Birdseed Cookies

YaYa and I had a good time making birdseed cookies while Mr. Trouble on Feet was napping and The Banana and Mr. Sneaky Pants were building with Legos in the piano room, (we call the living room the piano room now, since the piano takes up a lot of it!  Also, we live in the family room more than the living room, but we call the family room the cabin room because when we moved into the house and the kidlets were smaller, they said the wooden ceiling in that room reminded them of a cabin).

The recipe for birdseed cookies involves boiling unflavored gelatin and adding birdseed.  Gelatin, my friends.  I have never been able to cook jell-o.  Ever.  Every single time I’ve tried I’ve ended up with a jell-o disaster.  My kids have eaten jell-o fewer times than they have fingers on their hands, and each of those times it was made by their father or maybe my mother or someone at church.  I was a bit leery of working with unflavored gelatin, and in fact, I’d be remiss not to mention that the first batch of birdseed cookies came out smelling like burnt rubber before we even added the birdseed to the gelatin because once again I had not managed to quite stir things right.

We threw that batch away and kept going, and figured out what we were doing.  While the mixture was warm we spooned it into cookie cutters, adding a loop of string when the cookie cutter was half packed with birdseed.  The we filled up the rest of the cookie cutter and let things set for a bit.  We turned them every hour or so and then let them rest overnight.

YaYa dangled the cookies from various trees and bushes in the yard.  So far we’ve managed to keep the cat away from the birds, and we haven’t noticed any squirrels that have caught on yet!  I’m sure they will, though.  I actually don’t mind.  Squirrels are hilarious, and they put the cat on edge.  He needs more of that in his life.  It’s the urban deer herds that I really hope don’t find the birdseed cookies, because they tend to do a lot of damage.  Urban deer are so ridiculous.