I've moved my blog to lovingsixtyfive.wordpress.com
Same sort of content but a jazzier site. Will be taking wordpress classes on how to really razzle dazzle my (soon to be) jillions and zillions of readers. Exciting, eh?
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Sunday, April 2, 2017
I screwed up my cookie baking, and this is good because....
I really screwed up my last batch of chocolate chip cookies. This was SO wrong. Once upon a time I had amazing cookie baking tricks and a reputation to maintain. After a while baking chocolate chippers was like riding a bike. They were always awesome...
Until they weren't.
On March first I made our neighbor Brian, a batch of my Toll House cookies for his twentieth birthday. I've made them for him regularly and successfully in the nearly four years we've lived here.
But on March first something went horribly wrong. The cookies ran together in a big mushy mess. I managed to scrape them onto wire cooling racks, whereupon the middles dripped through the wires to the counter below. They were a dismal embarrassing failure.
I blamed it on humidity. I blamed it on the oven, the ingredients, the alignment of the stars. I blamed it on everything but human error. (ie myself)
I should have started over. Instead I chose to go with, "Well, it's the thought that counts!" When I was able to kinda' sorta' move from racks to platter I displayed the least unfortunate ones on top. Brian ate them without complaint, but Brian is twenty. Twenty year old boys eat everything without complaint.
Meanwhile my daughter, Mo---the cookie baking hot-shot show off---keeps posting Instagram photos of her baking products. Snickerdoodles, Toll House, Oatmeal Raisin, chocolate ones with sinfully delicious looking chunks. The pictures show perfectly browned, uniform French-bakery-shop-worthy beauties.
How is this possible? I'm the cookie person in this family, dammit.
Finally I broke down and confessed I had lost the touch. I asked Mo for advice.
"Are you using a cookie scoop, Mom?" .....huh?
"What about silpad matts?"....and those are? My ears translated that as "thilfad", then "willgab". She finally spelled it out "Stephen, Igloo, Lady, Patio, Alice, Deaf."
"Do you have half sheets?" This one I actually knew about from Ina Garten.
"Furthermore it's best to weigh ingredients rather than measure by cups---flour settles. A cup isn't always a cup. Oh by the way the best temperature is generally 360 degrees other than for chocolate chip" ....again, huh?
All in all I figured out I really don't know squat about cookie baking.
Immediately went to Amazon---bought the aforementioned scoop and silpads.
Today I decided to dive back into the cookie dough. Didn't have ingredients for chocolate chips, plus still too cowed by my recent failure.
Made peanut butter cookies instead. Even snuck some of Jim's closely guarded Dove Dark Chocolate mini candies. The results? Not bad. Not as gorgeous as Mo's though. Guess my next purchase is a scale for weighing the flour I can't eat. Celiac Sprue, no gluten allowed....which is a good thing because I shouldn't be eating cookies anyhow.
Check out these yummy confections. Yay me! No they aren't as uniform as Mo's, but I'm a beginner.
Until they weren't.
On March first I made our neighbor Brian, a batch of my Toll House cookies for his twentieth birthday. I've made them for him regularly and successfully in the nearly four years we've lived here.
But on March first something went horribly wrong. The cookies ran together in a big mushy mess. I managed to scrape them onto wire cooling racks, whereupon the middles dripped through the wires to the counter below. They were a dismal embarrassing failure.
I blamed it on humidity. I blamed it on the oven, the ingredients, the alignment of the stars. I blamed it on everything but human error. (ie myself)
I should have started over. Instead I chose to go with, "Well, it's the thought that counts!" When I was able to kinda' sorta' move from racks to platter I displayed the least unfortunate ones on top. Brian ate them without complaint, but Brian is twenty. Twenty year old boys eat everything without complaint.
Meanwhile my daughter, Mo---the cookie baking hot-shot show off---keeps posting Instagram photos of her baking products. Snickerdoodles, Toll House, Oatmeal Raisin, chocolate ones with sinfully delicious looking chunks. The pictures show perfectly browned, uniform French-bakery-shop-worthy beauties.
How is this possible? I'm the cookie person in this family, dammit.
