The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Organizing

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my sister's kids and bring them back to bake and decorate cookies over the weekend.  Alex has been itching all week to pick out which cutters we'll use, and finally, finally, tonight we took the boxes of cutters out and I told Alex to take them out and put them all over the dining room table while I emptied the dishwasher and washed up what was left in the sink.  (Julia wasn't interested.  She wanted to watch Frosty on DVD instead.)

As I was stacking dishes and bowls in the cupboard, I listened to Alex checking out all the cookie cutters and cookie presses and a few other assorted cutters that have nowhere else to go. 

"Santa!  A snowman!  A reindeer!  A Christmas tree!"  And so on.

After a while - and a few more boxes - he started announcing "Mommy, you have a LOT of cookie cutters."  "Mommy!  You have SO MANY cookie cutters!"

I figured since we were assembling them, we might just as well do ALL of them, regardless of the holiday. 

"You were tricking me, Mommy!" Alex stared at the additional boxes I'd placed on one of the dining room chairs.

"I wasn't tricking you, Alex.  I just thought we should put everything on the table."

At one point he flat out told me there wasn't any more room.  Shaking his head.  Crazy mommy.

But we slid things around and found the room.  The only cookie items I didn't add were my springerle molds.  But since Alex has been eating my springerle even though they are supposed to sit for a few weeks, I have a feeling I'll be making another batch or two before the holiday.  So maybe I'll take a picture of all the springerle molds at that point.

Anyway, after he'd put all the cookie cutters out on the table, I took a few pictures, and for some reason, they have disappeared from my camera.  I'm NOT happy about that.  Alex was grinning from the other side of the table and he looked pretty cute.

Before I put them away, I took pictures of them in groups, just to have a record of everything I have.  Some I've bought or they've been gifts.  Others were my mom's mother's.  And still others belonged to my late mother-in-law. 

So, um...maybe Alex is right...maybe I do have a lot of cookie cutters...what do you think?

A Springerle Recipe

2007:  I originally posted this a couple of years ago, and since this is the recipe I used again this year, I'm just going to add those in where appropriate.  I'll also keep this year's comments in bold, in case you're wondering....by the way, the black ringbinder I refer to in the paragraph below is my late mother-in-law's book of her mother's recipes, translated from the German.

This is not the handwritten recipe in the black ringbinder. I haven't attempted that one. I'm posting (for now) the recipe that we used two years ago, the time that I baked cookies with my mother-in-law. The recipe was in a 1996 copy of Yankee Magazine and was sent in by a Marian Tietz Anderson, of Fredonia, New York. At the end of the little article it says "The Yankee Cook Suggests Springerle molds from the House on the Hill" and gives an old address and phone number, and adds "It has a huge selection of deeply cut molds that make wonderfully detailed pictures."

So onto the recipe, courtesy of Marian Tietz Anderson, with notes from Elsa...

Springerle Cookies

Make these three weeks ahead if possible, then store airtight to mellow and soften.

anise seed
4 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 pound sifted confectioners' sugar (4 cups, per Elsa)
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Grease cookie sheets and sprinkle with anise seeds.
Sift together flour and baking powder. Set aside.
With an electric mixer, beat eggs until light;

add sugar;

beat until mixture makes a thick ribbon when dropped from a spoon (or a spatula).

Add lemon rind,

then flour mixture.

Mix well

* this year I had a repeating issue with dough that was too dry.  I followed the recipe, but things like humidity can affect your dough, and so maybe (I don't know for sure) the dryness in the air, or in my house, was partly to blame.  It held together okay in that picture above, but later on, when I went to roll it out, the whole thing crumbled.  I fixed that by dripping a little water on the dough - VERY LITTLE - and working the dough with my hands, adding a bit more water if necessary, until I had a better consistency.  So if your dough is crumbly - just work in bits of water.

and chill.

On lightly floured board, roll to 1/2-inch thickness.  (Sorry - for some reason I neglected to take pictures of this step.  But I think you can manage without them.)

Flour springerle molds  (because if you don't, dough will stick in the little spaces like you see below, and it's a pain to dig that out.)

and press firmly into dough.  Cut cookies apart.  (or, if you're using a single cutter like this one, trim around the main picture, either with a knife or a cookie cutter, as appropriate.)

Place 1/2 inch apart on cookie sheets and leave exposed to air overnight.

Bake the next morning in a 300 degree F oven, 20 to 25 minutes or so; do not let them get brown.

Yields about 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elsa had written the following across the top of the page: "Comes out high & full if baked in round cake pans rather than cookie sheets." I think this is because the cookies were surrounded by the sides of the cake pan, concentrating the heat within that circle, which probably helped give the baking powder an extra bit of oomph to help leaven the cookies. Just a guess.

Springerle molds are sometimes single pieces of wood (or a resin/wood combination) with a sort of checkerboard arrangement of lots of smaller pictures. Each picture is meant to make a single cookie, so after you've imprinted the mold on the dough, you need to carefully cut these into the smaller cookies. For straight lines, a pizza wheel works very well, as long as you're careful and the wheel doesn't get away from you.

She also noted, with regard to the length of cooking time "20 min is good" - but that will really depend on your oven. Still - check them at 20. No one wants a browned springerle!! Trust me!!

I am going to make a batch with this recipe this year (to play it safe) and a batch from Elsa's ringbinder(to be bold and brave). I also have (somewhere) a recipe that my husband's cousin, Elsa's brother's daughter, had sent to me last Christmas. I can't remember if it's an adaptation of a family recipe or something she got somewhere else, or something she developed...apparently these come out lighter and a bit easier on the teeth. The airing out can result in a rather dry, hard cookie, and time will have the same effect. I don't mind - I like to gnaw on them, actually. You can also dunk them in your coffee. Or tea. Or milk.

Update, 11/24/03
Now that I've finally made them, here are a couple of tips...

Make sure you let the dough warm back up a bit after chilling before you attempt to roll it out. This is a bad habit of mine - I start trying to roll it too cold (I do this with pie dough too) and it inevitably cracks and is very frustrating to work with. Can't really give you a length of time, but try 10-15 minutes and then figure out what's best in your kitchen.

Also - when pressing out the molds...the dough, as you press (and be prepared to exert some pressure - this is a strong dough and will push back) needs somewhere to go. It will go up into the mold, which you want, and it will go out to the sides. I found out it works best if you can cut a piece of dough just about the size of the image you're pressing, press that lightly to the mold, and flip it over and lean on it (evenly, so it doesn't come out really detailed on one side and less so on the other) that should work. I've also seen instructions to put the dough on the mold and run your rolling pin over it. I have one really big mold and I'll probably do the rolling pin thing when I get to that one. I'll be making another batch next weekend....

Always

This post is for my Mom, in a way.  It's her birthday today.  She's always been a wonderful mother, except for that time when we were little and she told us we could eat AS MUCH CANDY as we wanted.  That frightened me.  But apart from that...she's done a damn fine job.  From her I've inherited a love of books, and of cooking, and of music, and, hopefully, decent mothering abilities.  Time will tell.

Happy Birthday, Mom.  Mind how you go....Love, Jayne

Not long after my mom's father passed away, after the funeral was over, and we were supposed to start to "get back to normal", I was in my old bed at my parents' house, and I dreamt of him. 

In this dream, I was sitting on a bench in a park - I don't know where, I didn't recognize it.  And he, Grandad, came over and sat beside me.  He didn't look like he had looked toward the end - tired and gaunt and shrunken and sharply angled.  Instead, he was tall and healthy and hearty - full of "vim, vigour and vitality" as he used to say.  He looked as he had when I was younger, when I looked up at him always in awe and admiration and love and a huge desire to be with him all the time. 

I was so blessed with the lives of all of my grandparents when I was a child.  I knew each of them. I have separate and distinct memories of them.  My dad's parents moved to Arizona when I was nearly 4, and they came east once more when I was in the 6th grade.  I never saw my paternal  grandfather - Grandpa - again, but I did see my grandmother shortly after Grandpa passed away - Dad and I flew out to California, where they had moved, and we visited and I met other family members for the first time.

My mother's parents were constants in my young life, especially after I turned 7 and my grandfather had retired and the two of them moved up to Rhode Island and into a house on the same block as ours.  I was 22 when my grandfather passed away - so that's a huge chunk of my life with him in it.

Anyway. 

There I was on the park bench, and him sitting beside me.  And he was wearing a thin maroon windbreaker sort of jacket.  He used to walk down to Healy's News Store on Sunday mornings to get the paper.  He'd pick up two and drop one off at my parents' house before going home.  I can see him coming around the corner of Main street, newspapers rolled and tucked under an arm.... 

