Filters, Bliss, and Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles

It's always been interesting to me to watch the world awaken again after the Christmas to New Years week.  In my line of work, students tend to be relatively silent, either experiencing the satisfaction of a semester completed, or beginning to work through the stages of denial that surround a less than successful term.  There's a period of just-being that happens at the end of December, which I really enjoy before all hell breaks loose.  Where I am work now, students don't take exams until after the break, but I feel a similar escalation in tension, and the email is definitely beginning to build up again.  Which is why I'm even more glad that I was able to get to yoga class several times during the holiday week, even if I was responding to email more often than I might have liked.

My teacher spent a lot of time talking about the koshas, which are, in Vedantic philosophy, more or less like filters of experience.  The ones we end up focusing on most in class are the annamaya kosha, or the physical body; the pranamayakosha, or the energy-body; and anandamaya kosha, or what I can translate only as the "bliss body." 

When we practice yoga, sometimes we filter the experience through our physical body: we're tight in our left hamstring, or maybe we're a little wobbly in our balance poses.  We feel our weaknesses, or even our strengths.  If we're being attentive to the lived experience of our bodies, sometimes we can tell what we need next.  Do we need to move through vinyasa?  Or rest in child's pose?

If we can rise out of the physical body experience, sometimes we can be attentive to the pranamayakosha.  Where does the energy go? The breath?  Can we visualize its movement up and out of ourselves, connecting to something larger?

And finally, if we can let go of even this, we experience anandamayakosha, which is experience in its rawest form.  We don't get caught up in what hurts, or what's tight.  We don't overprocess it.  We just breathe, and be.

My teacher likens this to discovering vegetables after growing up eating them from a can.  I know exactly what she means; though my father grew a garden, and we ate from it in the summer, canned peas, canned beets, even canned asparagus were part of my childhood.  And the first time I tasted a roasted beet, or shelled my own peas, or bit into a raw asparagus spear, I was shocked to discover how flavorful and delicious it was.  So it goes with the filters of the body and the mind.  If we can experience things in their raw, pure form, without the canning and processing, we're bound to experience them with a depth and dimension that we never imagined.

On the other hand, sometimes things are better processed.  My yoga teacher happens to have a fondness for Del Monte creamed corn, which is about as non-organic as she gets, I imagine; for me, it's whipped cream from a can (true confessions: one of the valuable skills my son learned this week was spraying whipped cream directly onto his tongue).  And it's OK to process; we are human after all, and we were built with bodies that experience the world this way.  To deny that would be to deny our humanity.

But it's important, every once in a while, to get rid of the filters, to just be there.  The new year can be a time for removing obstacles, but also seeing the obstacles that stand in the way of our access to bliss.  Which is not to say that you have to eat plain lettuce, by the way.

What are your filters?  What stands in the way of your experience of bliss?

Gluten-Free Snickerdoodles
Food historians tell us that small cakes or biscuits with snickerdoodle-type ingredients date back to ancient Roman times. Joy of Cooking attributes the cookie to Germany, suggesting that though they added more spices and dried fruit, the name is a corruption of the German word schneckennudeln, a type of cinnamon dusted sweet roll. These are minimally adapted from Elana's Pantry; her snickerdoodles aren't exactly raw, but they do let you experience the heady cinnamon in a way uncluttered by processed white sugar.  If your body is crying uncle like mine has been, these are a good not-too-terrible sweet treat.

2 c. almond flour
1/8 t. kosher salt
1/8 t. baking soda
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 c. virgin coconut oil (or butter)

2 T. honey
1/3 c. coconut sugar for rolling
2 1/2 t. cinnamon for rolling

Preheat oven to 350, and line baking sheets with parchment.

In a food processor, combine the almond flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.  Pulse in the coconut oil and honey.

In a shallow bowl for rolling the cookies, combined the coconut sugar and cinnamon until well mixed.

Roll the dough into balls by tablespoonfulls and briefly dip the balls in a small bowl of water before rolling them in coconut sugar and cinnamon mixture to coat.  (If the dough is too sticky, refrigerate for half an hour.)

Place the cookies onto the prepared baking sheets and press gently to flatten them just a bit.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until beginning to turn golden.  Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet to make sure they're firming up, and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cleaning Out Closets, and Zaletti

Every once in a while, I get on a cleaning jag. Like the one that led me to throw out my books, only a little less drastic.

I think, in some respects, it's reactionary behavior: I am actively resisting becoming my mother.

You see, my mother has lived in the same house since she was two years old. Her two brothers moved out, got married, and eventually sold the place to her and to my father. It was easy. And my mother tends to travel by the path of least resistance.

While the house has undergone renovations over the years, parts of it still live in the 1950s, or 60s, or 70s. Though my mother is not exactly a hoarder, she comes close: things have accumulated in the attic, and since my father's death almost 11 years ago, they've also accumulated in every room of the three bedroom house. You can barely walk into the room where I slept for the first 17 years of my life; piles of clothes form an obstacle course to the furniture. In the back room over the garage, a thin film of dust covers almost everything. I fear that some day it will become my responsibility to clean out this house, and in the meantime, I try to keep my own accumulation at bay.

I was hoping to get up to her attic during the break to throw away old dresses I discovered at Thanksgiving (things I wore before I hit double digits) while I was looking for old books, but the timing hasn't seemed to work out. And I need the space to do this on my terms, without my mother looking on and fretting about it. I know that throwing things away is difficult for her, in this house where she has spent her entire life.

The problem with a house full of this stuff that one has gathered through the decades is that at some point, you begin to store things in a haphazard way that makes it virtually impossible to access both the things you want to use and the things you want to get rid of. The only way to clean out is to make things even more chaotic, to empty everything out of the space and look at it, and start over, storing things in ways that make sense.  It's a daunting task, even if the rewards involve finding the gems we'd forgotten we had.  You have to be fully prepared for this kind of deep cleaning.  It's not something to be undertaken lightly.

My yoga teacher says that we are like mini-versions of this problem.  We hold on to so much baggage--not all of it excess--but when it all becomes jumbled together, we become cluttered, too.  Which is the point of a meditative yoga practice.  To take out all the clutter, put it all under a microscope, and without judging ourselves, get rid of what we don't need. But also to know that in the process, things will get messy.  You don't reach bliss without slogging through a little mud.

