Snickerdoodles

I made some cookies the other day. Yes, snickerdoodles, using this recipe, except the girls rolled half of them in the traditional sugar and cinnamon mixture, and half in a sugar and ground ginger mixture. Yum.

While I was making the dough, the 7yo begged me to let her eat some raw dough. I was extremely resistant because when I was little, my mother didn't want us to eat the dough. My memory is that she said the raw flour could give you worms. Since then, of course, there's been all kinds of raw egg prohibitions. I do seem to recall eating a little oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough with my roommates when I moved away from home. And I lived to tell the tale. I asked around (okay, I posted the question on facebook), and it was unanimous that I should, indeed, let the 7yo eat the dough. And so I did.

We also ate all the cookies.






Peace.

I called him Al Weisel

The internet is a strange bird.

Al Weisel was a good friend of mine in college. I completely lost touch with him and didn't know he blogged as Jon Swift (but that explains why I didn't find him when I googled in the past).

Jon Swift, aka Al Weisel

Al was on his way to his father's funeral in VA when he suffered 2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis. He had 3 major surgeries within 24 hours and sometime during those surgeries also suffered a severe stroke.

I gasped when I read my friend Libby on twitter today write that someone named Jon, aka Al, had died. I gasped again when I clicked the link and saw his picture, looking exactly the same as he did when he used to make fun of me for comparing beautiful moments in nature to paintings.





It's good to read that all who knew him as a blogger thought he was as sweet and funny as I did.


May he find his way to the Summerlands. May his friends and family find peace.


Update: I am finding comfort in reading others' remembrances of Al. Here is a collection of links to posts. This one is particularly beautiful, and articulates a lot of what I'm feeling for "my long lost pal."

The Art of Clutter

My alma mater used to have an annual book show, inviting students and alumni to contribute. Though there were books by Martha Stewart and Erica Jong on display, for the most part it was visual artists who contributed, so what was considered a book was loosely defined. I think this wooden box book was my best work for the series.

[Full disclosure: they may still have an annual book show, but I have not been invited. If I've been excluded, I blame the below self portrait that I sent as my contribution to a non-book gallery show in honor of the then new college president. It turns out they didn't hang the drawing because they thought it was too scary. It seems pretty unprofessional to me that they didn't let me know when they received the drawing that they didn't want to include it. It turns out they didn't anticipate my showing up for the opening. Oops. Well, we got it up in the show. At least for the few hours I was there!]

Anyway, back to the book.

I designed the box and a friend generously made it for me. For the pages, I made five. Each page represents a member of my family. I used objects collected from nature as well as treasures from my supply of clutter. I hadn't made anything like this before, and I haven't really since. I love it, though, and would like to try something like this again. So that's my excuse for keeping all various sorts of rusty things and ribbon around.

page 1

page 1, close up

page 2

page 2, close up

page 3

page 3, close up

page 4

page 4, close up

page 5

page 5, close up

Peace.

Lemon Pear Cake

I'm still going a little crazy baking, using up the lemons I bought.

I made this cake yesterday as a quick alternative to scones. As I've said many times here, I make biscuits a lot, and the scone recipe is pretty much a fancy biscuit recipe, so it's not hard. It's just messy.

For a quicker path to a coffee accompaniment, I followed the lemon scone recipe below, except instead of butter, I used a quarter cup olive oil and one egg. I mixed this in with the yogurt/milk mixture, before adding it to the dry ingredients. I also chopped up some pear to add to the dough. It looked like it could use a little more liquid, so I added the juice of half a lemon. I lowered the oven temperature to 375° for no real reason!

I melted a couple tablespoons of butter in the pan in the preheating oven, a la upside down cake. I did not add brown sugar to the butter, but you could. I assembled what few pear slices I had left in the bottom of the pan. Then I spread the dough on top of that. I baked it until it looked golden and it passed the toothpick test. Yum.

Lemon Ginger Scones, Part 2

I made lemon ginger scones last Thursday to say thanks to a friend for helping with my computer. They were so delicious, I made some more yesterday! I used this recipe, with slight modifications (surprise): I used about a tablespoon of fresh grated ginger instead of the crystallized ginger, and I used a yogurt/milk blend instead of buttermilk.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into pieces
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger, chopped into small pieces
• 1 large lemon, zest of
• 2/3 cup buttermilk

I also didn't bother with the egg wash because I'm not a fan of that sort of thing and I'm lazy. When I made them yesterday, though, I did make a simple lemon icing (powdered sugar & lemon juice). Yum. I also used the zest from two lemons this time, instead of one, to make them extra lemony. And next time, I will either use a lot more ginger, too, or perhaps skip the ginger and try some sort of lemon lavender scone. Or lemon blueberry. Lemon almond. And on and on.

Snow!

Finally, our very own Snowpocalypse!

I hope everyone is safe and warm. I know that some folks have lost electricity. Ours flickered, but never went out. We've got extra biscuits and cocoa, if you need some.


I'm glad we finally got a real storm. And now Spring is just around the corner.

Maybe I should rethink the hat...

Peace.

Rain or Snow?

I took this picture this morning when I had just come back from dropping off the girls at school. I like the way the hayed garlic row stands out. The dusting of snow has already melted in now, two hours later. The weather folks haven't yet determined whether we'll get rain or snow from the storm that's passing through this afternoon. Even though yesterday a 5yo friend and I spotted a bunch of crocuses, daffodils, tulips and hyacinths sprouting in the schoolyard flower beds, I still hope for some big snow before it's officially Spring. What a strange winter it's been, with Winter heading south for the winter.