He walked at a purposeful, destination-bound pace.  He neither sauntered nor meandered, and I think this was true in most aspects of his life.  I remember sleeping over at my grandparents' house and wanting to get up to get the paper with him.  I knew I had to be up and ready to go on time, so I slept in my clothes, just to make sure he wouldn't leave without me.  I was young and small; he was larger than life.

When he sat down on the bench beside me, he spoke to me in his strong, London-laced voice.

And he said "I always love you."

It was a strange phrase.  Not "I will" or "I have...loved..." - but more of an "I do...."  Not "when I was alive" or "looking down from wherever I am now" - no - it was a constant, uninterrupted thing.

I woke up in tears. 

Days later, back at the house I shared with some college friends in CT, I told one of them - the one with the most religious upbringing - about the dream and asked if he believed that the dead can visit us in our sleep.  It had been so real...I could recall the feel of cool nylon jacket on my palms and fingers as I clung to him in a hug.  He felt solid.

My friend said no, something like that was more likely the work of the devil.

And since I had no way to prove otherwise, I let the subject drop.  With him.  But I didn't agree.  How could that dream be an evil thing?  How?  If anything, it was...uplifting, and joyous, and beautiful.  I didn't discuss it again.  But I still think my dear, wonderful friend was full of crap that day.

Someone larger than life leaves a huge gap in the lives of his family when he is physically no longer present.  The fallout, I think, has never stopped, though the vibrations have softened.  We all handle things differently.  Sometimes wisely, sometimes not.  Regardless, time continues on, oblivious.

I don't visit the grave where both my grandparents now lay.  Well, the physical part of them.  I don't really think they are there.  I think my grandfather, wherever he is, continues to move purposefully and with some destination in mind.  I think he visits libraries, and opera houses, and small amateur boxing clubs where the fighters are there to fight and not just for spectacle or ear-biting. 

For a long time, I kept the green vinyl recliner that had been his.  I actually had it before he died - my grandmother or my mother or someone wanted to get him a new chair.  I couldn't bear the thought of them throwing this chair away, so I claimed it. He'd had the chair when they lived in New Jersey.  When we went down there to visit, my sister and I would sit on his lap on that chair, listening to the soundtracks of "Oliver!" and "My Fair Lady." 

The chair smelled faintly of pipe tobacco.  Borkum-Riff Whiskey blend.  It came in a black and white and silver tin, and there were tall-masted sailing ships on the top and sides.  Even when the chair was no longer in his house, when he hadn't smoked a pipe in many years, especially since the heart attack, I could, if I pressed my face against the vinyl in just the right spot, still smell the tobacco.  I inhaled it like a drug. 

My husband and I have now lived in our house for just over 6 years now.  The whole house had been refurbished before we bought it - so much of it was like new.  It smelled of paint for months.

A couple of times, upstairs here, I have caught a whiff of that pipe tobacco smoke.  Unannounced, unexpected, unexplained.  (I don't have the chair any more.)  I wondered at first if maybe someone in a nearby house was smoking that same pipe tobacco, and that the wind had carried a bit of it in through an open bedroom window.

But I have dismissed that idea.  It didn't last long enough to have come from anywhere outside.  There was no more of it than a fleeting olefactory glimpse.  It was an eye blink of a smell.  There and gone.  But definitely there.

So he has stopped by, I believe, to check in on things.  And I'm sorry the books aren't in better rows, spines flush with the edge of the shelf.  And that I sometimes dog-ear the pages.  But I don't think it matters much.  I think so many of the things that matter to us on a daily basis, things we worry about and obsess about and torture ourselves with and bury - as if that will make it go away when all it does is hide if for a while - I think they don't really matter at all.  They just keep us busy.  And moving.  And distracted.  And we do them anyway.  Because we must do things.

Monday night - two nights ago - I was watching TV with my husband.  The program he had been watching ended, and I took up the remote and began to scroll through the programming guide to see what else was on.  I  am weird like this: no matter what channel we are on, I need to scroll to channel 2 - to the beginning - and proceed from there.  So I did, paging back from wherever we had been until I reached the beginning.  And there, on channel 2 - "Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert."  I hit the info button - it was the 1990 concert in Rome.  I hit "Select" and settled in for the night.

My grandfather died in 1988 - two years before the concert took place.  I'm sure he was there, floating above in the night sky, eyes closed, index fingers twitching, perhaps, as he conducted along with Zubin Mehta.   He would do that.

I know the whole concert by heart.  I know some of the songs in Italian, or French, German, Spanish...and what I don't know that way, I "know" phonetically.  I even sing along with the orchestra.  I'm sure I'm quite annoying to be around, but I don't particularly care.

I thought about my grandfather while I watched and sang in my chair.  I thought about my Mom, his only child, and wondered if she knew this was on, and if she was watching.  The holiday season is tough on her, I know.  But then, the season is tough on so many people who have lost loved ones and must celebrate without them in a chair at the dinner table. 

I sat there and kind of waited to feel tearful.  I really did.  I waited for emotion to well up in me, perhaps while Domingo sang "e lucevan le stelle", and pour from my eyes.  I waited to feel them sting a bit, and for my nose to feel prickly as it does when I'm going to cry.  But none of that happened.  I just listened, and sang along softly, and groaned and rolled my eyes whenever the program was interrupted because the public television station was in the middle of their fundraising.  And I got annoyed with this one woman who kept pronouncing Pavarotti "pavarot-tay" - what is that?  Get over yourself dear, you sound ridiculous.

And while there was singing, I also wondered if, maybe, I might suddenly smell some pipe tobacco.  Of course that's asking a lot, I know.  He could be watching this from anywhere.  Actually, he could be hanging out with Luciano instead, discussing other great tenors of the past and which arias were their favorites.  But still...I wanted something to happen.   

I've been watching Lisa Williams / Life Among the Dead.  I thing she's fabulous.  First - because she seems genuine.  And because she's got a great smile and funky hair and a cute little blond son and an English accent.  And because I have always been interested in the other side.  And according to Lisa, yes, they do communicate - though not always in the ways you expect them to.  So you have to be open to it, in whatever way it comes.

Well, I sniffed the air - quietly, so my husband wouldn't wonder what my problem was - on and off for a while.  Nothing.  I physically tensed as I tried REALLY HARD to - I don't know - squeeze pipe smoke from thin air through sheer force of will.  Didn't work.   

During one of the breaks, when the smiling, unblinking, fund-raising folk returned, waving CDs and DVDs, I went upstairs to move our son out of our bed and into his own.  He falls asleep on our bed because if both kids go to bed in the room they share, neither one falls asleep.  So this is how we're doing this for now.  It can't go on forever.  My son is five and a half, and growing taller by the minute, it seems.  It's a production picking him up off of the bed - sound asleep, so he weighs twice what he weighs when he's awake.  I lean in and hug him to me and then bend my knees a bit and lean backward to shift his weight onto me instead of the bed, and then straighten up so I don't fall over backwards.  I lug him as gently as I can from our room down the short hall to the kids' bedroom, trying not to whack one of his dangling legs against the door frame in the process.  Then I heave him up so he's somehow horizontal in my arms and then gently - in theory - set him down on the bed.  Cover him with the sheet and blanket and comforter, kiss him on the cheek, whisper "I love you" in his ear.  Sometimes he stays right where I put him, other times he sits up and slowly lays back down against the pillow, rearranging himself into a more comfortable position than the one I dumped him in, or he sometimes  mumbles or babbles in his sleep. 

So I got him settled in and whispered "I love you" and kissed him and was on my way toward the door when he spoke - perfectly clearly, as if he was awake, except that his eyes were closed.

And he said "I always love you."

I was so focused on not waking him or his sister up that what he said didn't really hit me until I was sitting on the couch watching the last portion of the concert, where all three tenors are on stage for that one grand and glorious and fun medly of opera and musical theatre and folk songs. 

And then I suddenly thought - huh?  What did he say? 

He said "I always love you." 

Not "I will..." or "I have .... loved..."  - future or past...

It was more like "I do" - something constant, in the present - in the ever-present tense.  The always.

And I watched the remainder of that concert lying on the couch, snuggled under a blanket, smiling.  I felt...happy.  I didn't feel sad at all.  My nose refused to prickle; my eyes would not cry. 

And - that's a good thing, I think. 

I don't believe we are supposed to cry forever.  I think we are supposed to live our lives - really live them - not wasting a single moment if possible.  I think that is the best way to honor those we have lost.  "Every day an adventure," as Grandad was wont to say.  Our time here is precious.  It's wrong to waste a minute of it.  I think we are supposed to love and cherish those around us - hug our loved ones tightly - and work hard and play hard and laugh and yes, remember, and move purposefully toward our destinations, wherever and whatever they may be.

