Okay so here s the last post of the year, and it's mostly baking, books, and pets.
I've made a ton of cookies this past month, with mixed results. In early December, I made a sprawling, epic baking video to play on the library's social media channels and I bit off more than I could chew making three recipes at once. I need to remember to look at the recipe before I start...the demands of chilling two of the three doughs turned what I thought would be a 2 hour activity into an unexpected marathon. I am pretty confident I do not have the right cookies in the right chronological order...I can't remember which cookies I did for the video and which I just did in the course of the month. I do not think an accurate cookie baking timeline is crucial to read this post so let's just roll with it.
First, I decided to try a new gingerbread cookie recipe featured in the holiday issue of Cook's Illustrated.
Looks good right? Well, looks can be deceiving. As I did the recipe I idly thought it asked for an awful lot of cloves...I double checked our traditional recipe for ginger bread boys and saw cloves wasn't even listed. I shrugged and went on my merry kitchen way...and let me tell you if you didn't already guess, that a little bit of cloves goes a long way.
Andrew and I ended up calling them the "cigar cookie" because Andrew says "I'd rather smoke cloves than eat them." I would say one would have to strongly be on team savory to enjoy these cookies. I could make them again without the cloves, but honestly there are soooooo many cookie recipes out there, I'm kicking this one to the curb. I did take the cookies to work, warned everyone and there were two co-workers who liked them. When a cookie languishes on the staff treat table, you know it's a dud.
I also tried a recipe from a magazine that I'm really enjoying that we carry at the library called Le Chatelaine...it's Canadian and looks like a Good Housekeeping kind of magazine but it's really quite edgy and modern. This classic peanut butter cookies with added chocolate chips were a hit all around.
Then for the third recipe I made was an oatmeal cookie recipe out of this book:
I may be making more stuff out of this book in the future. My Dad loves a good oatmeal cookie and so do I. This may be a recipe I redo. It is VERY oat centric...but demanded being chilled which took more time since I didn't look ahead for that. I really need to remember to pay attention to a little thing called "prep time." Also, I think the eggs I used were maybe too small to add enough moisture. Dad liked them though. Sadly, I don't have a picture of the oatmeal cookie.
The week before Christmas I made the sesame cookies from PBS cook Lydia Bastianich in an effort to replicate Andrew's Grandma Scordato's recipe. This is a basic shortbread recipe where you roll out the dough and cut into logs, then roll in sesame seeds.
The definitely spread out quite a bit in the baking. Mom liked them and some friends liked them, especially dipped in melted chocolate but Andrew says they are close but no cigar. This is the second time I've referenced cigar/cigarettes in a baking centric blog post. Shrugs.
Food 52 had two recipes I want to try and as I eyed this one, I suspected that I had made it before and was mildly disappointed in it...but the memory didn't stick so I moved ahead and made it anyway.
By the time I had put them on the cookie sheet I was convinced I had made them before. They seem much better to me cooled than hot out of the oven and taste more like a brownie. There is another recipe I still want to try that is a more chewy version of this without the peanuts...but if this one didn't blow my oven mitts off, should I try making the other one? These are the questions of my winter baking time.
I also made the traditional gingerbread cookies and butter roll out cookies with lactose free butters, but they have been featured in last year's posts so just get a mention for sheer quantity here.
Moving backwards into November, Andrew did a lot of baking for Thanksgiving, like this lactose free pumpkin pie, and pecan pie, one of his favorites.
And he made two types of monkey bread to go with our eggs and sausage breakfast. One with an orange icing glaze and another with chopped pecans.
Before we move outside, let's check in with the pets...
This is a regular occurrence at our house, especially on a day Andrew is at the station, and I go into work. I leave in the morning with the bed made and come home to find this I definitely think Tutu can tell the difference between a morning where everyone is at work all day, a day here someone is going to be home part of the day, and a day when her "pack" is all home. I also think she can tell that when one nightstand lamp is off, Daddy is not coming home until the next day.
I may have actually posted a similar picture recently of Maxwel peeking through the stair spokes It's a fairly common occurrence and probably happened while Tutu and Andrew were napping in the chair and I was puttering around the kitchen It's a bit of a "is the coast clear?" kind of move
The journal I started n August..I'm halfway through already. I got two nice, last-a-lifetime mechanical pencils for Christmas. I am trying to use all the wooden pencils in the house so eventually, the two mechanicals will be all that's left. It will take a while, and I'm already using the mechanicals for the journal.
BOOKS:
Usually I just focus on books from my private library for a few reasons, but here is a library title I am working through:
It's a sweet book, each chapter is a different month of the year. If you want a gentle nature read, try it.
I continue to grind through the private library and still decide to toss books in the donation box as I go. I have recently finished this biography of Jane Austen by a direct descendant of one of her friends. I don't think I learned much new in this book and it was a quick read. As I suspected, the author could not resist talking more about the Lefroys then necessary, and even the Austen-Leighs...of course. Into the donation box it goes!
Published in 1997, and accounting for episodes more than 30 years before, this book is mostly timeless, witty and incredibly funny. Recommended by James Herriot himself, this is a gentle read with a little bite, lots of humor, and wonderful sketches of a by gone era or rural life that still reflects characters you could more or less meet today. There is a real sense of landscape in the book as well I enjoyed it so much, I wondered if Dr. McCormack was still alive and found out he died just last year in December, in his 80s and his obituary was very sweet. I'm very tempted to send a message to the funeral home to see if they can pass it on to his wife and children about how much I enjoyed it. I even reserved one of the two other books he wrote through the library...another title to add to the pile. This one might stay in the study.
Are you ready to check on the garden and the chickens?
This Kale plant, given to me by a friend two years ago, is such a trooper and garden companion I found that sautéing fresh kale in a skillet creates too much splatter so I use frozen kale. This plant has gone to seed three times, has been eaten up by some kind of bug/worm down to it's main stem and just keeps coming back I love it, despite my neglect.
Calendula, still blooming in the garden, the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Also, I think this shot of Tutu hunting mice and voles in the lavender is also around Thanksgiving You can see the green plants after their prune.
Winter starts for me, when the electric waterer (holds three gallons) goes into the chicken pen
One book, that I want to read is "The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead. Such and amazing physical object in shape and scope. On Dad's suggested I've evolved from grass hay to the wood shavings for the nest boxes with great results
As I write this, on January 31st, I cleaned the chicken coop this afternoon before lunch and finishing this blog up. I have to smile that these pictures were taken the last time I cleaned the coop...which may well have been in November It was quite the chore today because I had added fresh grass hay at some point when I couldn't get to it as quickly as I would have liked but this ultimately made it more work to clean today. I captured this and thought t was cute. Looks like she made a perfect 10 landing.
I never grow tired of being baffled by some basically chicken views of life The contents of their coop, become new again when rediscovered on the compost pile
And let's end with the almost full moon in Gemini. I think this was taken on November 29th
If you have made it to the end of this post, consider subscribing in the upper right hand corner. I'll be launching something new in 2021 and it will be announced here
No comments:
Post a Comment