It was pouring rain today and there's nothing I like to do better during a rainy day then to go and visit my friend Taylor for a little ballroom dancing to Michael Bouble. Yeah, I have a little (okay, a lot!) of Ginger Rogers in me, and like nothing better than to visit my suave 50-year-old (looking like thirty eight) gay boy friend for a little twirl around his marble floor once a month in four step, cha cha and salsa styles. Being that it is the holiday time, he decked my welcome out for me in the most extravagant way: gold fringe on the door with bells, a waiting crisp and cool rose wine, and some shortbread cookies freshly made and alive with the fragrance of lemon and orange peel sprinkled across the rich, dense bars.
Dipping the shortbread in the rose, he reads me his latest literary venture into his own food writing, which is a luscious nostalgic piece about the first garden he cultivated with his mother in Northern California when she shucked the stockbroker life for the raising kids on the natural farm without t.v. life that lent my friend his lifelong appreciation of food. As he read to me aloud the loving reminiscenses of picking pumpkins and making fresh ravioli, of tilling the fields and learning to love thumb-sized blackberries, I noticed a blackboard in his home with a red velvet cupcake drawn upon it. He told me that was his manifestation board; where he puts down all the future manifestation creations that will soon cross his palate.
After a half hour of total synchronistic dancing and hesitations and dips, we pulled out the mama recipe file so I could share the recipe with you for these remarkable shortbread bars that go well a variety of ways: halfway dipped in homemade ganache, served plain for wine, coffee or milk dipping, or crumbled and sprinkled on some steel cut oatmeal for a warm and toasty morning treat!
SHORTBREAD
1 pound unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
4 cups flour
Cream butter and sugar, then beat until very light. Add flour then press into cookie sheet. Prick top. Cut after cooking. Can cut into shapes prior to cooking. Can add brandy or rum.
Taken verbatim from Patricia's aged yellow, lined notebook paper in a patriarch's notebook!
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