If you've read this blog for at least a year, you know that I don't make New Year's resolutions, because I think it's too arbitrary; I think that if we really want to make change, we need to be ready, and a new calendar doesn't necessarily mean we're ready for large-scale renovation.  But even if I don't decide to do anything drastic, I do find myself cleaning out a little at this time of year.  Maybe it's my way of trying to start with a cleaner slate.

Are you ready to clean out a closet or two?  Or do you need some time to prepare for the clutter and chaos that cleaning will entail?



Zaletti
These were an experiment this year, a sort of clean-out-your-closet cookie. I'm not sure they'll become one of my staples, but I'm grateful for the impetus to make space.

1 c. currants
1/4 c. dark rum
1 c. + 2 T. stone ground cornmeal
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 t. salt1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
4 egg yolks
1/2 c. sugar
6 T. unsalted butter, melted and cooled
zest of 2 lemon
1/2 c. confectioner's sugar
1 t. - 1 T. lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Soak the currants in the rum for at least 15 minutes, until plump.

Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking soda, salt and baking powder in medium bowl and set aside.

Using a stand mixer, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture becomes pale yellow.  Add the butter and lemon zest, beating until smooth.  Gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until well combined.  The dough should be firm; if it's too dry, add some of the rum from the currants, and if it's too wet, add a little flour.

Drain the currants and stir them into the dough, reserving the rum for another use.

Divide the dough into two balls. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into two 2" square logs about 10 inches long.  Cut each log into 1/2" thick slices, and gently press each cookie into a diamond shape.

Place the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake until golden, about 15-20 minutes.  Remove the cookies and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Sire together confectioners' sugar and lemon juice (1 t. at a time) until you have a thin (but not runny) glaze.  Drizzle glaze over the cooled cookies and allow it to solidify before storing.

The Weight of Being Interesting, and Pumpkin Spice Cookies

I work at one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world.

The students, while they do come from all over the map, both geographically and academically, are, by and large, freakishly amazing people.  They bring a wealth of experience and leadership to the table; they have collected more AP scores than anyone ought to collect; they ask intelligent, probing questions; they throw themselves into work weeks whose intensity level is far beyond what I experienced until I started studying for my quals in graduate school.

And yet, they worry about not being (interesting, smart, talented, whatever) enough.  The other day, I sat at another awards dinner, this one for juniors who had been awarded a fellowship to spend the summer after sophomore year doing something that contributed to their personal growth and exploration: one followed Che Guevara's Motorcyle Diaries travels; another apprenticed to a jewelry designer in India; another studied traditional fiddle music; another traveled in the footsteps of her grandmother who was a Holocaust survivor, and plans to collaborate on an intergenerational book; another interviewed siblings of special needs children and adults; another--a countertenor--studied Baroque music both domestically and abroad.  (And while the projects and students were not quite as polished as those at my previous dinner this month, they did make me wonder what I would do with carte blanche and $4000.) 

When all of the students had delivered their versions of "what I did with my summer vacation," the two graduate recipients of a parallel award, who spent a year on a project, stood up to give their speeches.  The first worked on women's health and health education in India, addressing everything from breastfeeding education to cancer screenings and shifting the cultural view of sick women as burdensome.  The second stood up to introduce his novel, and after some tripping over his words (affected or not, we weren't sure), and making some self-denigrating comments, said: "I forgot what being at [X] is like.  It's like ..." he gestured around the room " ... like this."

It's not the first time I've heard something along these lines.  All summer long, as I talked with students applying for fellowships, I heard from them: I'm not good enough.  So-and-so is brilliant.  I'm not really sure if my project is compelling.  I don't have grades like my roommate does.  Etc., etc., etc.

The awkward thing about being at a place where everyone is freakishly amazing is that it's hard to take a risk to do something as a mediocre novice, even--ironically enough--in the context of a fellowship that rewards your exploration of something as a mediocre novice.  And I get it: when I walk through the Common Room of our college, there is often someone at the grand piano, playing the equivalent of Rachmaninoff; it's no wonder that no one wants to venture a few bars of "Heart and Soul," and even when the room is empty, I resist the urge to sit down and work on my rusty rendition of Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu (I would never confess to these people that I played in Carnegie Hall, for fear that they might expect me to produce something impressive).

It can, if we let it, work the same way in blogging and writing.  If you read enough freakishly amazing writers, you start to think that there's nothing much you can contribute to the conversation.  Best to leave the work of writing and thinking to those who are more talented than you, you think, those who have something important and compelling to say, and who say it in innovative and impressive ways.  Perhaps you stop writing entirely, and become a passive consumer of language, pining away, somewhere deep within you, for your lost voice.

It can even work this way in the kitchen: if you read enough recipes, you can start to wonder why you should bother coming up with something new, since it's bound not to be much good the first time around anyway, and there are probably already fifteen better versions of what you're making already out there, under contract for a cookbook.

On the other hand, you could look at it this way: if you're surrounded by enough interesting people, or if you are friends with enough fabulously talented bloggers, or if you immerse yourself in enough cookbooks, you can't help but swim in those waters eventually yourself.  While my Chopin still isn't very good, it's better than it was at the beginning of the summer, when I didn't practice it, because I wasn't inspired to do so by the freakishly amazing Rachmaninoff-players.

The pressure to be interesting can feel like a two ton boa.  But it could also be liberating, given a safe and judgment-free place to take risks.  Part of me keeps thinking I should create a "Mediocrity Hour" at my place of employment, during which everyone can try or practice at something they're not very good at.  Because we are our harshest critics, and naming a forgiving space would take some of the pressure off, allowing for the "interesting" to happen organically.  Sort of like it did in my kitchen the other night, when I was desperately craving pumpkin spice cookies, but didn't feel like starting to play with butter at 10 p.m, and didn't want to commit to anything more elaborate equipment than a bowl and a whisk.  Sure, there about a billion versions of pumpkin spice cookies out there.  But these were mine.  And I won't tell you how many of them I've eaten since they came out of the oven.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

2 eggs (or flax egg to make it vegan)
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. canola or corn oil
1 c. canned pumpkin
1 t. vanilla
3 T. natural apple butter (no sugar added)
2 c. flour (any kind will do)
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. ground ginger
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/8 t. cloves
chopped toasted walnuts, optional, or anything else you think they might need

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (from eggs through apple butter).  Sift in the dry ingredients into a small bowl and then gently fold them into the wet ingredients.  Or if you're feeling extremely lazy like I was, dump the spices into your wet ingredients, stir to mix completely dump in the flour, baking powder and soda, and salt, and mix to stir again.  Add in some nuts if you're feeling like you might want some.  Or something else: white chocolate chips, toffee bits, raisins.  Decide if you want more spice, and add it.  No one will think less of you if they are not perfect, and you can always play with the rest of the batter if the first batch isn't exactly right.

