To Catalog or to Bake? A Libray School Dilemma

I was celebrating having President's Day off by working my cataloging homework. Sometime later, while agonizing about whether or not a certain author has an OCLC authority record and how to punctuate publication information, my brain said, "wouldn't you rather be baking?" What was I to do?

Abandon the computer and make chocolate chip cookies of course!

I only had half a bag of chocolate chips left from my chocolate chip banana bread, but I also had half a bag of white baking chips left over from my Christmas peppermint bark. Feeling adventurous after abandoning my punctuation dilemma (hmm... forward slash or semicolon?), I decided to make dark & white chocolate chip cookies. Walnuts are my go-to nut for cookies, but with only a teensy-weensy supply, it hardly seemed worth the effort of chopping. I dug through the cabinet a bit more (I am sans step stool, so this process involves me perching on the counter on my knees and burying my head in the cabinet) and found a bag of pecans. Perfect! The first batch just came out of the oven...delicious.

Dark and White Chocolate Chip Cookies with Pecans

2 ¼ cups all purpose, unbleached flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup softened butter (unsalted)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 oz. white baking chips (see this note about choosing white chocolate)
1 cup chopped pecans (I broke the pecans into small pieces, which worked just as well).

Pre-heat oven to 375°. Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl and set aside. Combine brown sugar, granulated sugar, softened butter, and vanilla; beat until smooth and creamy. Add eggs and beat until mixture becomes lightly colored and fluffy. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in semi-sweet and white chocolate chips and nuts. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto non-greased cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes. Refrigerate remaining dough while cookies bake. Yield approximately 2 dozen cookies.

After the first batch of cookies is ready, put the electric tea kettle to boil (you don't want to scald your tongue on melted chocolate). Enjoy a cookie with your choice of tea. I chose Trader Joe's Dutchess Grey.

Stylish Lunch Bags for a Girl-on-the-Go

I have high expectations for my lunch bags. They must be both cute and durable. I tried using those gift bags you receive when shopping, but my water bottle inevitably spilled or my fork punched a hole in the bottom. Either way, the result was a ruined lunch bag.

Several Christmases ago, my Aunt Lynne gave me a wonderful lunch bag. She purchased it at the British Museum gift shop, and it has an Egyptian motif. I have carried it almost every day since. It folds flat for storage, it can be washed with a damp sponge, and it is easy to carry. In short, an almost perfect match for the 'cute and durable' criteria, especially because it carries my water bottle and tea cup and still leaves room for lunch.

Being so well-loved, this poor lunch bag is being to wear around the edges, and I fear for its eventual demise. Also, it is not insulated, and I am only in one place long enough to refrigerate my lunch perhaps twice a week. For Valentine's Day, Pablo surprised me with a new, insulated, polka dot,  lunch bag that he picked out himself. I'm a lucky lady! It would not be a stretch to say that I adore everything about this lunch bag. It has a zipper, it is a great color, it has polka dots, it is insulated, and did I mention that it has polka dots...

I will still use my Egyptian lunch bag on certain days, especially if I need to fold it up and store it in my tote bag. There are some situations for which it is not appropriate to arrive lunch-bag-in-hand, even if you are but a harried graduate student.  But, for the every-day-dash, I will use my new polka dot bag. Like the Egyptian lunch bag, my water bottle and tea cup fit nicely, and now I can enjoy my string cheese as if it were fresh from the refrigerator. Life is good!

History of a Baguette, in three acts

Our household could survive on bread and cheese, with some fruit thrown in for nutritional purposes. This past week is a case in point.

On Monday I bought a baguette as part of our favorite Valentine's Day dinner: cheese fondue. Several years ago we decided that, instead of participating in the consumerist side of this Hallmark holiday, we would stay at home and enjoy each other's company at our own dining table. I received a fondue pot as a birthday gift from my sister and our menu has been set since then: a rich fondue of Emmenthaler cheese accompanied by blanched vegetables, apple chunks, and two kinds of bread. We drank a dry white wine (that also went into the fondue) and had salad on the side and lemon mousse for dessert.

Sorry, there aren't any pictures -- when the fondue is ready, you just dive in!

The problem with a baguette is that there's too much bread for two people. We never finish one before it gets hard and dry. This week I have been determined not to let that happen. So we had a nice light dinner on Wednesday evening: our favorite tomato soup along with a cheese plate featuring brie and pepper cheese (from Costco) and leftover Swiss from the fondue piled onto baguette slices.

No pictures of that, either, although J is a veritable master of the cheese plate.

Of course there was still some bread left over on Thursday, including about two cups of cubed baguette that hadn't made it into the fondue. I also had leftover veggies and cheese from earlier in the week. After a little web surfing I decided to combine them all into a savory bread pudding, cobbling a recipe together from a number of sources.

For the two of us, I put about four cups of bread cubes into a 1.5 quart casserole. I steamed the broccoli and cauliflower and put them on top of the bread. I made a custard of four beaten eggs, half a cup of milk, and half a cup of plain yogurt, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little Dijon mustard. I stirred about half a cup of shredded Swiss cheese into the egg mixture, then poured it over the bread and veggies. Then, since I had a little time, I covered the casserole with a small plate, weighted it down (with the peanut butter jar, if you must know) and let the ingredients get to know each other for about 20 minutes. I baked the dish, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. The key was to let it sit for a few minutes after it came out of the oven to give the custard a chance to firm up. I think it could have used more time in the oven, but it was very tasty as it was, and we had a lecture to get to.

