I have entered the ingredients including the chocolate and powdered sugar used for the glaze on NutritionData and calculated for 48 cookies per recipe.  If you’re watching your fat intake, skip the chocolate drizzles which adds 2g fat and 13 calories per cookie.
Recipe and Instructions.

Glazed Lebkuchen Heart and Star

Nutrition Info per cookie

Front of unglazed Lebkuchen

A traditional German baked Christmas treat, somewhat resembling gingerbread. Lebkuchen were invented by Medieval monks in Franconia, Germany in the 13th century.

If you have ever tried to make Lebkuchen, you probably think I must be out of my mind to try this at home. This has to be the messiest cookies one can make. Check out my made-EASY step-by-step instruction and amaze your family and friends with these tasty home-made treats!

Ingredients:

• 6 cups flour
• 1 box light brown sugar (1 pound)
• 4-5 Tablespoons Lebkuchen spice (see below)
  —mix all dry ingredients together
• 6 eggs
• 1 glass honey (pint/8 ounces)
  —mix moist ingredients together

Combine and knead into a smooth dough, let rest (covered) at room temperature overnight.
Form into shapes and bake at 325F for 10 minutes until light brown.  Glaze as desired. Makes approximately 50 cookies.

Lebkuchen spice:
Mix equal portions (I use only a hint of nutmeg and twice as much cinnamon) of ground: Cinnamon, Anis, Gloves, Nutmeg, Coriander, Cardamon, Staranis (if available)

Lebkuchen Dough

If you try to roll this sticky dough out, you’ll either have to add so much flour that it will ruin the flavor or you’ll end up with an incredible mess and nothing resembling the shape you cut.  You’ll swear to never do this again.

Here’s my made-easy method:

Get a bowl of water and drop you cookie cutters in.  line your cookie sheets with wax paper or aluminum foil.  I use 3 cookie sheets in rotation (deposit dough, oven, cooling).  barely moisten the palm of your hand with water, place a lump of dough on it and flatten a bit, cut out shape and place on cookie sheet. Don’t worry if they aren’t perfect or still have imprints of your fingers or hand.
The cookies will expand to 3-4 inches, leave plenty of room between them!

Using cookie cutter in my hand

Cookie cutter in bowl of water

Raw cookie on wax paper

Fresh from the oven

The most difficult part is letting the cookies cool nearly completely before removing the foil or paper. To remove foil, flip over and gently peel off.  To remove wax paper, wet the paper with water and peel off.  If your cookies are too warm, the foil or paper will not come off easily.  Just wait a little longer and try again.

Peeling off foil

Moist wax paper ready to peel off

Back of cookies

This recipe makes about 50 cookies.  Decorate with sugar and/or chocolate glaze.  Some people like sprinkles and others insert almonds before cooking.  They are soft inside and will keep for weeks when stored in an airtight container.  May also be frozen.  Enjoy!

Summer Dormant Daylily Patch

It’s almost impossible to believe these daylilies were in full bloom with fans over an inch in diameter in early June.

Climate change. Surely something is changing. After the soggy spring, summer rolled in hot as Hades in June. Temperatures topped 100 on the side porch thermometer and we saw nary a drop of rain since the end of May. Even our daylilies went heat-dormant, something almost unheard of in our Zone 6b/7a Tennessee garden.

Close-Up of Dormant Daylily Patch

Plants have enormous capacity to adapt to whatever Mother Nature sends their way,  check out this close-up picture:

With the cooler temperatures in July they are poking their  green heads back out of the mulch, soon to be their former size.

I can hear my plants sending the message: Don’t overly worry, be flexible and patient; most things will work out in the long run. Maybe that’s what part of gardening is all about — listening to the plants.

We broke from the traditional vegetable garden this year and our tomatoes have been given free reign of the front border. The idea was to easily share the excess harvest with the walkers in our neighborhood. So far, they haven’t done much as Mother Nature has ceased to provide them with the moisture they like. Our friends are  talking about the, albeit green,  baseball size tomatoes on their plants. I am having a serious case of tomato envy!

I am hopeful the plants will catch up in good time and provide us with plenty of tomatoes to eat fresh, make pasta sauces and freeze for use during the winter. If you’re walking along the sidewalk, please help yourself when they’re ripe, just leave one or two for us now and then!