Sure, maybe my son saying what he said, that way, that night, was a coincidence. 

But I don't believe in coincidences.

I do, however, believe love is endless.

Always.

 

In the Cookie Jar: Pfeffernusse

Pfeffernusse translates as "pepper nuts," which is pretty much on the money.  Ground pepper is one of the ingredients, and the finished products sort of, now that I think about some of the items on my recent cookie sheet, resemble acorns.  Kind of.  Anyway, they're hard.  Like nuts.  And rocks, actually.  But nuts are a bit more biter-friendly.  And they probably taste better, too.

First, the ingredients: 

1/2 lb sugar

2 eggs

1  1/2 tsp baking soda

finely grated zest of half a lemon

4 1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ground pepper

1/2 lb flour

brandy

You might wonder about some of the measurements.  Actually, the original recipe was a combination of pounds and grams.  My late mother-in-law, Elsa, converted grams into teaspoons.

Shall we proceed?

Stir sugar and eggs 1/2 hour.  Really, that's what it says.  I'm saying - it's an old recipe.  No hand-held mixers, no KitchenAid stand mixers, no food processing.  Just bowls and wooden spoons.  That's how you did it.  But it's okay to skip that bit of authenticity in favor of time saving measures.  So instead, beat the eggs and sugar together until light in whatever way you want to.

   

In a separate bowl, mix together all the remaining ingredients EXCEPT the brandy.  That's for later.

And then add the dry goods to the egg/sugar mixture...

...until combined.  But don't overdo it.  You're making a cookie, not a loaf of bread.  No need to get the gluten all excited.

Now you want to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board.

Hey...what are those little things in the back there?

Oh...you mean these?

These are one-of-a-kind pfeffernusse tools.  Elsa's father made them.  In front is a little wooden matchstick sliced into a blunt point at one end and marked (on the left) at the quarter inch mark.  That's how thick you want to roll the dough.  It's hard to read, but the word "pfeffernus" is written on the stick as well.  Behind that is a part of a little tin container that held Herb-Ox bouillon in some form or other.  He cut the tin down to size and as you can see, "pfeffernus" is written on that as well.

There are more of these match sticks for the other cookies we will be baking this holiday season.  But I think my favorite item is this tiny cutter.

For those of you who don't have an old Herb-Ox tin container to trim down... the diameter is about 3/4 of an inch.  If you don't have a round cutter that small, GET ONE!  No, you can use something a little bigger - but use the smallest size you possibly can (you don't want english muffin-sized pfeffernusse...someone could break a jaw).  If you end up making them larger than the 3/4 inch size, you'll need to adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Okay, so we've got our special tools, and we've got our dough.  Now you need to roll it out until it's about a quarter inch thick...

Now you take your pfeffernusse cutter and start cutting out little circles of dough, like so:

 

Place the tiny cookies on a parchment-lined sheet pan. 

You should dip the cutter in flour every couple of circles, so the dough doesn't stick too much.  Sometimes no matter what, you just need a bit of help getting it dough to come out...

You can re-roll the dough a few times, in order to get as many little circles of dough out of that batch as possible.

Yes, it can be exhausting work...

...but keep going, you're almost done for now.

Set the pan aside in a cool place for 12-24 hours.

I let mine sit over night.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 300 F.

And here's where the brandy comes in.  You don't need much.  Pour a little bit into a bowl and lightly brush the tops of the cookies with the brandy.  I believe that what it does is moisten the dried top surface of the cookie, allowing the cookie to soften a bit and pop up and take on that round nut shape.  But then, I could be doing it completely wrong and maybe they're really supposed to resemble pecans.  Probably not.

Now, just pop the pan in the oven and set the timer for 25 minutes.  Besides baking them, you're also drying them out, so you want the tops to feel firm, rather than mushy, when you check them at this point.  If they need to go longer, let them.  If you're not sure, another five minutes won't harm them.

When they're done, they will look more or less like these:

I say more or less because, well, mine still don't look consistent.  Some are nicely domed, others look like that little guy in the middle there...what happened to him?  Nothing good....

These, on the other hand, look a bit better to me -

- nicely proportioned, I think.

But no matter how they look, they will all taste good.  They should be dry and crunchy and spicy little bites.   If you're a fan of gingersnaps, you'll probably like these, too.

