Reading: Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

Christmas: cookies

Learning: icing cookies might not be worth it.

Moving: 3 mile walk

Listening: (Friday) Peter Gabriel, So, Passion, Us, Live

Viewing: (Friday) "Grosse Pointe Blank," and today, magpies and a storm front

18 December 1999: my Shadow puppy

When am I going to get over that dog? JPS was born this day in 1977. No dog, save Odysseus's, ever lived 20 years, let alone 22. I'm not going to check Guinness. I mean what I mean.

I never wrote about that. Months ago a book caught my eye in the 'brary; I flipped through it but knew it would be too wrenching to read all of: a collection of authors writing about dogs. I suppose most wrote about their own, but Richard Adams, whose The Plague Dogs I attempted to read for Watership Down's sake but could not, wrote about Odysseus's dog. I don't remember now if Adams gave him a name; I think Homer didn't. Anyway, this dog has been waiting 20 years, the past several on a dung heap, for Odysseus to come home. The dog is the first to recognize the homecomer, but recognizing his master is the last thing he does. Like Jefferson and Adams each waiting for July 4th to die, the dog has managed 20 years only by strength of his hope. Hope fulfilled, he dies. Homer goes into no detail, but Adams gets into the dog's head as he reminisces about how Odysseus trained him as a puppy then left him to guard Telemachus. Now the dog just waits, and then he sees, walking near, his dear old master returning, and in his joyful recognition is cut off mid-sentence--because he dies.

No wonder I didn't mention it. Stupid Homer.

Anyway, not that I'm bitter about someone who was blind and died 2900 years ago on another continent or anything.

Over the past few days I've made four batches of cookies for a party tonight. I don't think four batches were indicated, and they certainly weren't requested, but I'm so glad of the excuse to bake.

The snowballs I made two weeks ago are gone, of course, so I had to make more:

 

.5 cup butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 c granulated white sugar
2 c sifted flour
4 eggs, room temperature
2 t baking powder
.5 t cinnamon
.25 t salt

Chocolate Snowballs

Melt butter and chocolate in double boiler. (This recipe is so antiquated no one had a microwave yet, and I still haven't.) Remove from heat and allow to cool. Pour into bowl, then combine with sugar and flour, add other dry ingredients and then the eggs, one at a time. Refrigerate four hours or overnight. Form into balls 1" in diameter and roll through confectioner's sugar. Bake 350 degrees for less than 15-18'.

I never make the balls that big or bake them that long. Also I've never modified this recipe for altitude. When CLH lived in Aspen, another 4000 feet higher than Denver, she didn't either and hers always came out fine, better than mine a mere mile high. Being the younger sister is such a gyp. Or whatever that is when it's not linguistic prejudice against the Roma.

I have noticed that in Denver's dryness this get too crunchy too soon. A hotdog bun in the Tupperware with the cookies fixes that--the cheaper the bread, the more water content, the better it works.

 

3 c flour
2 t powder
.25 t salt
.5 c shortening
.5 c butter
3 oz cream cheese
1 c gran. sugar
2 egg yolks
2 t vanilla
1 t lemon or oj

Cream Cheese Cookies

Sift flour, powder, and salt together. Cream shortening, butter, and cream cheese until light. Gradually add sugar and continue beating until fluffy. Beat in yolks, vanilla, and juice. Add flour mixture in thirds, beating well afterward. Fill cookie press, press onto sheet with 1.5" between shapes. Bake 13' at 350 degrees.

This recipe doesn't mention food coloring, which to me is the point. What's Christmas without garish blue camels? I was so bored by this point that I separated the dough into only two bowls, made one green and the other red, and pressed out green trees and red dogs. No camels. Some year I'll make Lucky Charms cookies if I can remember the colors and shapes. I've forgotten all my vital Saturday morning trivia.

 

3 oz bittersweet chocolate
.75 c butter
.75 c sifted confectioner's sugar
.25 c unsweetened cappucino mix
1 large egg
1 t vanilla
2 c flour
>1 c pecans, almonds, or hazelnuts.

