiveSTRONG Day 2008, which is today, May 13th. 

Another sort of cancer survivor...

As soon as I saw a post mentioning the LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow event hosted by Barb at winosandfoodies, I knew that I wanted to participate.  I'm not a cancer survivor myself, and unfortunately this isn't the story of someone close to me who is.  Instead, I'm one of those who had to find a way to survive after having my life ripped apart when someone close to me died of cancer.  

In early 1992, I was a junior in college.  That spring, my fiance, Nate, was diagnosed with ocular melanoma--a rare malignant tumor in his eye--shortly before his 20th birthday.  He went through various treatments to kill the tumor.  We graduated the following spring, got married two weeks later, and moved to Seattle where Nate was going to grad school.  (I ran screaming away from more school at that point and got a job, but that's another story.)  Everything seemed fine; Nate went in for checkups every 6 months.  Then, in the early fall of 1995, before he was due for his next doctor appointment, he noticed that something seemed wrong.  He went in for various tests, and it was quickly discovered that the cancer had returned, and had spread throughout his liver.  He went through chemo, but what we didn't realize at the time, especially being in the middle of everything, was that the prognosis was very poor.  Nate died on January 22, 1996, at the age of 23.  I was about a month away from my 25th birthday.  

Cancer sucks no matter how old you are.  So why all the emphasis on our ages?  With everything that Nate and I went through, it was apparent that no one knew what to do with us. There's plenty of attention given to pediatric cancer and cancer in older adults, but not much to cancer in young adults.  Fortunately that's changed somewhat in the past 12 years, thanks to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  Lance was 25 when he was diagnosed with cancer.  His story has definitely increased awareness for young adults with cancer.  You can find out more about the LAF Young Adult Alliance here.

As for me, I would definitely call myself a survivor.  Today I have a wonderful (second) husband and two beautiful children.  Sure, there are times when I can't help but think that I wouldn't have my current life if Nate had lived.  And as time passes, I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who remembers Nate--it's not exactly the sort of thing you can bring up in casual conversation.  So I'm glad to have the opportunity to tell a bit of his story here so others will know.  

For my taste of yellow, I chose some lovely lemon cookies from Dorie Greenspan and decorated them with yellow sugar.  Yellow makes me think of spring, and thus of hope and rebirth.  "To love is to risk losing.  To lose is to risk finding something new.  The cycle of the heart: birth, death, rebirth.  Therefore, before my heart turns to stone, I will re-enter the cycle, and make up my mind again to risk living." (From Safe Passage: Words to Help the Grieving Hold Fast and Let Go by Molly Fumia.)

Lemon Sablés

(from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan)

1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup (1 ounce) confectioners' sugar

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 large egg yolks, at room temperature (mine were still pretty cold, didn't seem to be a problem)

2 cups (9 ounces) all-purpose flour

yellow decorating sugar

Working in a small bowl, using your fingers, rub the lemon zest into the granulated sugar until the sugar is moist and very aromatic.  Set aside.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until smooth and very creamy.  Add the lemon sugar, confectioners' sugar and salt and beat until well blended, about 1 minute.  The mixture should be smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the egg yolks, again beating until the mixture is homogenous.

Turn off the mixer.  Pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and the counter from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each pulse.  Take a peek--if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple more times; if not, remove the towel.  Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist.  (If most of the flour is incorporated but you've still got some in the bottom of the bowl, use a rubber spatula to work the rest of the flour into the dough.)  The dough will not clean the sides of the bowl, nor will it come together in a ball--and it shouldn't.  You want to work the dough as little as possible.  What you're aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy (rather than smooth) dough.  Pinch it, and it will feel a little like Play-doh.  

Scrape the dough out onto a smooth work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long; it's easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log.  Wrap the logs well and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours, preferably longer.  (Chill the log inside the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels to keep it round.)

Getting ready to bake:  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment.  

Remove a log of dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on a piece of parchment or wax paper.  Sprinkle the entire surface of the log with decorating sugar and press it into the dough so it adheres.

Trim the ends of the roll if they're ragged, and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies.  (You can make these as thick at 1/2 inch or as this as--but no thinner than--1/4 inch.)  (I used a serrated knife to cut the dough, rotating the log after each cut to keep it round.) Place the rounds on the baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between them.

Bake the cookies for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the midway point. (Oops, I always forget to do that.) When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top; they may feel tender when you touch the top gently, and that's fine.  Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest a minute or two before carefully lifting them onto a rack with a wide metal spatula to cool to room temperature.  

Repeat with the remaining log of dough, making sure the baking sheet is cool before you bake the second batch.