The recipe makes about 9 dozen.  I only bake one batch and I have more than enough to give away and to keep.

Have fun!

Do Intentions Count?

Well, I sincerely meant to write about either springerle or pfeffernusse last night, but clearly that didn't happen.  After the kids' swim class I baked off all the springerle that had been sitting out since I pressed and cut them the night before.  And they came out better than I expected, some of them.  That's pretty typical for me - I think "oh this is the worst I've ever done" and then, well, no, not yet.  Keep trying, you'll hit your worst eventually.

And then after all the cookies were baked and cooled (and a couple sampled, because, of course, you have to) and packed away, I had dinner and watched a bit of TV with my husband and then got sidetracked by what I was watching, and next thing I knew it was nearly time to go to bed.

So I do apologize.

And this morning - just not enough time to do a recipe justice, so yet again, I am putting off the writing.  Tonight I will roll out and cut AND bake the lebkuchen, so not sure if I'll get to write anything tonight, either.  But Wednesday night I will NOT be baking anything (I think) and hopefully I can catch up on all this.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a lot of pans of springerle waiting to be baked:

Well, except for the top two pans on that rack.  The top one is an experiment - two nations merging: lebkuchen biscotti.  More on that when I write about lebkuchen.  And below that - the pfeffernusse that, when I took the picture, hadn't been baked yet.  So this must have been Sunday night....

Anyway, thus began my baking.  So much more to do, and so little time because I'm stuck at work all day staring at my computer screen with very little to do now that I've trained some other people to do what I do.  I am not sure what my purpose is there, now, but apparently it is to take up space.

I do that pretty damn well.

 

It's That Time Again

Yesterday I "officially" (like that matters to anyone but me) began the Baking Of The Christmas Cookies.

I'll post more on that tonight, once I've got the rest of the pictures I want to use.

But for now...

Remember these cookies?  Well, I had some leftover dough that I wanted to bake off, since otherwise it would make its way to the back of my fridge and not be seen again until springtime.

And I'd been thinking about those stained glass window cookies you make by crushing candy (lifesavers or other similar candy) and sprinkling that in the center of a cookie outline, and baking that.  Most of the ones I've seen are simply that - an outline with a pretty color in the center.  And there's nothing wrong with that - I think they're pretty.  They don't appeal to me as a cookie, to eat, but I still think they're pretty to look at and might make a lovely ornament for your tree.

Anyway, while I was at work on Friday - yeah, Friday, wallowing in my post-turkey have-to-work misery, I had a little part of my brain busy at work with this stained glass thing.

And I thought, also, about the woman who cuts my hair.  Her name is Roberta, and she's an artist.  No, really.  She was a graphic artist, and she has recently been taking courses in stained glass work.  And the windows at the salon she co-owns are adorned with these beautiful stained glass images of fish and seahorses and starfish - in keeping with the ocean-side location.  They're gorgeous.  She designed them and made them and I keep thinking of them.

So I thought, in my copycat way, why not do something like that with cookies?  I figured I'd start small, and just do a little experiment with the rest of that gingerbread dough.  Maybe little fish bowls with little gingerbread fishies swimming around in blue jolly rancher water.

So that's what I did.  And here they are.  My stained-glass fish bowl experiments:

Kind of cute, huh? 

They were fun.  There are things I learned from the experiment, things I'd do differently next time, etc. 

As far as eating them, well, my son and the kid across the street didn't like them, but my daughter and my husband did.  I haven't tried them, actually, but I know my taste preferences, and I don't think I'd enjoy them either.  If you're gonna have candy, have candy.  If you're gonna have a cookie, have a cookie.  Plus, I'm just not really nuts about hard candy anyway. 

These hard candies, by the way, were blue jolly ranchers - THIS shade of blue, or close to it.  But in the baking process, they became greenish.  Interesting.

Anyway, I've got to go now, but I'll be writing probably tonight about the first batches of cookies I've made - namely, Pfeffernusse and Springerle.

Thursday

My sister told me she read somewhere that on Thanksgiving, people consume, on average, 5000 calories.

I think I was somewhere above that average. 

Alex was in heaven.  This year, what with studying about the Pilgrims and the Indians, and King George and turkey and cranberries and all that, AND with not one, but TWO Thanksgiving feasts this past Tuesday - one at his kindergarten class and one at daycare, not to mention all the construction paper Thanksgiving-related artwork and projects that he's been bringing home for the last week and a half, AND, his very first performance in a musical.  Okay - the kids were dressed in Pilgrim and Indian construction paper costumes, and they sang a couple of songs and then, standing in a row, recited a piece about Thanksgiving.  Alex's line was "oysters and clams, tummies growling" - and then he held up a sheet of paper with a picture of oysters and clams on it.