Mochaccinos

I have no idea what cappucino mix is, sweetened or no. Last year I resorted to a small jar of instant coffee, and this year, still not having discovered this substance and the instant still in the cupboard, well, I used it again. A bit, melted in a millimeter of water in a coffee cup. Who says I don't have culinary ingenuity? And don't bother with pecans or almonds. Use hazelnuts. After all, with which nut is coffee best flavored?

Melt chocolate. [This recipe doesn't say how: it's new enough that a microwave is a given.] Cream butter until light. Add sugar and cappucino and beat until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. While chocolate is still warm, beat it into the creamed mixture. Add flour and nuts and beat until blended and smooth. Press dough onto sheets with 1" between. Bake 8-10' at 375 degrees.

You've got to reduce the nuts to powder or bits will jam the cookie press. I use a food processer and then pan the result. I use a perforated serving spoon and pretend I'm at Sutter's Mill. Also the nuts should be powder because larger chunks make the finished chocolate cookie look like you forgot to clean up after your dog.

This is a powdery cookie and best eaten dunked into coffee, cocoa, or cider.

 

Chocolate Cookies

I gave this recipe last year. Icing these fuckers this year tried the very last of my patience, because I wanted to do it fast fast fast, like Mr. Wolf, but I had no one for brain detail. That's two "Pulp Fiction" references in two days. Time for a new movie. What I mean is that the tubes of icing were empty enough that I wanted vise grips to squeeze them, and they didn't stay rolled as a toothpaste tube has the decency to do, and I could either squeeze them with both hands or direct the output, but not both.

Why doesn't HTML support decimal tabs?

So. I'll make pesto later and I bought two kinds of tortellini, roasted garlic and cheese & herb. Blake will enjoy having some fresh basil and I bought plenty of piñon, just in case. CostCo has been stocking a large jar for the past several months and RDC has suggested it but I would each the little buggers by the fistful. Oh, but it's good fat. And I'll paint two canisters to receive the cookies.

Last night I went back to the mall again and found a gift for RDC's grandmother. I foresee a strained thank you and a prompt exchange, so I'd like to consult with DMB. I don't want to have to shop again. Also I found a gift for the exchange at the party tomorrow night.

Pasta, present, and pastry. I'm prepared.

Also I plan to have the house nice and clean for my prodigal husband's return and I want to go for a walk. Better get cracking.

---

Cracking after basic a journal check, anyway. Just the essentials. Just in case. Just hoping.

I had been reading on-line journals for more than a year and a half when I discovered Beth. For the two and a half years since then, she has been my favorite journaler, even when she wasn't writing publicly. So I was giving myself a stern talking to as I read today's links, today's entry, the rules for the award, and finally the list, and especially as my vertical scroll bar indicated the end of the page was nigh with no stroking of my ego in sight. But I was there I was I was I was!

What a great award, too. Best lexicon. I do like my own individual patois, and I like that someone else likes it. Beth likes me! Wheee! I was amused the reason she gave no link was that the site has gone kablooey. Kablooey was how I described it in a mass email sent from another account, and while I cannot, unfortunately, claim to have invented the word myself, I want to do my part to bring it back into common parlance. As I told her in my Miss America acceptance speech, words like kablooey have been sadly underused since Bill Watterson retired.

This is as good a time as any to explain that "swave" is a deliberate misspelling. A reader who points out my multiplous typos and misspellings (the next day, instead of giving me a month to reread myself) thought I wouldn't want to leave "suave" as "swave" until Aslan might rise again (alongside Arthur, according to C.S. Lewis, who thinks the sooner the better for ol' Wart). When I say "suave" I mean suave and when I say "swave" I mean a phonetic pronunciation, swayve, and I mean someone who so un-suave as not to know how to pronounce suave. So there. This I adopted from SEM and his swave and deboner gang of geeks. I didn't misspell debonair there either. Swayv and deBOHner. Get it straight.

---

I did go for a walk. I watched a pair of magpies harry a third, I watched a storm front roll in from the mountains, I hugged a tree. A good walk. Plus I got the mail. I got a box from Amazon addressed to me. I am officially not looking at my wish list again.

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Last modified 19 December 1999

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