After reading Sundry’s entry on Friday, I decided I’d give her cookie recipe a try.
I made them, and mine came out looking kind of different than hers. Go look at what hers look like, at the bottom of that entry.
This is what mine look like:
They have an almost cake-like consistency, and they were a BIG hit with Fred. He even said that he likes them more than my stand-by best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever.
I don’t know how it is that my cookies turned out so differently from Sundry’s – the only thing I can think of is that I used a couple of eggs I’d frozen a month or so ago and then thawed. I’m certainly not complaining – the cookies are really good, and I almost don’t want to send half the batch to Fred’s mother tomorrow.
I think I’m going to try making another batch with thawed eggs and see if they still come out the same. My concern is that I did something of which I’m unaware while I was mixing the cookies, threw some mystery ingredient in there, and that I’ll never get the same result again in my life.
It was kind of a cooking-themed weekend for me. We’re giving Fred’s niece and nephew jars of habanero jam, hot sauce, and money for Christmas. Fred’s made cherry-habanero, strawberry-habanero, and blackberry-habanero jam in the last couple of weeks. I made a batch of habanero hot sauce on Saturday and then made my first batch of raspberry-habanero jam on Sunday. Fred usually makes the habanero jam, but if I want to get the 300 habaneros out of my freezer – and I DO – then I’m going to have to take over making the jam and hot sauce because Fred doesn’t have the inclination to spend his evenings making jam.
Once Christmas is past, I’ll probably gear up the jam-making in earnest and I plan to start experimenting with sugar-free jam. Hopefully that goes well – it’s a little weird to make things that you can’t really taste-test without your lips falling off. Fred’s my taste-tester, and he pronounced my habanero hot sauce and my raspberry-habanero jam to be “not bad.”
I’ve been using Blogrolling to organize my Blogs I Read list, but since I can’t log into Blogrolling because they’re taking forever to redesign it, or whatever (I lack the interest to give the Blogrolling page any more than a cursory glance), I’m looking for something else to use instead.
Suggestions? The simpler to use, the better. Simple to use and free is particularly good.
The handyman Fred found in the yellow pages showed up on Saturday – when it was pouring down rain – to install the storm door on the back of the house. He did it pretty quickly, and he did a great job. It is absolutely amazing, the difference between having a screen door and having a storm door. Saturday night after the storm moved through, the temperature dropped into the 30s. When Fred got up Sunday morning, he opened the back door and collared up the cats. When I came downstairs a few hours later, you totally could not tell at ALL that the back door was open. It wasn’t until I stepped into the laundry room that I could feel that it was slightly cooler than in the rest of the house.
I’m eager to see what’ll happen to our electric bill, if there’ll be a noticeable drop next month. I’m hoping there will be – and for that matter, I imagine our electric bill in the summer will drop as well, since we’ll leave the storm door in place to keep from cooling the entire outdoors with our air conditioning.
Last night, we had our first successful night where the kittens had access to the rest of the house all night long. Saturday night we attempted it, and I woke up around 10:30 to hear a banging sound. I got up to investigate, and all four kittens were in the foster room, watching Tommy smack one of those plastic tubes that has a plastic ball inside. I lured Tommy out and closed the door to the kitten room. They stayed in there until 3:00 Sunday morning, when Lem started banging on the door (I’m pretty sure it’s Lem, since he’s always the one who comes shooting out the door when I open it).
Last night went okay. For most of the night I had Delmar curled up against my throat and Lem curled up against my back, and have I mentioned that kittens are WARM? I’m not complaining, though, believe you me. At one point I had all four kittens, PLUS Miz Poo, PLUS Tommy on the bed with me, and Lem smacked at Tommy (he’s a scrapper, that Lem) and Tommy rolled Lem over and bit his neck, and there were squeals of rage, and I finally grabbed the can of compressed air off the bedside table and shot a blast of air, and all the cats scattered long enough for me to get back to sleep.
Stinkerbelle has started spending a lot of time around the kittens. If I go upstairs during the day, she’s usually hanging out on my bed with the kittens. I’ve never actually seen her playing with them, but she’s shown an interest in them ever since they started spending time outside the kitten room.
Delmar has a complaint.
More pics over at Love & Hisses.
Have you ever seen such a happy Newt?
Previously
2007: I expected to read “And after we had fabulous chocolate crepes for dessert, we moved on to Bob’s house for the key party to end the night on a high note.”
2006: It burns, Jane! The applique, IT BURRRRRRRRNS!
2005: I’m a creature of habit, what can I say?
2004: No shit, Matt. Ya think? Ya think she might like to eat?
2003: “You are NOT allowed in Maine!” I informed him.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Except for world peace and all that. Yadda, yadda.
1999: No entry.