Drop by generously rounded tablespoonfuls onto parchment covered baking sheets, leaving about two inches between cookies.  Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until puffy and dry.  Cool, and store in an airtight container for just a few days, if they last that long.

NaBloPoMo: Cookies for the Library

In January, I was elected (sort of, anyway) to my town's newly-formed Friends of the Library Board. It happened in the way most things like this happen in a small town: one of my husband's co-workers, who helped to found the Friends group, knows that I frequent the library with the kids, that I have been active in other community organizations, that I tend to have a fairly well-reasoned opinion about things, and that I am a problem-solver. He approached me one day on one of his peripatetic walks through town, and asked me if I might come to one of their brainstorming meetings. I offered some suggestions, and before I knew it, he was asking me to consider serving as one of the first "at large" members of the board.

As I think I have established here before, I have a hard time saying no. And really love my little town library, which is within two blocks' walking distance of our house, and which became a great destination for hot days and rainy days with children; never mind that they often have the book I need, when the four copies theoretically available at our county mega-library have all been checked out. It's a little like Cheers there, too: go there often enough, and everyone knows your name and your kids' names, and the kinds of books you like, and all sorts of other random facts about you that only librarians and your regular checkout folks at the grocery store can figure out. They're a little like a monastic order, librarians: Keepers of the Book, keepers of your secrets, keepers--sometimes--of your guilty and not-so-guilty pleasures.

So I stood for election in an uncontested seat, and was voted in unanimously by people to whom I'd never spoken a word.

The Board is a good-hearted group of people. I am the youngest member by (I suspect) about 15 years, but that doesn't mean I have the most energy. And I admire their dedication, even if sometimes the conversation at meetings takes odd and less-productive detours.

Most of our discussions so far have focused on "friend-raising" events: ways to get the community involved and make them more aware of the library (because, it's true, some people in my town don't even know we have a library, due partly to the confusing county library system that surrounds us, but of which we are not technically a part). And there's been some discussion about a fund-raising event, because there are things our little library can use.

But tonight we advertised an "open meeting" (open to all of the Friends, that is) which would be a Q and A with the library director, complete with cookies for refreshments. (You see where this is going for me eventually, don't you?).

No one came for the cookies, unfortunately, besides the Board. It's still early in the life of our group, and we are struggling to build interest in the membership. I keep arguing that people won't show up to meetings unless they feel that they have a job to do, a role to play. And we are slowly creating those jobs and roles. It's too bad, really, because tonight's conversation turned to ebooks and open access computers, and I learned a lot about what's happening on the front lines of my little library's doorstep.

Like, for example, the difficulty in getting an ebook format that everyone's device can read, despite the fact that ePub is becoming more or less the industry standard. Like working with publishers who don't like to "sell" ebooks to libraries, and who will reluctantly do so sometimes on arbitrary-sounding terms, which could include things like an expiration code coded into the system: after 26 times (which, according to some publishers, is the number of times a paper book can be circulated before it begins to fall apart), the book will simply evaporate.  Like the fact that so many books get published not with publishers, and if a library wants to acquire them for a collection, they must do so under yet another set of unique terms.  Like working with aggregators (who become the middle-men, not even with publishers) to try to negotiate terms for a number of libraries and publishers together. Like the ways in which some libraries negotiate directly with large providers of ebooks (like Overdrive). The layers of complication for a library to provide ebooks to their patrons are more significant than I realized.

But the development that he is having a harder time coming to terms with, said our library director, was the expectation for libraries to provide open access computers. What does it mean, he asked us, that when the library opens in the morning, there are 15 people lined up to go in, and 12 of them go to the computers to sit down and check Facebook and listen to music? How does that fulfill the library's mission?

I speculated that just as the purpose of the humanities have changed in higher education over the past decade (shifting from the study of the "book" to the study of "texts"--or cultural productions writ broadly), so has the purpose of the library changed from circulator of books to the point of connection with the text, with information. And Facebook is as much a cultural production, a text, as The* Dubliners, even if we don't think much of its literary merit.  It's an interesting question, though, one that the library staff wrestles with on a daily basis.

Part of me wonders if libraries will ever go away, if the decline of the paper book and the barriers to creating equal access for patrons (who get varied access now according to the devices they can afford) in a BYOD world will change the face of libraries as we know them.  Or if libraries will become less about books and more about creating conversations around culture, providing centers for cultural community.  Whatever happens, I hope that they still hold meetings with the promise of cookies.

Are you a Friend of your local library?  Or just a friend?  What do you think the libraries of the future might look like?

(*thank you for the correction, (Not)Maud, watchful editorial heroine of mine.)

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Self-Rising Flour
Adapted from here, these are the cookies I made for the library's meeting tonight.  I had some self-rising flour in the cabinet, and have been working diligently to get rid of it; I finally emptied the box.

10 T. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. turbinado sugar
1 c. self-rising flour
3/4 c. whole wheat or spelt flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 t. vanilla extract
1 t. baking powder
1 c. dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325°F.  In a small saucepan set over medium low heat, melt butter and set aside to cool slightly.

Combine sugars and butter into a large bowl and mix well with a whisk until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Pour butter into a large bowl and stir in brown sugar and caster sugar until smooth and sugar is mostly dissolved.  Add the egg and the vanilla, and continue to mix well.

Sift flours and baking powder together into a small bowl and then gradually mix into sugar mixture until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop cookie mixture onto parchment-lined baking trays by rounded tablespoons and bake for 13 minutes or the cookies are just lightly golden.  Allow cookies to cool on trays for 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Karma, and Ginger Chocolate Kisses

Like most people, I often use the word karma all wrong.  We tend to think of karma as some magical external justice system: people who do good things, get good things coming to them eventually.  People who do bad things, well ... you all know the saying about the bitch.

And I confess, I've always liked the idea of karmic justice, the "you'll get yours some day" approach to people who create misery and suffering in other people's lives.  It's comforting, especially when there doesn't seem to be any hope for justice in the current situation.

