Churning and baking

For a month or so after my Jersey cow has a calf, I am forced to milk her every day.  When the calf finally is able to take all that milk, I go back to only milking when we need it.  Right now I am throwing a lot of it away, but I am also keeping more in the house than usual, thinking I might get energetic enough to make cheese again.  Today I decided to skim the cream off a couple of gallons of milk and churn butter.  Although I have a Dazey churn about the same age I am, I am in the middle of a very interesting book, and I wanted one hand free to turn the page.  Yes, even on an ereader you need a finger free to turn a page.  So I put the cream in a gallon jar and shook it with my right hand and arm; my left hand was free to deal with my book.  

This is before I got completely done washing the butter.  
Now, home-made butter made from the cream off raw milk doesn't keep as long as what you buy in the store, and Cliff and I don't use all that much butter.  I decided to make some butterscotch cookies, thinking that would use most of it.  Upon reading the recipe, though, I was reminded that I would be using half butter and half Crisco.  Oh well, if worse comes to worse I can freeze it until I make cookies again.  

I always double this recipe, since it only makes enough cookies for about one cookie-sheet full.  

My husband and my daughter are ashamed of the appearance of my cookie sheets.  Last time Rachel saw them, she said, "How long have you HAD those cookie sheets, anyway?"  
She said she was sure she remembered them from when she was a kid.
I bought that nasty-looking aluminum pan when I was still single; the shiny stainless steel pan is actually, I believe, a sheet cake pan my mom passed along to me sometime during the first couple years Cliff and I were married (we were married in 1966).  So I've used them for over fifty-five years, and I believe they will serve me the rest of my life just fine.  

I love these cookies!

See?  A double batch doesn't even fill a gallon jar.  And I only had one cookie, so don't blame me!