Bonjour, mes petits fleurs! Or something like that, I don't actually speak French.
This is going to be a short one, because I am full of pepperoni pizza and sleepiness, and I have to be up in about five hours to go to Sainsburys, I promised I'd buy some piping icing, and I want another four T-shirts like the one I bought yesterday for £2.50 or some ridiculous price. It's cornflower blue, and absolutely the most comfy thing I've worn in months, and I've decided that this is what I'm wearing to sleep from now on. So I have to go back and get a bunch more of them.
I had a pretty good day today. The morning was a write-off, as most of my mornings are atm (although not yesterday), but this afternoon I made some phone calls that I'd been putting off, and then Mom and I made icebox cookies. That was difficult, but good. The dough we use is a real pain in the ass, you have to mix it up and then refrigerate it overnight, and then roll it out the next day, cut your cookies and bake. The real problem is that the melting point of this particular dough is very low, so once it's been out of the fridge for about five minutes it starts to go gooey and becomes impossible to work with, and you have to keep putting it back in (it also melts straight away if you have warm hands). It also sticks to EVERYTHING, including the rolling pin, but we managed to get around this by using wax paper. Oh, and if you dust your surfaces with flour to stop it sticking, the dough gets tough and the cookies aren't nice - but we managed to get around THAT by using powdered sugar instead. Aren't we inventive?
So yeah, the dough is a pain. I used it once before and the cookies didn't come out well - they were tough and dry, and I was absolutely crushed because it's the only recipe I have for rolled cookies, that you can use cookie cutters for, and I have SO many wonderful cookie cutters. For Halloween - the ones we used today - I have a bat, a ghost, a cat and a tombstone. For Easter I have a bunny face, and a couple of different flowers. For Christmas I have a holly sprig and a bell and some stars (also good for 4th of July and Thanksgiving) and possibly a couple more. And for Valentines' Day - oh man, Valentines' Day. A couple years ago Mom went really overboard buying Valentines stuff, and I ended up with a bunch of hearts in different sizes, plus a REEEEEALLY expensive set from a gourmet cooking shop, which had a L, an O, a V, an E, a cupid, a pair of interlocked hearts, a heart with an arrow through it, and Lord only knows what else. So yeah, I have a heap of cookie cutters, most of which are good quality metal ones that'll last me half a lifetime, and I'm always buying more - although unlike Mom, I usually buy mine one at a time - so I was pretty unhappy when the last sugar cookie recipe didn't work. I was not looking forward to having to pack away all those cookie cutters. But then today's recipe, despite being a pain in the ass, turned out quite well. After experimenting a bit, I found a way to roll the dough and use the metal fish slice that let me get the shapes up without breaking them or squishing them enough that the shapes were unrecognizable. The only one that really gave me problems was the cat - the legs and tail were so thin and spindly the dough wouldn't hold together. I did manage to keep the legs on most of them, but all the tails fell off. Guess they have to be Manx cats.
Happily, I can tell you they taste pretty awesome. I'm not so much of a decorated sugar cookie type person - I tend to like big chewy cookies, either of the peanut butter or the oatmeal-raisin varieties (or occasionally chocolate chip) - but they did taste good. They need a bit of brightness, though, so I have to go to Sainsburys to get some pipe icing, since I can't find my icing bag.
(The fact that I can also get T-shirts and scope out the adorable guy who gave me the most perfect smile yesterday...well, that's just the icing on the cookie, so to speak.)
So anyway. Yes. Good day. I didn't manage to carve the pumpkin that Mom wanted me to do, though. I need to do that tomorrow, because I went a bit overboard with pumpkins this year, and ended up with four instead of our usual two (or occasionally three, if I have a boyfriend that year). We also usually get little ones, and this year I ended up buying one little one, two medium ones and one that's actually pretty huge. Not huge compared to the ones you sometimes see at State Fairs, but certainly bigger than a basketball - perhaps twice the size.
At Sainsburys yesterday, they had these absolutely adorable ones called Munchkins, which were smaller than my fist. Not much good for carving, unless you're extremely good at it (which neither of us are) but so cute to look at. I managed to restrain myself, though. (Although there's always tomorrow.)
I wish I'd managed to get to Marshalswick to get some decorative gourds from the florists there, they always do nice ones for a reasonable price in Autumn. The ones in the supermarkets are ridiculous prices. I did get some nice Indian corn, though.
Oh, how I love Fall!
Hopefully it'll be bright enough tomorrow to take pictures of the cookies and pumpkins. And I'll post the cookie recipe when I get my hands on the cookbook.
Oh, the other nice thing - I finally managed to get to the bookshop on a Thursday morning, and that guy was there again. I didn't get to see much of him - he was working in the back room, and he only came out a couple of times to stock shelves - but when he came near me, and we were standing back to back, I got this rush of emotion from him. I can't even explain what emotion it was, exactly - sometimes they're like a jolt of electricity, and the shock of it prevents me from analysing it properly - but it was intense. I doubt that it was about me, but it still felt amazing. I can't explain what it is about him, but I just find myself wanting to be around him. It's not even a lust thing really, although he is attractive. There's just this yearning in me for intellectual and emotional stimulation that he fulfills, much in the same way that Kurisu-san does. (That's my redheaded musician, who I should be in class with this year, and I miss a great deal.) The only explanation that I can give is that some people feel things very strongly, and project them very strongly, and those people are like gravity to me. (Or more accurately, like magnetism or nuclear forces, since gravity's actually quite weak, comparatively speaking.)
Since I don't have pics of the cookies or pumpkins or Halloween decorations yet, here's a pic of the dress I was wearing when I met him. (He seemed to like it, or at least he kept looking at it.) [Whoops! Already posted the picture on the post I wrote about him. That's what I get for not looking ahead, I guess.]
Hope y'all are enjoying the Fall!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment