Baking Experiment Chronicles: Orange Cookies

Orange Cookies a la Fanny Farmer ca. 1979 with a few modifications

Set oven @ 375F.

Ingredients:
1/2 c olive oil (or butter, or vegetable shortening)
3/4 c brown sugar (recipe called for white but I had brown. So.)
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg*
1 tbsp fresh-squeezed orange juice + orange zest from half the orange for color
1 1/4c flour**
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

Topping:
Remaining juice from the orange--I juiced the whole thing and drank my surplus after this step was finished. Yum.
1 tsp-ish of sugar

Directions:
Cream together oil or butter and sugar. Beat in egg, vanilla, orange juice and zest. Sprinkle salt and baking powder over wet mixture. Stir well. Add in 1/4 c flour first, stir, add 1 c and stir.

Spray cookie sheet or foil. I did not, and my cookies stuck to the foil. Boo. Drop 1-2 tsp sized cookies onto the sheet. I thought of rolling them out and makes shapes if I had followed a different recipe or had added more flour, but I chose to just make round cookies because the juice and olive oil made this dough slightly runnier than regular cookie dough. Bake 8-10 min. Brush hot tops with oj and sprinkle on sugar. Cool. Enjoy.

Results:

A sweet yellow-white cookie with a pleasing citrus undertone. I can taste the olive oil, but I like olive oil, so it doesn't bother me.

*If I had thought of it and had used a good substitute for eggs, this would be an excellent vegan recipe: the "orange" variation fills in for the milk/cream of a traditional sugar cookie and I used olive oil in lieu of butter.

**I think I used closer to 1 1/2 c flour because my dough was too runny at the end. However, I put it into the fridge between batches and that seemed to firm things up to the point that I probably didn't need the extra flour. They taste yummy, though, so oh well.

Dream Chronicles No. XXVI

This morning I had an unusual number of dreams, because I started waking up around 6 and kept going back into REM for 15-30 minute cycles for 2.5 hours rather than getting out of bed at 6 and starting my day.

The dream I remember most vividly is about my friend Denise who was staying over (in real life and the dream). She woke me up and told me the cat had peed on the floor inside her bedroom door. When I opened the door, there were wet blankets and there was a big puddle on the carpeting. I got a squirt bottle of vinegar and some towels and brought it up to her room. The cat was underfoot and did not act very guilty, and Denise and I were discussing why the cat might have decided to go pee on her floor. As I was cleaning up with vinegar, I realized that it was just spilled ginger ale (and also way too large of a puddle for the cat to have made). However, before I quit cleaning it up, the house became a boat and the bed was floating outside, tied on to the boat. All bedrooms were attached via ropes to the main house-boat. We had to be careful how we slept because otherwise we'd roll over into the water or dip parts of the bed into the ocean. At least it was tropical and warm. So that was weird. I woke up really thirsty this morning.

I also had a dream in which some grilled kale was the source of a very loud and fraught argument between Kevin and I. And we were playing soccer during this argument.

February 12-12-10

Best American Poetry 2011

Girl Scouts

I ordered some girl scout cookies a few weeks ago because I'd heard about the controversies over inclusion of kids who were "different" in the scouts. In a small way, I thought, I'd buy four boxes and help the troops here keep going. I think the Girl Scouts are a good organization. If I ever have a daughter, she'll go off to meetings once a week. I might even be a leader.

I was a member of the Mitten Bay Girl Scouts in lower Michigan when I was a kid. I was a Brownie, then a junior scout and then I had to choose between swimming in "Angel Fish" and continuing as a Girl Scout. I chose Angel Fish, but gave up on that after a few years. But, now, I'm not sure why my mom let me quit scouts. She tried to convince me not to, but told me it was my decision. I chose swimming. I loved the pool and probably needed the exercise, so she let me make that choice.

Don't get me wrong: I pursued other interests that brought me joy and fulfillment. I learned to play the French horn and piano. I rode horses. I ran track. I swam for one season on the high school swim team until I was injured. I got a job at age 15, a different one at age 16, and worked for the same company until I was 21. I wasn't uninvolved, but I didn't ever belong to an organization that offered me the same type of community that scouts did and would have continued to do.

The things I learned in scouts were to accept all the girls and be friends with them, to believe in something bigger than myself, and to respect nature and enjoy the outdoors. Sure, we did projects to earn badges, but I had more fun playing with my friends than anything. Besides, my parents were teaching me the same things by sending me out to play every day after school and all day on weekends with my brothers and the neighbor kids, by asking me to live by the golden rule, and by loving the people around us as an example.

I have these romantic memories of playing Traffic Light and Red Rover and Simon Says on a little lawn by a creek with ten or so other first and second grade girls from the public and private schools in town. The girl scouts had an old hut where we met. It smells damp when I think of it. The lighting wasn't so bright. It reminded me of something out of a fairy tale. Because it was only a few blocks from school, the troop met up and walked there where we met the girls from the Catholic school who were also in our troop. We had fun. We were a community.