But recently, I've been mulling over a terrifying thought: what if karmic justice doesn't happen?  What if, sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to people who behave in truly morally reprehensible ways?  It's not that I haven't always known this might be possible, but maybe I chose to ignore it.  Because, you know, that just doesn't fit with my perception of the universe.

Karma, the way the Buddhists mean it, anyway, isn't about predestination.   It's about intention. Which sort of turns the common perception of karma on its head.  Instead of things happening to you, it's about the way you do things, and the way you are more likely to do things because of the way you've done them.  It's about the development of habit.

A long time ago, when the Tibetan Buddhist monks came to visit us, they talked about how people can only give what they have.  People who have no joy can't give it.  And too bad for you if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have to endure these people.  The practice of karma demonstrates how this works.  You practice ill will and greed, and that's pretty much what you end up with.  You practice good will and generosity, and you will become more good-willed and generous.  We're planting behavioral seeds.  Of course this makes sense.  Not in the "fake it 'til you make it" way, but in the mindful, cognitive behavioral therapy way.

We don't experience karma; we do it.

I have been struggling with karma for a long, long time.  With the concepts of punishment and justice.  Torturing myself with the possibility that maybe, if deeds went unpunished, they were warranted.  That I could have acted differently.   But really?  Sometimes people act in really awful ways, and get away with it.  And there's not a thing we can do about their behaviors.  They will never be brought to justice ... at least, not for our charges against them.

So maybe karmic justice isn't about people getting their just desserts.  Maybe it's about choosing to live in a way that creates the kind of heart we want to live with, and the world we want to live in, even if it's not the world where we live right now.

How do you respond to/deal with the injustices you see or experience in the world, the ones that are perpetrated by human beings?

Ginger Chocolate Kisses
These are Heidi's, of course.  I tweaked few things, but she is the goddess of just desserts.  And many, many other things.

6 oz. bittersweet chocolate
2 c. spelt flour
1 t. baking soda
4 t. ground ginger
1/2 t. fine grain sea salt
1/2 c. unsalted butter
1/4 c. unsulphured molasses
2/3 c. fine grain natural cane sugar
1 T. grated fresh ginger, peeled
2 t. candied ginger, minced
1 large egg, well beaten

Preheat the oven to 350F and place the racks in the top and bottom third of the oven. Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper.

Finely chop the chocolate and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking soda, ground ginger, and salt into a large bowl.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat; remove from heat and stir in the molasses, sugar, and fresh ginger.   Let this mixture cool before proceeding; you don't want to cook the egg or melt the chocolate!

When the pot is cool to the touch, whisk in the egg and add this mixture to the the flour mixture.  Stir until just combined and fold in the chocolate.

Roll dough into 1/2 tablespoon-sized balls. (Heidi suggests rolling them in sugar, but I preferred the ones I didn't roll in sugar.  Use your judgment, of course.)  Place dough a few inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake for 7-10 minutes or until cookies are dark brown and puffy (they will likely deflate just a bit after you remove them from the oven).  Let cool on the sheets for a minute or two before removing them to cool completely.  Store in an airtight container not more than a few days, or freeze.

On Vulnerability, and Blueberry-Mango Lavender Shortbread Bars

The visiting minister who gave the sermon at our church this past Sunday said that every minister has one sermon that they keep preaching over and over again, with different scaffolding, different illustrations, different stories to drive the point home.  I think that the same thing goes for many writers: that is, that we're trying to exorcise our demons, to write our way out of a problem that we, too, are stuck inside, in one way or another.

This minister's one sermon, she said, was about the spirituality of imperfection: the profound connection that can result in willingness to be vulnerable with others, and with ourselves, about who we really are, instead of who we think we ought to be.  We've heard this before from people like Brené Brown, whose Ted talks and books and appearances on Oprah have catapulted her into the public eye.

One of the things that came up in the discussion after the sermon (because for those of you who aren't UU, that's how we roll: we talk back after the minister talks, even if we do let said minister have the last word) was when it was useful to be vulnerable, given the tendency to overshare in social media.  Though the question was really more about Facebook, the question applies equally to bloggers, and about whether the kind of vulnerability Brown describes is really what we're doing here.

When Brown talks about being vulnerable, with sharing our stories of shame, she says that we can't just be vulnerable with everyone.  In fact, there are several kinds of people we want to actively avoid:

"1. The friend who hears the story and actually feels shame for you. She gasps and confirms how horrified you should be. Then there is awkward silence. Then you have to make her feel better.

2. The friend who responds with sympathy ("I feel so sorry for you") rather than empathy ("I get it, I feel with you, and I've been there"). If you want to see a shame cyclone turn deadly, throw one of these at it: "Oh, you poor thing." Or, the incredibly passive-aggressive Southern version of sympathy, "Bless your heart."

3. The friend who needs you to be the pillar of worthiness and authenticity. She can't help because she's too disappointed in your imperfections. You've let her down.

4. The friend who is so uncomfortable with vulnerability that she scolds you: "How did you let this happen? What were you thinking?" Or she looks for someone to blame: "Who was that guy? We'll kick his ass."

5. The friend who is all about making it better and, out of her own discomfort, refuses to acknowledge that you can actually be crazy and make terrible choices: "You're exaggerating. It wasn't that bad. You rock. You're perfect. Everyone loves you."

6. The friend who confuses connection with the opportunity to one-up you: 'That's nothing. Listen to what happened to me one time!'  "

--Excerpted from http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Brene-Brown-How-to-Conquer-Shame-Friends-Who-Matter#ixzz2SZs1J32F

Basically, Brown says, we need to honor our struggle by sharing it with someone who has earned the right to hear it.
 In real life, I can attest to the fact that Brown's assessment feels pretty accurate.  Even as an adult, even in the past year, I've had my share of being vulnerable with the wrong people--not people who tore me down, but people who didn't value the gift of my vulnerability.   People who came back with "oh, yeah, that happened to me" ... except it didn't, because I'm not you, I thought.  I walked away from those conversations feeling hurt, strangely violated, strangely tossed aside, wishing that they'd told me instead, from the very beginning, that they didn't really want to hear my story.  But of course, that's for me to judge, not them.

