Looking Out The Window: Julie Cosgrove Shares Christmas Memories And Talks About One Leaf Too Many, Her New Book. She'll Give Away An E-book.

A Warm Welcome To Julie Cosgrove

Julie shares an easy, yummy Christmas recipe her mom used to make for gifts and quotes one of her favorite Bible verses. Julie will give away an eBook of One Leaf Too Many to one, randomly chosen person who comments. To enter to win leave the comment and an email address below.

Julie and her brother gathered under the Christmas tree, taken by her mother in 1955

Stuffed Holiday Dates

This recipe graced every family Thanksgiving and Christmas table. We even had a special platter for them. I think it was handed down from my great-grandmother.

We used to gather in the kitchen with Mom to make them for our teachers, the postman, the neighborhood patrolman, and as holiday hostess gifts. Several boxes of these, wrapped in white tissue paper with a red bow, waited on the hall table in case anyone dropped by unexpectedly with a gift. Dates and pecan were cheaper back then.

One box or bag of pitted whole dates.

A small bag of whole pecan halves. (Or crack the shell and dig it out if you are lucky enough to have a pecan tree in your yard.)

A small bowl of powdered sugar.

Snap the pecan half at the seam, making two pieces.

Place one piece on top of each other inside a pitted date. Pinch to close.

Roll in powdered sugar.

Arrange in a small box or tin, lined with festive tissue paper.

DO NOT lick your fingers in the process!!

That’s it. Easy-peasy, except for the urge to lick your sticky fingers as you make them.  Damp wash cloths help deter that action!

Children love to assemble these treats, especially on cold, yucky winter days when they are stuck indoors.

A family chuckle is revived each year when these stuffed dates are placed on the table. It revolves around a thank you note I received from my third-grade teacher. “Thank you, Julie, for the delicious dates, stuffed with your own little fingers.”

Ewww. No, those were pecans!

One of Julie's Favorite Bible Verses

One Bible verse that always speaks to me is Pslam32:8.  I will instruct you in the ways you should go. I will counsel you with my eyes on you.”

Some may find that intimidating or stifling, but the older I get the more I realize how much I don’t know. My vision is limited to right now. Realizing a loving Father God is so interested in me that His eyes never leave me, and He sends His Spirit to guide me, is a comfort.

My main character in One Leaf Too Many, Bailey, needs to learn this lesson. Her impulsive, large heart drags her down several dangerous paths to bring estranged family members together as she seeks to solve a fifty-year old mystery revealed in a hidden black and white photograph from her grandmother’s album.

I relate! In my younger years, I acted like a female Don Quixote, ready to battle windmills for the people I cared about. Not often wise.

More About One Leaf Too Many

Bailey and her two friends, Shannon and Jessica, begin a genealogy search into her mother’s side of the family. Her mother had three brothers but has lost contact with them over the years following her parent’s deadly car accident when her mother was in college.

As Bailey thumbs through her grandmother’s photo albums for information she can turn into a leaf on an ancestral discovery website, she finds a photo of a young girl hidden behind them.  Determined to discover the girl’s identity, despite her parents’ silence and warnings from Detective Chase Montgomery, Bailey begins to reveal a fifty-year-old secret some powerful people want to keep concealed.  Has she uncovered one leaf too many?

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BIO:

Besides being an award-wining suspense romance and mystery novelist, Julie has been a devotional freelance writer for several in-print and online publications for over eight years. For the past two years, she has been a digital missionary with The Life Project, the internet ministry of CRU. As managing editor over 25 volunteer devotional writers, Julie also writes and edits inspirational articles for their two websites, The Life.com and Issue I Face.com that reaches over 600,000 worldwide a month, encouraging them to contact free, online mentors to journey with them through their issues and doubts. Learn more at The Life Project.

Follow her blog, Where Did You Find God Today?, along with other readers in 52 countries, and check out her twelve novels, including One Leaf Too Many, the first in the new Relatively Seeking Mysteries Series,  as well as her  nonfiction works at her website