If one didn't happen to have a refrigerator full of leftover fondue ingredients, I imagine this recipe would be just as tasty with any leftover vegetable and any type of cheese. It might even be better if one had some bacon to go in there. Next time we have a baguette...

Stirring the Peanut Butter

I have been putting it off for more than a week, but I finally pulled myself together and stirred the peanut butter this morning.

You know how it is: there's something you have to do, and you know it's going to be a good thing in the end, but the process itself is kind of a pain and so you put it off, and then it somehow becomes more intimidating and more daunting to follow through on the project.

Stirring the peanut butter is just one example. We prefer all-natural chunky peanut butter and we buy it at Costco in the giganto size, which makes it very affordable. However, as any connoisseur of natural peanut butter knows, the peanut oil separates from the peanut solids in storage, and must be re-incorporated before the peanut butter can be used.

When you are dealing with a veritable vat of peanut butter, this process is more complicated. First, before I stir I like to pour off most of the excess peanut oil. The shape of the container makes it almost impossible to do this without getting peanut oil everywhere. Then again, it is difficult to find an implement that is long enough to reach the bottom of the vat, and is just wide enough to displace the peanut butter for effective stirring. If you choose the wrong tool you can end up with peanut butter all over the place; worse yet, you could find dense, unspreadable clumps of ground-up peanut at the bottom of the container at the end of the month. (Or however long it takes you to get through a vat of peanut butter).

So I put it off, and J puts it off, because nobody wants to be responsible for peanut clumps. And then you wake up on a Friday morning wanting a bagel for breakfast, and you had cream cheese on your bagel last Friday because you didn't want to stir the peanut butter, and you finally get all Nike all over the place and Just Do It. And seven minutes later, as you are enjoying your bagel with crunchy peanut butter, you wonder why on earth you have been denying yourself peanut butter for all this time.

As I stirred the peanut butter this morning, I was thinking about the other things that I have been putting off. We have had several bags of castoffs waiting to be donated; I must have moved those bags from room to room half a dozen times in the past two months. I finally took ten minutes to make an itemized list for tax purposes, and dropped them off at the mission yesterday. Likewise, I just got around to seasoning the lovely crepe pan I received as a Christmas gift. It wasn't difficult, but I was supposed to fry up some potato peelings in a little oil and God forbid I should peel a potato for the purpose! We had mashed potatoes for dinner the other night so I saved a few of the peels and seasoned the pan right then and there -- it took all of ten minutes. Guess what? We had crepes for dinner yesterday. And they were very good!

I am really good at the "Wouldn't-it-be-nice-if?" part of life and not so great at the "Let's-make-it-happen" part. Even when I can overcome my chronic indecisiveness to get something started, my desire for a perfect outcome makes it difficult for me to enjoy the process. After all, what if I were to ruin the crepe pan in my attempt to season it?

This year, my resolution is to follow through with good ideas and the resolutions I have made in the past. Starting this weblog with Amanda S. is one part of that follow through, a commitment to myself to spend more time writing. Tackling my long-unfinished sewing projects is another. I want to be able to give myself an "A" for effort, and to enjoy the process regardless of the outcome.

Although there had better not be any clumps in the peanut butter...

Dreaming of Spring

If you live in the Midwest or the Northeast, then you understand what this winter has been like. If not, let me paint a picture for you. Six blizzards in as many weeks (fingers crossed- it looks like we get a reprieve this week). Snowdrifts are taller than I am, and the slightly warmer weather of yesterday and today has resulted in melting. Melting is good, you might say...but you would be mistaken. Now there are deep puddles of doom everywhere. Unlike normal puddles, the bottom of these puddles is sheer ice. Winter in Boston has been quite an adventure, and I am at the point where any temperature over 35° seems warm.

Now, I don't want to make it seem like the weather has been entirely bad. The fresh snow is beautiful, and the public transportation runs (mostly) smoothly even during the worst of the storms. I have snuggled with Pablo and George (husband and cat respectively) and drank endless mugs of hot chocolate. I have been resigned to winter's hold, because I am in Boston after all! But, I've broken in my snow boots and turned the calendar page from January to February. In my mind, the heart of winter, deep winter, as a colleague described it, is gone. Yesterday and today, I even felt a hint of spring warmth in the cold. So, I am closing my eyes and ignoring the snow drifts.

Instead, I am dreaming of spring in all of its glory. A spring with...

cherry blossoms (hopefully there are cherry blossoms in Boston too!)

From Sally's Garden in Bush Park, Salem, Oregon

and tulips

From the tulip beds in front of the Bush House, Salem, Oregon

 

If the sun was shining, and the flowers were blooming, I would stroll down the street in a flowery skirt and strappy, kitten-heeled, peep-toed shoes.

Instead, I'll pour another cup of Jasmine Green Tea, wrap my shawl a little tighter, and dream of spring, which is right around the corner.