Homemade Lemon Snaps & a Home Beautification Project - Spend the Day with Me!

Happy Sunday, friends. I hope you are all doing well. I need to tackle some odd projects around the house today, and as a reward for the work, we are going to recreate those lemon snaps that you and I bought together at the Mennonite General Store. And I have my recipe right here, and I see the only ingredient I am missing is lemons. So we are going to make a quick stop at the supermarket. Also, I want to buy more of those terrific, reusable seed starting trays at Ocean State Job Lot. And I want to see if Odd Lot has any more of these colorful hoodies for sale. And I want to stop at the hardware store. I need some fine grade steel wool for one of the household projects. It was too noisy for live audio at Haniford Supermarket, so I'm doing a voiceover here. Anyway, I'm buying lemons for today's cookies. Plus, I want to buy ingredients for the awesome low-carb cheeseburger roll that you and I made together in a previous episode. The cheeseburger roll-up is my new favorite thing. I will also grab ingredients for a protein bowl. And several of you mentioned that avocado is available frozen. And to my surprise, Haniford actually carries frozen avocado. I'm going to give this a try. Well, I came here primarily for seed starting supplies, but I got very lucky with these sweatshirts. And there's more over here. Let's have a look. Now, typically, I only buy sweatshirts that have zippers. Otherwise, I feel kind of claustrophobic. But I like this color. I'm going to buy it. These are my absolute favorite seed starting trays. They are reusable. You can even put them in the dishwasher. I can link these trays in the description below if you are unable to find them locally. I was not happy with the seed starting mix at Ocean State Job Lot, so I'm going to buy a high quality mix here at the Berry Farm. We are heading now to Chatham Flowers. I want to do an arrangement for either the music room or the parlor. You know it's going to be a good day when Harry the guard dog is on duty at Chatham Flowers. He's a good boy. Final stop. We're at the hardware store. I need to buy fine grade steel wool for one of the house projects. Our home again. I have put the flowers that we bought from Chatham Flowers in this bucket over here and we will arrange them later. Right now, I want to do the lemon snap cookies. So, one of the ingredients I need is one cup of butter at room temperature. This is that wonderful Minerva butter that you and I bought together at the Mennonite General Store a couple of weeks ago. And I know that one cup is 226 grams, so I'm going to use my scale here. It's 235. 229 grams. Close enough. I'm going to pop this into my microwave oven just to bring it to room temperature. Are you like me? Do you have your mise en place when you bake? That means you have all of your ingredients ready to go. And I need lemon zest. Now, I will post the recipe that I'm following in the description below. I've never made these cookies before, but they do look promising. And I know the lemon snaps from the Mennonite General Store were thin and crisp and super lemony. Lemon juice. Now, I need to beat the butter and some sugar together. Butter in. Sugar in. Cloud of sugar here. And I need to whisk together flour and baking soda and salt and cream of tartar. Unfortunately, I do not have any cream of tartar. But I think these cookies will work out just fine without it. Cream of tartar is an acid. Lemon juice is acidic. This Minerva butter is whipping really well. Beat in the egg. Smells wonderful. And a seed in here. Uh-oh. There are a couple of seeds in my lemon juice, so I'm going to add that now through a sieve. Now, those cookies from the General Store were very yellow colored, so I'm going to add some yellow food coloring to this butter mixture. I'm also going to boost the lemoniness by adding just a tiny splash of lemon extract. Now we can beat in the flour mixture. I just reread the recipe and it says to cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate for at least two hours or overnight. That's not going to happen today. I'm going to cover this and then pop it into the freezer, oh, for maybe 30 minutes. To the freezer. And while we wait for the cookie dough to chill, I'm going to get cleaned up here. My cookie dough is still chilling, so let's go ahead and arrange these flowers. But first, I need to gather some greens from my garden, my very snowy garden. Despite all outward appearances, it actually feels like spring today. Flour preservative. I can use the paper here that the flowers were wrapped in, just to protect my work surface. For someone who knows absolutely nothing about flower arranging, I think this little portrait turned out very nicely. And we can enjoy the flowers right here for now. And then later we can move them to the music room. Since I've already made a mess here, might as well plant some seeds. Seed starting mix. The other mix I bought had a lot of little twigs and things in it. I don't think it was great for seed starting. This looks beautiful. It also looks incredibly dry. The only way to moisten a peat-based seed starting mix is to attack it with very hot water. This is just hot water from my tap. I need to hydrate the seed starting mix. If you don't hydrate the seed starting mix before you plant, then when you go to water the seeds, the water will just sit on the surface of the mix. In other words, it will bead up. It won't penetrate. I'm going to use these wonderful, reusable seed starting cells. I used to use the inexpensive, I think they're jippy, seed cells and trays, but they are so, well, they are very cheaply made, okay? And they fall apart after one season. These will last a very long time. And as I mentioned when we bought them, you can even put them in the dishwasher. And my goal today is to plant my onion seeds. Every year I try to plant a year's supply of onions, carrots, and celery. The holy trinity. So these have another tray underneath, which is great because you can water the seedlings from the bottom. I can link these trays in the description below if you are in the market for reusable seedling trays. Change of plan. I'm going to plant my onion seeds in a larger container. That way I can do many seeds in one container. And today I'm going to plant celery. I have pelleted seeds here. And I'm going to plant parsley. Parsley is very slow to germinate, so it's good to get that started early. How many seeds do I have here? Minimum 250. Pelleted seeds are so easy to work with. They are tiny seeds that have a clay coating. And you can actually see where you have planted them. These are coated with white. And on to the parsley. Parsley is slow to germinate, so it's good to start it now. So there I have a year's supply of celery and parsley planted. Now I want to cover the seeds very lightly with vermiculite. Vermiculite is wonderful, for me anyway, because it seems to stop algae from growing on the surface of the seed starting mix. Now I want to test out that little mister bottle we bought. This reminds me of a perfume. I think it's called Atomizer. Well this thing is cute, but is it necessary? Absolutely not. I have a much larger bottle that emits a spray mist that I normally use. Now these can go under lights in the grow room. But first I need to label the trays so I know what's planted in them. To the grow lights. I'm going to get cleaned up here and we can plant the onion seeds in another week or two. And then I think it's time to form the cookies. I want to form the stove into one-inch balls, which means I need my one-inch cookie scoop. Now these cookies will spread, so we are supposed to space them three inches apart. But before we do that, we need to roll them in sugar. And there's my oven telling me that it has achieved 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Now I need to roll all of these cookies in sugar. Actually I'm going to shake them in sugar. I'm going to gently flatten each of these little balls. I'm going to pop this tray into the freezer so I can flash freeze the cookies. It's so easy to invite a friend over for afternoon tea when you have formed but unbaked cookies in the freezer. These cookies go into the oven until they spread. And I think they're supposed to color just slightly. 12 to 15 minutes. These cookies look fabulous. I'm going to let them cool for a bit and then I will transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. And of course we can't try a cookie yet because first I need to accomplish a house beautification project. I'm going to polish the pocket doors in the dining room. We are in the dining room now and these are the pocket doors that lead from the dining room to a little corridor here and then the music room is on the other side. And I want to dust these doors thoroughly and then I'm going to polish them. Now I see a bit of mildew on these doors. That's from summer humidity and the way to treat that I have read is with a mild solution of bleach and water. So I'm going to give that a try. By the way these doors are 200 years old. The bleach and water worked and my cloth was only barely saturated with the solution. And now that the pocket doors are thoroughly cleaned I'm going to rub them with walrus oil. Walrus oil is a mixture of mineral oil, beeswax, vitamin E. It's food safe. And I'm going to apply it with fine grade steel wool which will also polish the doors without scratching. It's amazing this fine grade steel wool is even removing little drips of paint from the doors. I thought I was going to have to use some powerful solvent but it's a water-based paint and with the walrus oil and the fine grade steel wool the paint's coming right off. The paint I'm referring to is the drips and spatters from when I painted the white frame around the doors. The doors themselves are made of mahogany. And there these pocket doors are cleaned and fed and polished. One fine day I will remove these escutcheons and polish them. But for now I want a cookie. I decided to try on one of the sweatshirts that you and I bought together earlier today. I rather like it. And it is cookie time. And Lisette is here. How many cookies will you try? A few. As in six? Maybe two. Okay. Do you want tea? Yeah. Okay. So yes, now you are having tea. Do you want milk with your tea? And away we go to taste test the lemon snaps. Biscuit taste test. I love. Me too. Super crisp. Super lemony. Lisette, I think these are even better than the lemon snaps that we bought at the general store. I agree. And I will post a link to the printable recipe for these lemon snaps in the description below. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. Your engagement with these videos allows me to do the things I love to do. And I do not take your companionship for granted. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being you. And I can't wait to see you next time. Bye for now, friends. I'm going to finish my cookies.