-- Being the combination of math genius and detail-oriented cook that I am, I doubled a recipe calling for 1.5 cups plus 1 tablespoon of flour to 2 cups plus two tablespoons. The dough has to set in the fridge for a while, and when I removed it after two hours I realized it wasn't as stiff as it ought to be, but I attributed that to inadequate chilling. When I removed the first two trays--32 cookies--from the oven, they were flat as nilla wafers. Flat flat flat, flatter than the islands of chocolate chips. I gave up in disgust and went to bed pouting. Overnight I realized what I had done, so in the morning I was about to put another cup of flour to the remainder of the dough when I brilliantly realized that I was no longer dealing with the full measure of ingredients. So I added 3/4 cup of flour, and the rest of the cookies turned out very well. Not perfectly, because I should have added only 2/3 cup. They tasted right and had the right texture, but they were a little paler than they should have been.
-- I added any flour to a dough that was, if not as stiff as it should have been, still pretty stiff after a night in the fridge, with my new KitchenAid mixer. In nickel pearl, because how well it goes with the granite, tile, paint, and stainless steel is a vital component in my lurf of this thing. Its only fault is that the blade aligns so closely with the bowl that it snaps chocolate chips into even chippier pieces. So far I have made cookies, the same recipe, twice. I have bananas waiting to become banana bread, and RDC is going to make bread, and it is so pretty I want it on the counter all the time.
-- But we don't have enough counter space for that. If we ever build a breakfast nook, though, it might have to be out all the time. Or I might have to buy a different one, cobalt blue, for the breakfast nook. Then I'll buy a lavender one for the bedroom and three green ones for the dining and living rooms and RDC's office.
-- At the first meeting of Scarf's new bookclub, talking about influential books, I opined how messed up my generation was by V.C. Andrews. Kal, being several years younger, had never even heard of her (it, the writing corporation). I just lent her my 25-year-old copy of Flowers in the Attic, spine broken about halfway through (at the Christmas party, nowhere smutty), on the other side of yellow with age, held together with rubber bands. She asked! I am lisa, bringer of corruption.
-- Also recently in conversation, Ellen Tibbets, The Champion of Merrimack County (compare and contrast this obscure OOP book with The Mouse and the Motorcycle, even though the titular champion is a bicyclist), The Outsiders, and Look Through My Window.
-- Yesterday marked my eighth anniversary at NCSL.