Even though I am not close, or even friends with any of my girl scout troop now, and even thought I lost touch with some of them before we reached high school, I always cared about them. Now, I feel some secret desire that they should have happy lives because of that shared experience we had as small children. Some of them, I didn't even like as teens. But now, I hope they're happy. I don't remember or care about girls I knew in dance classes or on the swim team or in the middle school band or in the high school choir. These other group experiences didn't leave as much of an impact as something I did after school once a week for two or three years.

So if I have a daughter, I'll send her to girl scouts and be proud to know that she might walk away with more love for humankind and more respect for all of her peers.

Happiness comes from

Snowflakes falling on my nose
Frost on tree branches
A poem or line of prose that gets in my head and rattles around
Friends coming to visit
Curling up in a patch of sunlight with or without a book and a peppermint
Walking under a sky of trees
Working hard and seeing my efforts pay off
Working hard and knowing that even if my efforts didn't pay off, that I put enough of myself into a project to be proud
Seeing the smile of a child
Reading a map and understanding a journey's projected course
Listening to the story of an elder
Losing myself in the pages of a book, becoming a new character and experiencing his or her emotions
Getting a question right on the National Geographic Geo-Genius quiz in a "difficult" month
Seeing the light in a novice writer's eyes when they "get" whatever it is I've shown them, explained, had them look at examples of, had them try and fail before
Writing a poem that is sad and beautiful and that only I could write
Wearing soft pants
Pretend-planning vacations I'll probably never go on
Recalling and savoring the details of times when I've experienced real beauty, real wildness, real compassion
Daydreaming with no regard for deadlines or to-do lists
Loving people as a choice, not a duty, or habit
Listening to a parent talk about his or her children
Drinking something hot or cold while talking with a friend
Listening
Being listened to
Seeing my eyes in the mirror and thinking that they look ice blue or cerulean or gray or green (it's probably narcissistic or strange but I love to look at eyes)

Tuesday's Mail

A typical Tuesday in 2012:
6:05 -- alarm
6:25 -- shower
7:30 -- drive to work
8:00 -- teach a section of Writing 1
9:30 -- head home for the day, call someone in the family on the drive
10:30 -- back in pajamas, curl up with grading, music, reading, writing or job applying
12:00 -- break for tea and news and then back to work
15:45 -- think about cooking dinner
18:00 -- eat
19:30 -- walk a few miles in the dark
22:00 -- movie or music entertainment

Today so far:
6:43 -- Oh no, I forgot to set my alarm. Check email: not a "snow day" despite weather predictions to the contrary
7:00 -- shower
7:35 -- leave for work
7:36 -- realize I walked out and locked the door while my keys are on the hook inside
7:50 -- arrive at work, make copies
8:00 -- only two of fifteen students are here
9:15 -- end class, go print off something
9:30 -- come home, call mom on the way
9:45 -- eat a sourdough roll with hummus (both homemade) for breakfast
9:50 -- mailman, who is usually a mailwoman, knocks on the door with my diploma from OSU
10:00 -- eat an orange for a snack and then go find some fleece clothing. It's cold in here.
12:00 -- drink hot chocolate and make green tea, still cold.
1:00 -- cat jumps on the desk while I'm trying to write a poem and sits on the notebook purring.

So here I am, sitting in a tree.

The Millennium Series

Steig Larsson's trilogy was a fun set of books to read. I didn't want to put them down. Kevin and I read these aloud to each other on our vacation to the Florida Keys:




But enough about vacation. You came to read about the books. Instead of a raving review, I've made some lists. My wrist hurts. So here you go.

Things I liked so much I wish they were mine:
Characterization of Blomkvist & Salander
Adventure/Plot Development in Dragon Tattoo and Played with Fire
Feminism
Hacker crimes
Investigative Journalist as the protagonist but the book didn't feel like a book about a writer
Description of people

Things I liked less:
Plot development in Hornet's Nest
Characterization of Berger, Palmgren, the guys in the Section (not enough!!)
Description of place

These books felt like crime novels, to be sure, but I did forget that they were trying to be titillating and get into the story. I felt like Larsson did a nice job of making Salander more accessible as the books went on, so that people could empathize with her more. I liked her from the beginning, but I did see how she could be hard to pull for, because she made such cold decisions.

Overall, I liked the books. I liked the movies, too, for the record. I thought the Swedish ones were well done, and I loved the woman who played Salander. I did think that the woman they chose to play Berger was all wrong in the Swedish films. I eagerly anticipate the US releases for the second and third films. I love watching movies after I've seen a book. I did wonder whether the Swedish films made all that much sense to those who hadn't read the books, though.


Here is a picture of the southern Lake Superior Shore. K and I are headed that way in a month.

While I am excited to revisit the Porkies, I'm not sure where I'm going next with 12-12-10. I am proud to have completed two full years of the project. 10 more to go! Maybe some feminist texts or nonfiction. Maybe even poetry. Don't worry, I *DO* read poetry almost every day. I just don't buy a book and write about it once a month. Lately I've been reading literary journals and looking through their online content, like Virginia Quarterly Review, and etc.

Today, I have to go grade. Boo.