Merry Christmas!

Red squirrel north of Beaver Marsh, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

RussianTeacakes for Christmas

This recipe is from my Grandma Zdenka Kucera. She made them every Christmas, along with dozens of other delicious cookies and pastries. 

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter

½ cup sifted powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ¼ cups sifted flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup ground walnuts

Directions

Cream the butter, powdered sugar and vanilla, using an electric mixer. Stir the salt into the flour. Add the flour mixture into the butter mixture, using a slow setting on the electric mixer. Mix in the ground walnuts. Chill dough.

 

Roll dough into 1” balls and arrange on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for 9 – 11 minutes, until set, but not brown. Cool on the cookie sheet for 1 -2 minutes, then allow to finish cooling on a rack.

When completely cool, roll twice in powdered sugar.

 

Makes about 4 dozen.

 

Notes:

Soften refrigerated butter for about 15 seconds in the microwave. It should be soft, but not melted. Don’t use margarine or light margarine.

Fluff the powdered sugar and flour with a fork before measuring. Level contents of the measuring cup with the straight side of a knife.

Pulse walnuts in a food processor to grind. The results should look like a nut meal, rather than chunks.

Cookies can be placed about 1 ½” apart as they do not spread very much in the oven.

Cookies are fragile when hot. Give them a minute or two to cool before transferring them to a rack.

Recipe can be double or tripled.

Use a sturdy stand mixer since the dough is quite stiff.

Raptors!

Had a wonderful shoot at the Medina Raptor Center on December 8. The Center rehabs injured raptors as well as other animals. Only one of the birds we had the good fortune to photograph is likely to be able to return to the wild, and that was a juvenile osprey.  Josh Clark, an excellent nature photographer and coordinator for MPEG, made the arrangements for 15 photographers. The weather was frigid, which was good, because that meant the snowy owl could come out. Here are a few of the photos. I hope to post more soon, including the snowy owl.

This is a red-tailed hawk. His name is Owati, which means Mischief,

 

Victory, ruffling his feathers at the crowd of photographers, is an adult osprey. I saw one of his kin flying over the Snake River when Chuck and I were on our death-defying off-road expedition in Grand Teton National Park.

Cloud is a luecistic red-tailed hawk, not quite an albino because they have pigmented eyes and legs. This guy lived in an area with a lot of limestone, so his coloring didn't make him a target for larger predators.

And finally, the bald eagle Migisi. He looks all fierce and noble here - and he is a gorgeous bird - but he was basically checking out his handler for more snacks.

 

More information on the Medina Raptor Center can be found here: http://medinaraptorcenter.org/.