Of course, we don't all share everything online.  There's a lot I don't tell you, or that I tell you only in veiled ways.  I am not my blog.  But our blogs are the places where some of us do feel we can be vulnerable.  Why is that, given what Brown says about the privilege of being empathetic?  And does it matter to us whether our audience has earned the right to hear our story, if that story is difficult or painful in any way?  It certainly matters to us when people tear us down; so how do we walk the line between productive (for ourselves and for our readers) vulnerability, and self-preservation?

***

Then there are others of us who blog (and, for that matter, live) like we have our shit together.  These are the people whose DIY projects and food dominate Pinterest and Foodgawker.  They're the people who win all blogging awards, who have gazillions of followers.  They're the people whose statuses you hate to read on Facebook.

Mel wrote this week about the tricky business of admitting that we don't have our shit together,  and I think this has a lot to do with vulnerability.  She talks about the fact that we are drawn to confidence, to people who seem to know things.  Smart doctors.  Well-recommended dentists.  Bakers (oh, yes, for me this hits home ... I rarely eat a mediocre cupcake on purpose).  And she suggests that perhaps we look to others who "have it all figured out" because we don't.

I don't know.  I think I actually feel better about people who openly don't have their shit together.  Do I like to read a well-written novel?  Hell, yes.  For as much as Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel has its flaws, I found myself practically weeping over the beauty and cleverness of her prose, telling myself I could never be that good.  But on the other hand, as a writer, I like reading other writers that struggle, that help me to do it better.  If I'm seeing a doctor, I like to know that she has gotten good medical training, and that she's had some success with patients.  But I also know that I'm not every other patient, and I appreciate when a doctor is honest with me about a course of treatment.  Maybe we'll try this, and if it doesn't work, we'll try that.  A chocolatier recently opened a little shop in a town not far from me, and I've already made friends with him.  He was making truffles a few weeks ago, and posted to Facebook something along the lines of "I have these truffles that are not very good yet; come taste them and help me figure out how to make them better."  So I did, of course.  I had a great conversation with him about taste and texture and mouth feel of a truffle.  I learned a lot.  And I was glad he was willing to stumble out there in public.  And yet, you don't do that with everyone, do you?

***

Recently, I joined what our church calls a covenant group.  These are basically once-a-month small group meetings outside of the regular church service where the members choose a topic, or series of topics, to discuss over a period of several months.  The members of the group covenant with each other to show up, to be respectful and supportive, to listen, to contribute, to value the contributions of others.  It's a lot like a vow of empathy, the way Brown might describe it.  And because of that covenant, the group becomes a safe place to be vulnerable.  I will admit, I have not become completely vulnerable with my covenant group.  But I do feel like I can trust more of them with my authentic self now, and I'm grateful for that.  I am drawn to those relationships.  I need them.  I need them even more than I need beautiful DIY crafts and perfect pictures and stunning prose.  I need to feel like it's OK to be imperfect.

I intended to make these bars from Flourishing Foodie for my covenant group when I hosted last week, but I got a little sidetracked, because I couldn't find fresh apricots in the store, then (after I'd bought the canned ones) realized I didn't have enough apricots.  It's also the wrong season for fresh lavender, and we didn't have any Grand Marnier.  And the powdered sugar went everywhere when I turned on the mixer because someone who lives in this house and who is under three feet tall likes to turn things on and walk away, so I had to add more powdered sugar after the fact.  And when I cooked the mango, there were little fibers in the bars that looked like hair, which was sort of embarrassing.  I disclosed all of this information before I let anyone eat one.  But everyone thought they were good anyway.  And maybe sometimes good enough is exactly what we need.

Where do you feel like you can be vulnerable?  If you blog, do you feel like you can be vulnerable on your blog?  Or do you feel like you need to have your shit together?  Are you drawn to people who are imperfect, or who make living look easy?

Blueberry-Mango Lavender Shortbread Bars
makes 16 squares
adapted from Flourishing Foodie, who adapted it from Baked Explorationsby Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito


12 T. unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 1" cubes
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
3/4 t. finely chopped dried lavender
1 3/4 c. flour


1 c. canned apricots, chopped
1 c. fresh mango, chopped
1 c. fresh blueberries
1 c. white wine
1/2 c. of water
1/3 c. sugar
2 T. honey
1 T. Triple Sec
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. chopped almonds
3 T. unsalted butter, chilled, cubed
2 T. oats

Leaving a 1" overhang, line a 9 inch square baking pan with parchment paper. You can also coat it with cooking spray if that makes you feel better, but it's not necessary.

Place the powdered sugar in your electric mixing bowl, and drop the butter in.  Stir gently a few times to coat the butter so that the sugar won't fly everywhere when you turn the mixer on.  Using an electric mixer, starting on a very low speed and pulsing gently, gradually working up to a full-on high mixing level, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the vanilla and chopped lavender.  Beat again until combined.  Add the flour and mix on low speed, until everything is combined.  Place the dough into the pan and press flat. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

While the dough is chilling, prepare the filling.  In a medium saucepan simmer the apricots, blueberries, mango, wine, water, sugar, honey, and Triple Sec on low to medium heat.  Stir occasionally, and cook until the liquid has absorbed (45 - 60 minutes).  You may have to vary the heat as liquid begins to evaporate.  Set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Place the crust into the oven and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature.

In a bowl, using your fingers, rub together, the flour, brown sugar, and butter. You want the mixture to lightly clump together.  Add chopped almonds and oats.  Set aside.  Once the shortbread has cooled, spread the filling over it, and top with the crumble. Bake for 25 minutes or until the top has just lightly browned.

Let the bars completely cool on a wire rack, in the pan, before serving. Once they have cooled, pull them out with the parchment paper and slice into bars.

Homework: Kitchen Sink Cookies

I've been good.  Really, really good.  No cookies, no cake, a spoon or two of ice cream.  Minimal processed sugars and dairy.  Low carb, and no refined carbs.  So when my son started his read-aloud homework last night, my reaction was understandable.

"The Cookie Quest?  Sounds like the story of my life," I said drily.  I listened with half an ear as he read, stopping him to ask about words he misread as other words, trying to entertain my daughter, who was making tea in the cupboard, uninterested in her brother's assignment.  At some point, the reading stopped.  I'd lost track of the details, but I had a vague sense of the plot: something about a mother creating a contest-winning cookie recipe, and her son's friend trying to find it out before it was published.  Not exactly a quest, in my book.  I reached for the pen to sign the sheet saying he'd done the reading.

