Lemon & Lavender Brown Sugar Shortbread

I re-arranged my house last week.

By myself.

I did not pull any muscles.

Which was actually the biggest surprise of the whole thing!

I live in an apartment… townhouse, I guess, really…doesn’t matter. The long story very short is this:

I decided to combine my living room and dining room into one area (with a LOT of furniture, now) and turn the dining room into a mini photography studio!

Honestly, even though, at first, my place seemed a little cramped, I actually love it more. Everything seems a bit cozier.

I also don’t want to make my ‘studio’ seem like a grand affair.

It’s not.

For now.

The truth is that I rarely have people over.  Why was I using the space in the traditional manner with the anticipation someone may come over? As opposed to using the space that is the best use and investment for me.

When I say studio… right now, it’s my favorite table backdrop placed right near the window with my best light.  I’m not Annie Leibovitz with a lighting system and various backdrops.

Just a woman….

… with more plates and bowls than any normal person should own.

That brings me to this cookie.  In the process of cleaning up after my re-org, I found this cookie cutter that I had bought from a company in Germany a few years prior. Can you believe, I never used it.  Not once.  For one thing, I couldn’t get it apart to put the letters in the appropriate place.

I had asked my boyfriend for help and that led to a discussion about what I should make. He spent a few years of his childhood in England and since changing to a meat free diet he had been on the quest for a good tea cookie. I knew immediately what recipe I wanted to try.

He picked the word.

He had his reasons to use that word and they were his cookies and so I happily went about making them. Honestly, looking at this word with every press of the cookie cutter…

… well, it got me thinking.

The first thought was if a person, by ingesting a cookie with a word on it, any word, would they start being the embodiment of that word?  If someone were to eat a thoughtful cookie, would they start thinking?  I know that sounds very “The Secret”-ess, but in all seriousness… do we take on the energy of the food we eat?

Of course that led me down the thought path of our food system.  I remembered something I heard Michael Pollan once say:

Food Rule #1: Give some thought to where your food comes from.

I really and truly feel that if this were done, the food paradigm of this country, of the world, would change.

Lemon & Lavender Brown Sugar Shortbread