Finally I broke down and confessed I had lost the touch. I asked Mo for advice.
"Are you using a cookie scoop, Mom?" .....huh?
"What about silpad matts?"....and those are? My ears translated that as "thilfad", then "willgab". She finally spelled it out "Stephen, Igloo, Lady, Patio, Alice, Deaf."
"Do you have half sheets?" This one I actually knew about from Ina Garten.
"Furthermore it's best to weigh ingredients rather than measure by cups---flour settles. A cup isn't always a cup. Oh by the way the best temperature is generally 360 degrees other than for chocolate chip" ....again, huh?
All in all I figured out I really don't know squat about cookie baking.
Immediately went to Amazon---bought the aforementioned scoop and silpads.
Today I decided to dive back into the cookie dough. Didn't have ingredients for chocolate chips, plus still too cowed by my recent failure.
Made peanut butter cookies instead. Even snuck some of Jim's closely guarded Dove Dark Chocolate mini candies. The results? Not bad. Not as gorgeous as Mo's though. Guess my next purchase is a scale for weighing the flour I can't eat. Celiac Sprue, no gluten allowed....which is a good thing because I shouldn't be eating cookies anyhow.
Check out these yummy confections. Yay me! No they aren't as uniform as Mo's, but I'm a beginner.
I took them to the Brian. He dove into the chocolate topped cookies first. My next
cookie baking extravaganza will be Mo's recommended salted peanut butter cookies. Find the recipe on smittenkitchen They are gluten free. Eeek....that could be a problem.
c
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Learning to Drive
When I was thirteen my father decided I should learn to drive. We had a 1959 Renault named "Fifi." Fifi was adorable. Three speed. She had a bit of trouble on an incline, but who cares.
Daddy drove us to the duPont Louviers parking lot on a weekend. The lot was empty.
Then he had me take the drivers seat and calmly explained how to manage the manual transmission. I lurched and stalled all over the lot.
But eventually I got it~That's when I became dangerous. Mother and Daddy would go to a party, I'd steal Fifi and go joy riding. Good new, that. It made stalking Carl Jacobson even easier.
I loved that car! By the time I had a legal license I drove her to school daily. Best friend Nora always knew when Fifi and I were half a block from picking her up. Fifi was marvelously loud.
I cut school in Fifi. Went to Washington, D.C. with my High School boyfriend, Greg. He was a terrible first boyfriend. (There won't be more about him on this blog since my blog is all about channeling positive energy. Negative energy Greg blocked from my brain.)
Once, while riding down the Main Street with Gina Jackson, we actually traded seats at the speed of 30 miles an hour! She climbed over me from passenger side to drivers while I crawled under her. Happily we didn't crash.
Gina's car was a NEW blue opal. Her Dad worked for a car company so she got new cars all the time. She later got a bright orange brand new Vega. My daddy believed in used cars. "They depreciate by a third the minute you drive them off the lot." Mostly what he said I believed.
Upon college graduation my parents offered to buy me my very own first car. I looked at loads, Daddy stated, "They are all yours until you buy one". He was pushing me toward a canary yellow Karmann Ghia.
Instead I chose Gina's now used orange Vega. What a dope...hard to come up with a "....but that's good because" about an orange Vega.
Karmann Ghia above. Cute huh? Even cuter in canary yellow.
Orange Vega, not so much.
Another friend drove a 1950's Mercedes Benz. This was in 1969. The back seat was loose. Everytime she hit the brakes all of us back there would be slammed into the rear side of front seat.
Her parents had added a big odd air-conditioning unit between passenger and driver. No other friend I knew had automobile a/c. Very plush.
My sister's first car after college was a 1965 navy blue Chevy, Malibu. I wrecked it while singing along to "Gitarzan" and fooling around with a car full of kids. Daddy replaced it with a 1969 Cutlass 442.
He was such a cowboy in a muscle car. His favorite muscle car activity was pulling to the side of the road, standing on the accelerator and counting how fast that buggy got from zero to sixty. When he leaned on the 442's gas the whole front of the car lifted into the air.
I was forbidden from driving it. I suppose wrecking my sister's first car played a part in that. So I back to tooling around in Fifi.