"All done," he said.  "Oh, wait ..." He turned the page.  "Hey LOOK, Ma!  There's a recipe!  We can MAKE these cookies!"  He was practically shouting now.  "Kitchen Sink Cookies," he read, pointing.

"You mean I can make these cookies," I corrected him, knowing full well who was going to end up manning the mixer and dropping little balls of dough onto cookie sheets for two hours.  "Since when did your homework become my homework?"  I scanned the recipe quickly and turned back to N., who was now dismantling the cupboard.

Ignoring me, he continued, "SO?  Do we have all of the ingredients?"

I shook my head.  Negative, dude.  No chocolate in the house.  I can't be trusted.  Actually, I probably could be trusted now.  But I am not about to start taking chances just yet.

"Well, you can go shopping tonight and get the chocolate chips," he assured me.  "I'll copy the recipe for you."  And he climbed up onto the stool to reach a recipe card, beginning the painstaking process--for a first-grader, at least--of transcribing the recipe by hand, in pencil.  "I'm going to use abbreviations.  Do you know what 'tea' and 'tab' will stand for?"

I was beaten.  And really, what kind of a parent would I be if I didn't bake him cookies from his read-aloud homework book?

I didn't go shopping last night.  But guilt-ridden, I went to the store today.

I took a few liberties to make them a little healthier, but really, they're still cookies. I guess I'll have to send them to his teacher.  I hope I get an A.

Have you ever found a recipe in an unexpected place?

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconutties
The "real" kitchen sink cookies, in my book, are made with more stuff.  Like raisins.  Or butterscotch chips.  Or cranberries.  And maybe potato chips and pretzels.  Random bits of things in your cupboard.  You can do that and tell me how they turn out.  In the meantime, I think my name for them is better.

1/2 c. shortening (use Earth Balance)
1 c. coconut palm sugar (or use 1/2 c. brown and 1/2 c. white)
1 egg
1 T. vanilla
3/4 c. flour (whole wheat pastry will work OK)
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 c. oats
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. unsweetened coconut
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (or other nut of your choice, or raisins if you have nut allergies)

Preheat oven to 350.

Using an electric mixer, beat shortening and sugar until well combined.  Add egg and mix well.  Mix in the vanilla.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add to the shortening mixture and beat to combine.

Add in the rest of your mix-ins, and combine well, using your hands if necessary to incorporate all of the bits.  The dough may be a little crumbly in appearance; don't worry about that.

Mold the dough into 2 t. size balls (you can squish it in your hands to make the balls solid), and bake on baking sheets covered with a sheet of parchment for 10-12 minutes, or until browned.  Cool cookies for a minute or two on the baking sheet, and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Store tightly covered for up to 1 week.

So Long, 2012: Cocoa Mocha Crinkles

It's been a hell of a year.  There was the crash of the Costa Concordia, which made us question heroism.  The horrendous scandal at Penn State, which opened our eyes to be wary of hero worship, and reminded us that we all own the responsibility to protect our children.  The shooting at the theater in Aurora, which reminded us about our vulnerability, and drew the first large-scale media attention of the year to gun control and mental health issues.

Then there was me.  I got to take a long-anticipated trip to BlogHer, and meet some of the women and writers I most admire.  I unexpectedly lost a friend in tragic circumstances that still make no sense, leaving her two children without a mother.  My mother fell down her stairs and had to move in with us while she recovered from her broken ribs and scapula.  Superstorm Sandy left my state without power, and left many without homes to return to.  I got myself elected to the Board of Education.

Finally, there was the tragedy in Newtown, which left us all grieving the loss of beautiful, innocent lives, and rethinking how we will live, to cultivate love for the future.

Despite some of the highs, honestly, I'll be glad to see 2012 go.  I've been cleaning out the refrigerator in preparation for our trip, and it feels good to be empty, to start the year with a clean slate, even in my pantry.   I don't make New Years' resolutions, because I feel that they're sort of artificial and arbitrary, but something about the change in calendar year makes me feel like I can start over, like I can wake up with hope and purpose.  And I'm looking forward to that more than usual this year.

I won't be posting for a little while, because I'm going to disconnect from my computer, and I won't be wrestling with internet on my phone.  But I'll be thinking about you while we're gone, and hoping to return here in the new year (or a little before then) with renewed blogging energy, with some thought-provoking posts, and with some tasty recipes.

In the meantime, here are the last sweets for the season.  We'll be leaving cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve, and if I were Santa Claus, I think they'd be exactly right; chocolatey, snappy, with a slight caffeine kick to keep me awake for the long journey of good cheer before I turned the sleigh towards home.  Wishing you warmth, light, and love during this darkest season of the year.

Cocoa Mocha Crinkles
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1/2 c. butter, softened
1 c. packed light brown sugar
2/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 t. instant espresso
1 t. baking soda
2 egg whites
1 2/3 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 T. unsweetened cocoa powder

Beat butter in a large bowl on high speed for about 30 seconds.  Beat in sugar, 2/3 c. cocoa powder, espresso, and baking soda.  Beat in egg whites.  Beat in flour.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350.  In a small bowl combine 1/4 c. sugar and cocoa powder.  Roll dough into 1" balls (and then into 1 1/2" logs if you like) and roll in sugar/cocoa mixture.  Place 2" apart on a cookie sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are firm.  Transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

Past Lives, and Rosemary Shortbreads

My mother has been cleaning out her house.  Or at least, my brother's room.

This is, in theory, an excellent thing.  My mother has lived in the same house since she was two years old.  Though over the years before they moved out, her two brothers took things that belonged to them, there is still a good almost-seventy years' worth of accumulation of things there, and after my extremely organized Type-A father died in 2003, there was no longer anyone left in the house to do periodic purging.  She borders on hoarding behavior, her basement pantry stocked full of condensed soup and canned vegetables and brownie mix and pasta (we recently found cake mix there that had expired ten years ago), and every bedroom piled with her clothes and bills and paper and shopping bags with items still in their original packaging, tags attached.  I worry sometimes about what will happen if she downsizes, and selfishly, I worry, too, about the inevitable unpacking of her life that I will have to do some day, even if she never leaves her house.

I know that children create clutter, and I've claimed quite a few things from my mother's house over time.  Books.  Clothing.  Random pillows and throws.  Notebooks.  So, so much paper.

But I know there are also still many things left, remnants of another someone I used to know, like that overplayed and over-covered Gotye song.

