Happy New Yeah!

Here we are, at the brink of a new year, and I'm not sure whether it's a happier thing to look forward, or to look back. As best I can remember, 2011 was a fairly good year- although I'll admit my memory isn't quite as sharp as it used to be. Right, right, I remember now- some bad and sad, but also some glad. And 2012 looks pretty promising. NPR is asking on Facebook what word you'd use to describe 2011, and all I can come up with is "adult." I did some grown-up things this year; played a lot of games of scrabble, made some progress toward paying off our debt, weathered some scary times with loved ones, hosted parties, lost our pensions, worried about our parents, grad school, drank unsweetened iced tea, gained weight, lost weight.
But now all is reasonably well, my kitchen smells like chocolate, my dear sweet husband is at the other end of our dear sweet home, the cats are good (for now) and I'm feeling all deep and philosophical. I just made Marble Gooey Butter Cupcakes- the recipe is for a 9x13 pan but I'm bringing them to a party so I thought I'd give cup-caking them a try, and it seems to have been successful, so far. They look scrumptious but are a stitch to get out of the pan.
One of them came out in pieces, so I'm eating it. Whenever I bake, I always keep the lousiest looking one for myself.
It makes me think that in every batch of life-choices we make, there are bound to be some that come out a little rough, and it's a good rule of thumb to remember that those mistakes, well, they're for me. Not everyone has to see them, and they usually still taste good (better if you eat them right away). My mistakes are for me- to gobble up and learn from, to perfect my skills on. It's not a bad rule for life. Maybe this year I'll look for mistakes I chew on and learn a little something. I was going to say "grow from them" as I am currently doing from this delicious cupcake, but that's the opposite of one of my resolutions. Must stop growing wider.
I called my parents to wish them a Happy New Year, and asked if they had resolutions- my Dad told me he's going to keep working out this year, and my Mom said "If I had any, I wouldn't tell anyone." I said "sure, and a year from now you'll be telling us how successful you were at all your resolutions, and no one will be able to doubt you." Not a bad idea...

4 Things

Here are the four projects I should be working on right now:
Weatherstripping the windows. I bought it, that putty kind of stuff, and it's ready to go but you know what? It's too cold to go near the windows right now.
Baking Christmas cooky (I've decided to spell cooky that way, it's all right, I looked it up, and doesn't it look even better than cookie? It just does, admit it.) gifts for my co-workers. This year it'll be chocolate-toffee bark (again) and these lovely cinnamon roll sugar cookies (click the pic for the recipe):
Also, I should be scanning in old family pictures for my parents' Christmas calendar. I started making calendars last year from all my fancy pho-tog-raphy (read that all fancy and pretentious-like) but since the brief death of my computer I don't have much left... so old pictures it is. Don't tell my parents... that I have a blog.
Wait, there were four? What was number 4? Oh, shoot.
Aw, look, it's already 9:00, too late to start any projects. Maybe I'll just eat the M&M's that were going to be on the aforementioned bark.

Sweet Saturdays

Did you know I keep a strict low-carb diet? Well that's because I am a reasonably spectacular failure at it. I do pretty well for a while and then go to the fair or a party or something and it's like I get possessed by Willy Wonka or something.
Part of the problem is I love to bake, especially at this time of year. There's something about the air getting colder and the bulking of the clothes and whatnot, and it makes me want to cook. Well, what can one do? Lent will come around before we know it and I will crawl, bloated and high from sugar overload, back on the wagon.
So today, which turned out to be an introvert's dream, I saw Scott off to Halloweeny land with the kids, and my podcasts and I got a ton of housework done, did the grocery shopping, cheffed up dinner for myself, and now I'm sitting down to one of my favorite old movies (His Girl Friday) with this delicious little something-I-whipped-up. It's a reverse whoopie pie! Chocolate cream cheese frosting as its filling! And yes, it's spectacular.

Christmas preparations on the Hill

If tomorrow wasn't supposed to be such a busy day, I'd be pretty excited about the massive amounts of snow forecasted for tonight and tomorrow. We are supposed to have four baptisms at 3 different times tomorrow, along with Breakfast with Santa after the 9 and the 11. Not to mention the "Red Sox" Swap (because it doesn't seem right to do a Yanke swap here in Soxland) and my musical comeback in Lessons and Carols. Ah well. Maybe we can limp in there at some point and make half the day happen.
But here at the homefront, my shopping is done, and wrapped. The tree is lit and surrounded with pretty packages, and soon Scott will be home from the mall with his bounty. I spent the afternoon making treats for my co-workers.Here's what I cheffed up:

These are nifty little treats my sister told me about: pretzels with rollos melted on top and then squished down with an M&M, and I added a drizzle of white chocolate. Oh yeah, they're yummy.


















This is bark made with graham crackers, emphasis on the word CRACK, they are so freakin' good. I broke up M&Ms on top to make them even more festive.














I packed them up together in nify plastic chinese-food-takeout box things. Festive!!

worst part: I burned the inside of my cheek on this!

A couple of weeks ago, my aunt sent out a recipe for acake that could be made in five minutes, by combining all the ingredients in a coffee mug and cooking it up in the microwave. I haven't been able to get it off my mind since then. So tonight, while Scott went off to the gym (way to go honey! Keep up the good work!) I made a cake in my microwave.
It's such a good idea, and we have all had nights when a five minute cake could keep us from doing much, much worse... so it pains me to tell you that this is NOT what we had all hoped it would be. It comes out as some kind of a cake, but rather than moist, fluffy goodness, it's a quivering, spongy kind of a mass. It was chocolaty, and the choc. chips in there helped, but in no way does it redeem this recipe for the massive PMS-letdown that it is. I guess, if I were on a stranded island with all the ingredients to bake a real cake but only five minutes and a microwave (and what are the odds of either of those on a stranded island?) I'd suffer through it. But until then I guess it's back to break-and-bake chocolate chip cookie dough. I wish I had summa that right now...