Until the Cows Come Home...

It's been an interesting year!  So many things have factored into my nine-month hiatus from blogging: the stress from the fires of last summer, subsequent illness, followed by the holidays and our "birthday season", intense audits at work, personal computer crashes, and the ever-present busy-ness with family and school and vacations. And now the cows.

We had a mountain lion take out a dairy goat earlier this summer.  We think the same predator literally scared one of our horses to death.  Then a few days later, five of our cattle blew straight through a barbed wire pasture fence and took off downhill like rabbits into the neighbors' sections of range-land.  Our dairy cow was located a week later and about 5 miles away!   While we're delighted to have her back, we're still searching for the missing cattle and it's like hunting for 4 really big needles in a 10-square-mile haystack.  We've had a  recent sighting of the wayward bunch.  Tracking and herding them into catch-pens is not an easy matter...one jumps like a show horse and another has no idea what it means to be herded at all and won't move an inch, that is until she decides to race after the jumper.  No definite progress yet, but we're tracking their whereabouts and we'll remain hopeful until the cows come home.

COW PIES
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter
3 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
1/2 c. chopped peanuts (optional)
1)  Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper, parchment or aluminum foil.  Measure out your vanilla, peanut butter, oats & peanuts, and set them aside.
2)  Combine sugar, butter, milk and cocoa powder in a medium saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture comes to a full rolling boil.
3)  Remove pan from heat and quickly add the remaining ingredients.
4)  Mix well and immediately drop mixture by heaping tablespoons (or small portion scoop) onto the prepared cookie sheet and allow to cool completely before removing.   Store leftovers in a cool dry place.

This recipe is a quick favorite for those last minute "I gotta bring 4 dozen cookies tomorrow" snack requests.  Makes about 48 delicious, chewy, fudgy, no-bake treats in less than fifteen minutes.  You can guess why our family calls them "cow pies."