New Year's Eve

We're celebrating as befits our year - quietly and gratefully.  Aaron and I enjoyed an in-house date this afternoon watching Miss Marple and munching on lime cookies.  Tonight, we'll gather with our SITAG family still in Honiara (fourteen of us, nine of us thirteen years and younger) to play games and chat.

2011 has been a year of building relationships - with the Lavukal, with friends and family across the ocean, with our SITAG family, with each other, but most importantly with Jesus.  Our goals for 2011 will be similar to our goals for 2012:  to look more like Jesus today than we did yesterday, quietly and gratefully.

Lime Cookies (from an old BH&G magazine)

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 TBSP finely shredded lime peel

2 TBSP lime juice

2 cups all-purpose flour

Sugar topping

Beat butter in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds.  Add sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg; beat till combined.  Beat in lime peel and lime juice.  Beat in as much flour as you can with the mixer.  Stir in remaining flour.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Shape dough into 1-inch balls.  Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Flatten to 1/4-inch thickness with the bottom of a glass dipped into Sugar Topping.  Bake about 10 minutes or till edges are golden.  Transfer to wire racks and cool.  Makes about 48

Sugar Topping:  Stir together 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 2 TBSP green decorating sugar, 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (we found that leftover sugar topping is excellent on top of whipped cream in coffee!).