Bill said Alex did really well.  He was ready to go with his line, spoke up loudly and clearly.  My little boy.  I wish I'd been there, but I was at work.  Julia was there, though.  And Bill said at one point another little kid was supposed to say his line but apparently forgot it and so there was a great silence of collectively held parent breath...and Julia...Julia...well, she chose that exact moment to, um, pass gas.

Yep.  Julia punctuated the silence.

Anyway, Alex's favorite part of Thanksgiving is, if you ask him, "The Feasts!" And so he was ECSTATIC when it was time for dinner at my parents' house yesterday.  Yeah, yeah, he had fun playing with Julia and his cousins, but when it was time for The Feast, he couldn't get to the table fast enough.  Want some turkey?  "Oh yes!"  Stuffing?  "I LOVE stuffing!  It's my most favorite thing!"  No mashed potatoes though - he doesn't like them.  Green beans - okay.  Brussels sprouts sauteed with pancetta?  Okay.  The biscuits that his cousin Natalie baked (Yay Natalie!), YES!  And - the most surprising part - "can I have more of that pink stuff?"  It wasn't pink, it was red.  My mom had made a cooked cranberry relish, and Alex LOVED it. 

And then - as suddenly as he had started, he put down his shovel and said he was done.  Probably because Julia had already left the table and was playing somewhere and he didn't want to miss out on anything. 

But then dessert time rolled around, and we all rolled our bloated selves back to the table to have pie.  He had some of each, but the best part was when I asked my Dad what kind of pie he wanted - not that I needed to - and before Dad could answer, Alex hollered out "Wait!  I know what kind!  SQUASH! Because I know that's your favorite kind!"  Which, of course, it is.

So then, after sitting around groaning about the pie we'd just eaten, and talking and laughing and groaning some more, while the kids went and played or hung out outside in the back of my dad's pickup, we started gathering our things together and getting ready to head home.

And then Alex appeared again.  "Where's the pie?"  We put it away.  It's going to stay at Grammy and Papa's house.  "But...but I'm HUNGRY!" 

The whole ride home "Mommy, I'm HUNGRY....Mommy, I'm SO hungry...." and on and on.  Like he was absolutely STARVING.  Because, though he'd been enthused about dinner, he only ate a little of it (except the cranberry stuff) so he could go play.  And now, right when it was time to leave, he wanted to eat again.  He groaned in agony for half the ride home.  And once home? 

The newly traditional can of spaghettios and meatballs was opened and heated and shared by the little hungry boy and the little hungry girl. 

And they were very thankful.

Sunrise and Fog - Thanksgiving Morning 2007

 

I.Q.

Yesterday I was bored at work so I went online and took an IQ test.

I got both letters right.

(ba-dum ching)

Happy Thankgsiving to all of you!  Have a wonderful day!

Cakes - Natalie's First Birthday - 1996

I have no notes on this one, and I'm thinking it might not even be chronologically correct in my little photo album of cakes...but oh well. 

We skip ahead a few years to my niece's first birthday.  I used a Wilton teddy bear pan that we must have borrowed from someone because I don't have it here.  I think it may have been borrowed from Beth...Beth?  That sound right?  Mere, do you remember?

Anyway, the cake pan came with pictures of suggested decorating themes...I think you could decorate the bear as a cheerleader, or, as in this case, a ballerina.  I don't remember the other choices.  My sister went with the pinkest, girliest one because, well, she had a girl!

Somewhere I have pictures of Natalie - bald little Natalie - with pink frosting on her face and her mouth and eyes wide open in surprise or delight or a sugar rush.  Very cute. 

I think the cake was chocolate...if my sister was choosing the flavor, then it was definitely chocolate.

Gee, this is a really exciting and informative post, isn't it?

That could be because I had some sort of snobby aversion to the cake pan - not just this one but any character cake pan.  I don't know - I get weird like that at times.

But anyway - there you go.  I'm looking ahead at the next couple of pictures, and one of them is DEFINITELY way out of order here.  Oh well.  I will just follow along anyway.  Even though it will bother me.  I'm so easily bothered....