What I did on my vacation + Rosemary shortbread

Hi Knitters!

I've been "away" lately. Managing my contractor work life @ Symantec has been a big learning curve for me since October and I don't expect that to change much now that they've hired me as a regular employee, starting May 18th. Church choir meeting on Wednesday nights this year means I'm missing all the Santa Clara Knitting Meetup nights and I even missed a knitting guild last week. Booo!

So what *have* I been doing? Well, May 9 thru May 17 spouse-man and I were on walkabout with our very good friends from Milkwaukee. We drove north to the far northeastern corner of California (no, there there really isn't anything there - it was great). From there, we headed into Oregon for a visit to the High Desert Museum and a weekend in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Phew! Our friends sent me a thank-you note that I am blatantly stealing from their note to tell you what we did:

... This was our longest vacation to date - it had everything, too: mountains, waterfalls, theater (second row!) duck (live and on plate), more theater, falafel, prairie falcons, jalapeno cheese curls, Sid's Water Hole's fried chicken and JoJo's, early morning birding, veggie box greens, moving furniture, high end shopping, business socks, modern architecture, badger petting, red naped sapsuckers, lava beds, petroglyphs, jazz piano + bass, Vietnamese food, lots of life birds, way too much cheese, late night discussions, Star Trek, wine flight, rainbows, microbreweries, sock knitting, Shakespeare, mosquitoes, kitties, Dr. Horrible, Ave Maria, fava bean puree, vast changes in climactic zones, post-theater discussion and, well, being with y'all!

Oh yes, S&R, it was a fabulous week. Thank you so much for coming to California to make it all possible!

Honestly, it was a startlingly successful vacation for the amount of planning that went into it, AND we got to spend 10 days on the road with our friends, meeting up with AWiz & the Wiz knitter in Ashland to top it all off.

Meanwhile, the thing that finally drove me to post on the blog today was the crazy search I go through every time I want to make rosemary pine nut shortbread. Well, this time, I'm getting SMART. If I post the recipe here, then I won't be able to lose it anymore. Hah! I'll fix your wagon, Internet! Just try messing with me again! Hmm.. maybe I shouldn't have said that.

Anyway, here's the rosemary pine nut bars, a recipe we found in our Two Small Farms CSA newsletter in June 2008. Quick & easy - try it!

Tuscan Rosemary and Pine Nut Bars,
here is that old recipe from the L.A. Times Food Section 8/11/99—Julia
¼ cup pine nuts, roasted
½ Cup butter, cut in 10 pieces
½ cup powdered sugar
1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup flour
Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, rosemaryand pine nuts. Stir in flour to make dough; it will be stiff. Pat dough evenly into ungreased 8-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until golden and firm at edges, about 20
minutes. Cool pan on rack about 2 minutes, then use sharp knife to cut bars into 16 squares. Let cool in pan at least 10 minutes before removing with small spatula