On my birthday, my mother presented me with two canvas shopping bags of things belonging to me, which had been living in my brother's room: one bag containing two sets of artist-quality colored pencils, a set of watercolors, and a large box of crayons that probably date back to the late 1970s; the other containing a pile of awards and plaques.  My spelling bee plaque from the eighth grade.  My ten-year Excellence Award plaque from my dance school.   A plaque recognizing my service as the leader of the Children's Choir at my Catholic church, from my senior year of high school.  Another congratulating me on my performance on the National Spanish Language exam.  And on, and on.

The first bag was easy to deal with.  I gave the colored pencils and paints to my art-obsessed son and the crayons to my crayon-obsessed daughter, who has already made them her own.

The second was not so easy.

I've moved seven times in my life.  I am no stranger to the process of purging things, because there was no space in the car or the moving truck or on the bookshelf or in the cabinets.  I regularly recycle and Freecycle what we no longer need.  So it's odd to me that I'm left wondering what to do with these things, feeling on the one hand like I can't get rid of them (besides, the green citizen in me wonders, how does one recycle a plaque, anyway?) and on the other hand that I need to reduce the clutter in my life, not add to it.  This green canvas bag full of the past made me feel both like I need to retain this physical connection to that past, so I can pass it on to my children, and because--as Lori Lavender Luz puts it so beautifully in her post "Presence"--all of my past selves are me, and yet also like I have no need for physical attachment to that part of my past, to that person I no longer resemble. 

My past lives have been on my mind.  We're going out to LA in less than a week; it will be the first time I've been there since I left in early 1998, fourteen and a half years ago.  It will be a trip full of bitter, and sweet, and salt.  We will visit my old street, my old apartment complex.  We'll eat cake down the street at Sweet Lady Jane where, alone, I mourned the loss of a brilliant and generous-hearted college friend to a rare brain cancer, celebrated small triumphs, recovered from the traumatic experience of oral exams.  We'll walk past the alley where I was mugged at gunpoint.  We will step into the Pacific Ocean, the place my then-boyfriend took me in the dark of night when I first landed in the west coast for the first time eighteen years ago, knowing that I needed to touch the west.  We'll see some old friends.  I can't put my finger on why, but there was something about this act of remembering that has been important to me lately.  LA and I parted ways on less than friendly terms, but recently, I've felt like I needed to go back; I was ready.

I've shelved the plaques for now, in a place where I won't see them, where they will gather dust, like old memories do.  They'll stay there, and I suspect I will eventually forget about them, until I'm deep cleaning, moving, reorganizing.  I'll pull them down and look at them, and probably move them again, to somewhere else out of sight.  Maybe then I will know what to do with those fragments of the past; or perhaps, some day someone else will have to decide whether those artifacts are important enough to keep.

What physical pieces of your distant past do you hold on to, if anything?  What artifacts do you wish you could get rid of, but can't?  What would you do with a pile of old plaques?

Rosemary-Lemon Butter Cookies  

These cookies were made by fellow blogger Susan of A Less Processed Life for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.  I've added a bit more lemon juice and zest, because I liked the pairing of tangy with sweet and salt.  Sort of like memory, come to think of it.

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 t. fresh lemon juice
2 1/2 c. sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T. finely chopped fresh rosemary
3/4 t. kosher salt
1 1/4 t. lemon zest
coarse sanding sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, rosemary, salt, and lemon zest in a small bowl. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about two minutes.  Mix in the egg, vanilla, and lemon juice and beat until combined, then gently beat in the flour mixture until the dough just comes together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured workspace and pat into a 6" round; cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 10 minutes.

On a lightly-floured workspace, roll the dough to 1/4" thickness and cut into desired shapes.

Place the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle each cookie with coarse sanding sugar and bake for 20-22 minutes or until lightly golden on the edges.

Cool on a wire rack and store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.

Tea for One: Gingersofts

I got through the weekend pretty well, all things considered.  The events at Newtown have continued to weigh heavily on my mind.  There was a birthday party for a friend in my son's class, and seeing all of the children together made me think about those children who don't get to celebrate any more birthdays.  And those parents whose arms are empty, who wrapped Christmas presents to give to a child who will no longer be there on Christmas morning to open them.  But I tend not to grieve in the form of tears until a few days or weeks after something happens.  It's just the way I work.  And besides, I still have my children.

But this morning, after putting my son on the bus, I almost threw up.  And then I wept, walking back to my house with my daughter in my arms.

Because the reality is that every day I watch my son leave on that bus, and am faced with a complete lack of control over what happens to him.  It's nagged at me a little bit every day since the first day of school.  It was just a little harder than usual today.

I could keep him home.  I'm home now with my daughter; I could homeschool him.  He's smart, and though he also resists instruction and correction from me, we would make it work.

But that's not where he belongs.  He's a social child, a child who expresses his creative self best in the company of others.  We have a good school system.  And horrible things happen everywhere, in many places that are supposed to be safe, not just in schools.

I could enroll him in a private school, a smaller school where there would be more vigilance, more safety measures, less intrusion from the outside world.

But I'm a product of the public school system, and I believe in the value of children from all walks of life learning together, and teaching each other.

I could drive him to school every morning, at least removing one more transition during which something could go wrong.

But he loves the bus, he loves that freedom.  It makes him feel grown-up.  He is probably no safer in my car.  And I trust the bus driver to get him to school and home safely.

So I put him on the bus.  I wave at him through my tears, as he presses his face against the window, grinning in his inimitably impish way.  I try to put things in perspective, feeling lucky for the luxury of waving to him.  I remember, as many people have said, that the risk inherent in becoming a parent is that you allow your heart to walk around outside of your body.  I make ginger tea, because that usually helps to settle my stomach, and maybe I break into the container of gingersofts.  And I wait for him to come home, watching the minutes tick by impatiently.

I didn't want to write about Sandy Hook today.  But it also seemed irreverent to write about anything else.  So I will settle for comfort, for the normal of Christmas cookies.  Because there is more than one way to die in this world, and one of those ways is to refuse to live.  And the children of Sandy Hook deserve a better legacy than that.

Gingersoft Cookies
adapted from Two Peas in their Pod


2 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 t. ground ginger
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground cloves
Pinch of nutmeg
3/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
1 c. light brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1/4 c. molasses
1/4 c. diced candied ginger
White sugar for rolling

Preheat the oven to 375 and line baking sheets with either parchment or silicone baking mat.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and spices in a medium bowl.

