"We're going," Hannah said with a sigh, driving forward onto the icy surface of Eden Lake.
SHORT STACK COOKIES
DO NOT preheat oven ' dough must chill before baking
1 ' cups melted butter (3 sticks) 2 cups sugar 2 large beaten eggs, any brand (just whip them with a fork) ' cup maple syrup *** 4 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla 4 cups flour (not sifted) ' cup white sugar for coating the dough balls
*** To measure maple syrup, first spray the inside of measuring cup with Pam so that the syrup won't stick to sides of cup.
Melt the butter and mix in the sugar. Let it cool and add the beaten eggs. Add maple syrup, soda, salt, and vanilla. Mix it all up. Then add the flour and mix thoroughly.
Chill the dough for at least 1 hour (overnight is fine, too).
Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls with your hands. Roll the balls in white sugar and place them on greased cookie sheets, 12 to a standard sheet. Flatten them with a spatula.
Put oven rack in the middle position. Bake at 350'F for 10 to 12 minutes or until nicely browned. Cool on the cookie sheets for no more than 1 minute, then remove the cookies to the rack to finish cooling. (If you leave them on the cookie sheets for too long, they'll stick.)
Edna Ferguson says these taste exactly like pancakes that are slathered with maple syrup and butter, and she wishes she could get away with serving them instead of real pancakes at the annual faculty breakfast.
-23- It was a great day to be out on the lake with a snowmobile. The ice was covered with a light blanket of snow that had fallen the previous evening, and it sparkled in the pale rays of a sun that had peeked out just in time for their deliveries. It was cold, but both Hannah and Andrea were dressed for the weather, and they zipped along from ice-fishing house to ice-fishing house, taking cookies and coffee to the contestants. Everyone was glad to see them. It was a break in a sport that could get rather boring if the fish weren't biting.
"I've never seen the inside of an ice-fishing house before, but they remind me of something familiar," Andrea said, buckling her seatbelt and waiting for Hannah to drive to their next stop.
Hannah looked over at her sister and grinned. "I know exactly what it is. Just think of the buildings on Grandma and Grandpa Swensen's farm, and that should jog your memory."
"What good will that do? Grandpa Swensen didn't go ice-fishing." Andrea thought for a moment. "You mean the corn crib?"
"No." Hannah pulled forward across the ice. "Guess again."
"The shed where he kept the tractor?" Andrea raised her voice so that Hannah could hear her over the sound of the engine.
"Nope."
"Then what? Their farm was nowhere near the lake, and I know they didn't have an ice-fishing house."
"You're right. They didn't. But there's another thing they didn't have ' indoor plumbing."
Andrea's mouth dropped open and then she started to laugh. "Really, Hannah!"
"Well, it's true. An ice-fishing house looks a lot like an outdoor privy. It's got four walls, a roof, and a bench. The only difference is, the hole is in the ice."
"It's true," Andrea admitted, still cracking up. "I wish you hadn't told me. Now I'm not going to be able to think of anything else."
Hannah grinned and headed across the lake at a good clip. They'd decided to start with the farthest ice-fishing houses and work their way back to shore. So far, they'd visited six, and they still had over a dozen to go.
"Don't tell me Pete's fishing from his car!" Andrea looked utterly amazed as they pulled up next to Pete Nunke's old Ford.
"Looks like it." Hannah left the snowmobile idling, and they got off to gather up Pete's cookies and his container of coffee. As they approached, Pete rolled down his window, and Hannah had all she could do not to burst into laughter. He was fishing from the passenger's bucket seat, which had been turned backward. Pete's car radio was tuned to KCOW, he had the engine idling and the heater going, and the backseat had been removed to make room for a hole in the floorboards that he'd lined up with the hole he'd chopped in the ice.
"Afternoon, Pete," Hannah greeted him. "We brought you coffee and cookies."
"Thanks, ladies." Pete reached out to take the bag and the coffee.
"Any luck?" Andrea asked.
"Not yet, but there's something down there." Pete pointed to the small monitor that had been installed on the back window ledge. "See those blips on the screen?"
Andrea peered through the window. "You've got a fish locator. That's smart, Pete."
"Took it off my boat when I dry-docked it this fall. Want to climb in and warm up? You can share the driver's seat."
"Thanks, but we'd better get going," said Hannah, shaking her head. "We still have more cookies and coffee to deliver."
"Okay. I have to move on anyway. Looks like those fish are heading for the old sunken rowboat about twenty feet to the north. It's a natural habitat."
"Are you going to chop another hole in the ice when you get there?" Andrea asked.
"Already chopped it. I put in three holes yesterday and another three this morning. All I have to do is drive over and wait for the fish to get there."
Hannah and Andrea stood by and watched as Pete drove away in his mobile ice-fishing house. Then they headed back to the snowmobile and continued on their delivery route. After another twenty minutes of passing out coffee and cookies, they had only one ice-fishing house left, and it belonged to Mayor Bascomb.
"It certainly is big," Andrea commented as they pulled up in back of the mayor's structure. "I heard he really decked it out in style."
Hannah nodded. Mayor Bascomb always had the biggest and the best. As the son of Lake Eden's most successful land developer, he'd grown up with money, and he knew how to spend it.
"What's that?" Hannah asked, cutting the motor and listening. "It sounds like voices. Mayor Bascomb must have someone out here with him."
Andrea shook her head. "I don't think so. Bill was thinking about entering and I read the rules. It's a solo contest. You have to do it all by yourself."
Hannah grabbed the last bag of cookies and handed Andrea the last container of coffee, and they walked around to the front of the mayor's ice-fishing house. She spotted a generator sitting close to the wall, and there was an electrical cord that ran through a small hole to the inside. "He's got a generator. Maybe he's listening to the radio."
The door was shut, and Hannah knocked out of pure habit. It was a real door with a handle, and it even had little panes of glass at the top.
"Come in," the mayor called out, his voice muffled by the heavy door.
"I'm surprised he doesn't have a doorbell," Hannah muttered to her sister, opening the door. She took two steps forward and then stopped in awe as she saw what Lake Eden's mayor had done to decorate his ice-fishing house. Not only was it bigger than all the others, roughly the size of her guest bedroom at the condo; it was practically a second home.
Instead of the crossed two-by-fours that the other ice-fishing houses had in place of a floor to keep the structure rigid, Mayor Bascomb had a real floor covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting. This floor ended three feet short of one of the walls to expose a strip of ice with his ice-fishing hole in the middle. Against one of the carpeted walls was a television set in an entertainment center that also included a stereo and a VCR. The set was tuned to a golf tournament, and the ocean and palm trees on the screen indicated a tropical venue. Perhaps that would have kept some people warmer by pure suggestion, but Mayor Bascomb's ice-fishing house wasn't even close to freezing, thanks to two electrical space heaters that sat on stands. A leather loveseat sat against the opposite wall, and it was flanked by two tables that both contained lamps. A coffee pot on a shelf near the door gave off the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and a microwave sat next to it.