Remember the song "Gitarzan?" Lyrics follow---climb into your vintage car and sing your lungs out!! You're welcome.
Daddy drove us to the duPont Louviers parking lot on a weekend. The lot was empty.
Then he had me take the drivers seat and calmly explained how to manage the manual transmission. I lurched and stalled all over the lot.
But eventually I got it~That's when I became dangerous. Mother and Daddy would go to a party, I'd steal Fifi and go joy riding. Good new, that. It made stalking Carl Jacobson even easier.
I loved that car! By the time I had a legal license I drove her to school daily. Best friend Nora always knew when Fifi and I were half a block from picking her up. Fifi was marvelously loud.
I cut school in Fifi. Went to Washington, D.C. with my High School boyfriend, Greg. He was a terrible first boyfriend. (There won't be more about him on this blog since my blog is all about channeling positive energy. Negative energy Greg blocked from my brain.)
Once, while riding down the Main Street with Gina Jackson, we actually traded seats at the speed of 30 miles an hour! She climbed over me from passenger side to drivers while I crawled under her. Happily we didn't crash.
Gina's car was a NEW blue opal. Her Dad worked for a car company so she got new cars all the time. She later got a bright orange brand new Vega. My daddy believed in used cars. "They depreciate by a third the minute you drive them off the lot." Mostly what he said I believed.
Upon college graduation my parents offered to buy me my very own first car. I looked at loads, Daddy stated, "They are all yours until you buy one". He was pushing me toward a canary yellow Karmann Ghia.
Instead I chose Gina's now used orange Vega. What a dope...hard to come up with a "....but that's good because" about an orange Vega.
Karmann Ghia above. Cute huh? Even cuter in canary yellow.
Orange Vega, not so much.
Another friend drove a 1950's Mercedes Benz. This was in 1969. The back seat was loose. Everytime she hit the brakes all of us back there would be slammed into the rear side of front seat.
Her parents had added a big odd air-conditioning unit between passenger and driver. No other friend I knew had automobile a/c. Very plush.
He was such a cowboy in a muscle car. His favorite muscle car activity was pulling to the side of the road, standing on the accelerator and counting how fast that buggy got from zero to sixty. When he leaned on the 442's gas the whole front of the car lifted into the air.
I was forbidden from driving it. I suppose wrecking my sister's first car played a part in that. So I back to tooling around in Fifi.
Remember the song "Gitarzan?" Lyrics follow---climb into your vintage car and sing your lungs out!! You're welcome.
Search Results
He's free as the breeze
He's always at ease
He lives in the jungle and hangs by his knees
As he swings through the trees
With a trapeze in his B.V.D.s
He's got a union card and he's practicing hard
To play, the guitar, gonna be a big star
Yeah, he's gonna go far
And carry moonbeams home in a jar
He ordered Chet's guitar course C.O.D.
Like A and E and he's working on be
Big W&W and R&B and even the chimpanzees agree
That someday soon he'll be a celebrity
Get it, get it, get it.
He's always at ease
He lives in the jungle and hangs by his knees
As he swings through the trees
With a trapeze in his B.V.D.s
He's got a union card and he's practicing hard
To play, the guitar, gonna be a big star
Yeah, he's gonna go far
And carry moonbeams home in a jar
He ordered Chet's guitar course C.O.D.
Like A and E and he's working on be
Big W&W and R&B and even the chimpanzees agree
That someday soon he'll be a celebrity
Get it, get it, get it.
Gitarzan, he's a gitar man
He's all you can stand
Give him a hand, gitarzan
He's all you can stand
Give him a hand, gitarzan
He's got a girl named Jane
With no last name
Kinda homely and plain
But he loves her just the same
Cause she kindles the flame
And it drives him insane
When he hears her say
She really does her thing
It's her claim to fame
Come on sing one Jane
Baby, baby, oh baby
Baby, oh baby
(How about that folks)
With no last name
Kinda homely and plain
But he loves her just the same
Cause she kindles the flame
And it drives him insane
When he hears her say
She really does her thing
It's her claim to fame
Come on sing one Jane
Baby, baby, oh baby
Baby, oh baby
(How about that folks)
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