Christmas!

What a wonderful time of the year... I am so happy to have been surrounded by family this Christmas! It really made me appreciate all the things that are good in my life. My side of the family came into town and we all enjoyed the celebration together with K's family! The best part about it all was how much EVERYBODY seemed to be enjoying themselves! Christmas day went so well that it was well past 11PM before anybody noticed the time! We ate a delicious prime rib roast, had cookies, played games, and watched 3 movies!!! Can you believe it? I can't either. Everybody was in the best of spirits.

I took about 200 pictures on Christmas Day and I couldn't be happier. I took my most portable setup, the camera flash on a light stand with a silver umbrella and a silver reflector. I'd have used soft white, but I knew I'd have to light large areas, so I needed all the reflected light I could get :) I'm still pretty happy about the pictures except for the fact that somebody's little sister decided to make silly faces in 90% of the pics she was in! And I forgot to set the flash to manual mode for a series of pics so the lighting is all over the place. But I can fix a lot of it in post processing. So all is well.

K and I spent about $200 over our budgeted amount for food this month, but man was it all so good! So many good cookies, breakfasts, and other meals left me wanting to eat more. Luckily, I was able to resist over-eating for several meals. I only went overboard on cookies. But hey, they taste the best when they're fresh :) I hope everybody's Christmas was as good as mine was. I am looking forward to a fun-packed New Year's celebration! Bring it on holidays!

Happy Camper

I now have 24 bratwurst waiting for me in the ISU MEATS lab freezer. I will soon be reunited with a long lost college love. [tears up] Now all I have to do is figure out how to eat a West Street Deli sandwich, chicken wings and cheese bread all in the span of about 3 hours and I'll be set!

I think I'm also going to stop by the good ol ECSS office and say hi to my former co-workers. Of course every single student that I worked with will be gone, and that is sad, but I'll still have the memories. They can never take away my memories.

I brought a ton of peanut butter cookies into work today. I haven't sent out a mass email though because I don't want people making a mess in my cube. I'll put the cookies out in one of the main asiles around 11 after Tony comes in because he gets first dibs for helping fix my TV problem.

What do you do when you're bored?

Bake cookies!!!!

...and post about it in your blog. I made some peanut butter cookies with a similar recipe to the molasses cookies Kristin and I made the other day. I think I'm going to bring these into work tomorrow. I made almost 50 and I still have a ton of dough left! I'm refrigerating the rest until Kristin comes back from Colorado.

Grandma's Best Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup white sugar
1 cup Butter Flavor Crisco
1 cup creamy peanut butter (Skippy)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups flour (1/4 cup more if needed)

1. Cream together the sugars, Crisco, peanut butter.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla.
3. Sift the dry ingredients together and add gradually until blended well.
4. Roll into tablespoon size balls.
5. Roll cookie dough balls into sugar.
6. Place on cookie sheets- do not mash with fork in normal "peanut butter cookie" fashion!
7. Bake at 350° oven for 11-13 minutes.

Soft Molasses Cookies
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon nutmeg

1. Cream together shortening and brown sugar.
2. Stir in egg and molasses and mix well.
3. Fold in dry ingredients and stir.
4. Cover and chill till firm (1-2 hours).
5. Preheat oven to 350°.
6. Roll dough into small balls and roll in white sugar.
7. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet.
8. Bake at 350° for 9-10 minutes.
9. Leave on sheet one minute until set.

Movies, Molasses, Marklar

Friday was the start of my movie marathon weekend. Well I only saw 3 movies, but that is more than normal! I went to see the Simposons Movie with Tony, Kristin, and her friend. It really didn't seem all that exciting and it seemed like just another episode to me. But I guess after writing a show for 15+ years you start to run out of ideas. It really is one of those movies you should see in the dollar theatre but not shell out the money for the full-price ticket. It was really short, but I was glad because we ended up going to the 11:00PM showing because of random scheduling mix ups along with people going to the wrong place and having to find the rest of the group. Before the movie I had a great piña colada at Bahama Breeze. And before that, I had cooked the chicken saltimbocca for Kristin and Tony to try. Even though I burnt the chicken it was still moist because of how it was cooked and everybody claimed to like it! Kristin even had a second piece (2 days later).

On Saturday I watched Cruel Intentions with Kristin. I remember liking that movie back in the day and I still do, although I have a more jaded viewpoint on the way love works now and I have a hard time believing that somebody could fall in love with another person in a matter of weeks. The movie still showed that you could change for the better and in the end, you'll get killed for it. It's those life lessons that I so adore! (sarcasm)

Molasses Cookies

Blueberry pancakes started the day on Sunday. Kristin came over to make them with me. We put the heat on too high though so they either burned or were slightly undercooked between the blueberries. Next time I'll do better, I swear! We also tried making a recreation of the Walker Brother's flapjacks by adding a lot of extra water to one pancake. It was thin, but it just didn't have the same flavor. I think it was most likely the pancake mix we were using because I remember having a slightly undercooked pancake made at the YMCA with very similar flavor. Walker Brother's probably adds a couple of secret spices to their flapjacks and I bet that's what made them taste so good! Later in the day I watched the Rocky Horror Picture show with Kristin. It was a weird movie, but I had to watch it because people referenced it all the time in college. I really don't know what was so awesome about it though. It kind of reminded me of Clockwork Orange, which is a very very twisted movie. You don't want to watch it.

While watching the movie, we made molasses cookies. Kristin has loved these cookies since childhood, and I really am starting to like them too. While making the cookies, I learned that Cracker Jacks are actually molasses flavored, and not just some crappy caramel flavor like I had thought as a kid. Anyway, Molasses cookies are delicious spice cookies made out of a bunch of tasty spices including, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and of course, molasses! These cookies get my stamp of approval! They kind of remind me of ginger snaps, and I probably have eaten them and mistaken them for ginger snap cookies. I've eaten 10 since making them last night. Good thing we made small ones because I'm sure I'd have eaten more mass-wise if they were bigger!