Greenhouse

Small, yes.
Plants, yes.
Fans and ventilation, yes.
Water, yes.
Electricity, yes.
Looking like a greenhouse, no.

Read about us and go on a short tour with me in this article by Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Karen Nazor Hill.

There’s lots of different iris varieties, so many in fact, that generally it’s impossible to determine the name of a plant from its picture alone. While no name iris (NoID’s) may be less valuable in the marketplace, they are no less beautiful than the ones with fancy names.
Stop by and see some of my favorites.

Being the passionate gardener that I am, I immediately thought about fruit and vegetable gardening. I don’t think that’s quite what the President had in mind and maybe you are beginning to wonder about my sanity?

How does fruit and vegetable gardening relate to responsibility, sacrifice and public service?

Tomato Medley

Responsibility
There are fresh, from the garden, fruits and vegetables in the future for the Green Thumbs Galore table. This year, I will grow many new and different varieties. Notice I said ‘grow vegetables’ and not ‘have a vegetable garden’? My tomatoes, peppers and berry bushes will be interplanted in the beds with ornamentals this year – an achievable goal – rather than waiting for the ‘vegetable garden’ area to be redone after the beating it took during greenhouse construction last year.
In this way I will do my part to reduce use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers which are harming our environment and waterways.

Blackberries

Sacrifice
How could having fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy for me and my family, be a sacrifice?
I will try to forgo buying out of season strawberries & tomatoes forced in Costa Rican greenhouses and oranges grown in Israel this year. I am not anti Israel or Costa Rica, I am pro rediscovering produce grown for taste – not for how well it holds up in transport.

Public Service
I am hoping that planting many plants and a generous application of compost will bring forth an abundance of produce. Enough to freeze and can for later use in our kitchen and to share – with friends, neighbors and the Chattanooga Food Bank.

I am hoping President Obama will add fruits and vegetables to the First Lawn – I think a berry patch would look great near the swing set and just imagine how cool it would be if the cherry trees in Washington produced REAL cherries for anyone to come and pick!

I’m known for pushing plants a zone or two and killing my share of them along the way. I am also guilty of babying some and neglecting others to the point they show me their brown, slimy or crispy sides.
Last year, I planted the sections next to the greenhouse with lots of the new varieties and vowed to give them the care they were supposed to get – no more and no less.

Most of them bloomed and delighted me and everyone else taking a stroll out toward the back. Now it’s time to take stock and see which of these gaillardias, coreopsis and coneflowers are perennial, which will be per-annuals and which will be no-repeats in my garden.

Gaillardia
I don’t think I have ever come across a gaillardia I didn’t like. From the shorter and sturdier varieties to the big and floppy red and orange ones. I have room for them all, somewhere in the garden. Gaillardias thrive on poor soil, drought and benign neglect – perfect for hot and sunny spots far, far away from the reach of the garden hose.

My favorite in 2008, by far, was ‘Oranges & Lemons’. It bloomed and bloomed and wouldn’t stop until the hard frost in December. I finally cut back the foliage after the finches finished eating the seeds and what was left looked brown, dry and dead. No problem, it’s so beautiful, it would just be a replant in the spring per-annual. Imagine my surprise yesterday – new green sprouts coming from the base of the brown and dead looking stumps – this one is a keeper!

So are all the new fluted varieties, they never left me with a doubt as to their ‘perennial-ness’ as they had green rosettes on the base throughout even the coldest part of this winter. ‘Fanfare’, ‘Frenzy’ and ‘Tizzy’ are all repeats!

For 2009, I will be adding ‘Summer Kiss’, more of ‘Burgundy’ and ‘El Fuego’, a fluted sport of ‘Burgundy’.

Hummingbird nest with 2 eggs in Orange County, California. The eggs were laid February 16 & 19. Approximately 17 days to hatch and 3 weeks to fledge.

Mom is sitting on the nest and I can’t wait to see the hatchlings in a couple more weeks. This year, I am putting out more feeders and adding some nesting helper to attract and keep more of them in our garden.

So here it is, a little after 6 am now and I managed to complete the about me page and I am on way to join the community of  bloggers.