- And so we begin again: Home on the Homestead

"I'm Going to Texas" began a little over a year ago with a posting about a roadrunner photographed a few miles from our new home in Wimberley. A lot has happened since then, not the least of which is our recent relocation to a five-acre homestead in San Marcos ... which explains both the roadrunner in our new garden to the right and the extended blog subtitle above.  Moving twice in a 14 months has been a challenge, but we're finally settling in and looking forward to being at 700 Cascade Trail for the long haul.

The house is wonderfully eccentric, and I'm waiting for Don to take some pictures that show it to full advantage. For now, suffice it to say that I'm like a kid at Christmas with a kitchen that has both a gas cooktop and an electric convection oven, which vie for favorite toy status with the granite sink we splurged on after moving in. You'll notice there are two faucets, one of which delivers filtered water for drinking. Our first few days at Cascade Trail were marked by some dismay as we discovered how hard water can be when it travels through 900' of limestone before reaching the surface. We ended up needing both a new water softener at the well head and a new dishwasher as a result ... but the up-side is we no longer have glasses coated in milky white calcium.

Of course, as we unpacked the boxes that were hidden away in the closets at Garrison Trail, we unleashed a flood of memories from Shelter Island, Williamsburg, and Avon ... and couldn't help but think of those we miss back east. Still, this is home now. We can only hope the bits and pieces of stuff that we've accumulated over the years will serve as talismans for the future.

So too does food serve as a reminder of good times past, with always the promise of the next memorable recipe ... like the buttery cookies we discovered at Austin's Central Market.

Alfajores

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg and 2 yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 cups corn starch
1/4 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
Canned dulce de leche (if you can find it)

• Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Carefully mix in flour, corn starch, baking powder and salt.
• Roll 1/8" thick, cut into 1 1/2" rounds. Bake on parchment paper in a 325 degree oven for 9-10 minutes (you don't want to brown them, so I don't use the convection oven for this recipe).
• Cool and fill with dulce de leche (to be authentic), or jam, or lemon curd, or ganache ... the list is endless. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and try not to inhale.