Beat the butter and brown sugar at high speed with a hand or stand mixer until fluffy, about two minutes. Add in the egg and vanilla extract.; beat well. Add in the molasses; beat well.

With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture a half cup or so at a time until all of the flour is mixed in.  Mix in the crystallized ginger either VERY gently with your mixer or by hand.

Roll dough into tablespoon-sized balls, and roll each ball in white sugar.

Place the cookie dough balls two inches apart on prepared cookie sheets.  Bake 8-10 minutes (they should still be soft, just cooked in the middle and barely crispy around the edges).  Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for a minute or two, then transfer to a cooling rack.

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap: Honey Basil Shortbread Cookies

There's no denying it.  In December, I become a cookie fanatic.  And to a cookie fanatic, there are few things more lovely than getting a package of home-made cookies in the mail, especially from a friend you have yet to meet!

For the second year, I decided to participate in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap hosted by Love & Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen.  This swap requires participants to send one dozen cookies to three different bloggers, and in exchange, three additional bloggers send a dozen cookies each to you.  All in all, you get to meet six new bloggers and try three new kinds of cookies, and there's a round-up at the end wherein one could salivate over all cookies in the exchange.  Last year I agonized over the cookies to send: I wanted to offer up something really different, really unique, but didn't know where to begin.  I scoured the internet, and wound up with mostaccioli, which are traditional chewy almost cake-like Italian cookies, made with wine.  I also learned a lot about attractive packaging and sending cookies in the mail last year, lessons which I tried to apply in this year's swap!

This year, Lindsay and Julie upped the ante and partnered with Cookies for Kids' Cancer, a national non-profit organization committed to funding new therapies used in the fight against pediatric cancer, which claims the lives of more children in the US than any other disease.  Each participating blogger made a small donation to the organization for the honor of participating, and OXO® will be matching the total donation, dollar for dollar, up to $100,000 dollars!

I'd been in sort of a baking slump, and I have to credit this year's swap with helping me to get my cookie-making mojo back.  I've tried and modified quite a few recipes that I'm posting here as a result of my search for the perfect swap cookie!  During the past year I've become especially interested in using traditionally savory herbs in sweet treats (like the basil ice cream I made), and I wanted to send something that represented my blog and my commitment to local food sources; so I decided to make Honey Basil Shortbreads with local honey and basil.  I get my honey from Tassot Apiaries, which is just a few miles away from our house (they also make fabulous soap and other items which you can order online); their honey is among the best I've tasted anywhere, and I practically live on it during cold season.  I loved the fact that you can really taste these flavors in the cookies, though they're not overpowering.  I also thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with cookie stamp patters using found objects.  I don't own a cookie stamp, but I pressed my cookies with a swirl-shaped wire, with the top of a clean star-shaped pattern in the top of a spice-jar shaker, and finally, as you'll see below, with the back of a pie server! My recipients were:

• Michelle Hilton of From Calculus to Cupcakes
• Rosalynda Thorn of This Mama Can Cook
• Susan Bronson of A Less Processed Life

My swappers did not disappoint, either!  I received:

• Honey Vanilla Macaroons from Ruth at the tasty tRruth (see, Ruth? I was paying attention!),
• Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies from Denise at Addicted2Recipes, and
• Espresso Shortbread from Sarah at Cooker Girl, to whom, in a bizarre twist of fate, I sent my cookies last year!  (Sarah, in a great twist of irony, I just baked some soft Gingerbread cookies ... not yours from last year, but definitely similar!  I'll be posting the recipe soon.)

I loved the honey taste in Ruth's macaroons, too.  Denise's Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies left me desperately seeking a pint of Haagen Daaz' Peppermint Bark.  And Sarah's espresso shortbreads were just right; not overpoweringly coffee-flavored, but perfect with a morning cuppa joe.

Thanks again to everyone who made the cookie swap happen, and to Lindsay and Julie for hosting!  Congratulations, ladies, on your fundraiser, and on helping the food blogging community to give such a fabulous gift together this year!

Honey Basil Shortbreads
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens


1 c. butter, softened
2/3 c. sugar
1 egg
3 T. honey
1 T. fresh snipped basil (or 1 t. dried)
2 t. finely shredded orange peel
1 t. vanilla
3 c. flour
sugar for stamping

Preheat oven to 375.  Beat butter in a large bowl on medium high speed for about 30 seconds until fluffy.  Add 2/3 c. sugar and beat until combined.  Add egg, honey, basil, orange peel, and vanilla and beat until combined.  Beat in flour.

Place a small amount of sugar into a shallow bowl.  Roll dough into 1 1/2" balls, and place them about 2" apart on your cookie sheet.  Dip the patterned bottom of a glass, a cookie stamp, or serving utensil (I used a pie server!  This is a great time to experiment with found objects in your kitchen, to see what they turn out like!) into sugar, and using the glass or stamp, flatten balls to 1/4" thickness.

Bake 6-8 minutes or until bottoms are light brown.  Cool on sheets 1 minute; transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

Risking Joy, and Cornmeal Lime Cookies

I have, for as long as I can remember, been a type-A control freak.  This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me in real life, and to be honest, it's served me well academically and professionally.  But it's also been something of a liability in parenting; if there's one thing having children proves to me, again and again, is that I can't always be in control, and sometimes that's OK.

The other day, at a park playdate with a friend, I was on the "big girl" swing with N. sitting on my lap, letting go of her just enough so that she could experience the adrenaline rush of a brief freefall, pumping us both high enough so that after she got past the initial uncertainty, her squeals were near-continuous.  As we swung into the icy breeze, I couldn't help but notice how the other mother hovered over her child, who was swinging just imperceptibly next to us, and swooped down when her small lip quivered with uncertainty, picked her up and pressed her to her chest.

There's no rulebook for potential parents, of course.  Parenting styles are as varied as the individuals who parent, no matter what path we take to achieve that role.  We know our children best, and sometimes we can avert disaster by being attentive, by responding to comfort them before they even know they need comforting.  My friend is a fabulous parent: smart, caring, nurturing, encouraging.  But I was also struck by the thought that as parents, especially as parents who have experienced loss, we have to make a deliberate choice to risk joy, and that joy sometimes requires letting go.

And then I thought, well, maybe that applies to everyone.  If you've ever known loss, it becomes hard to trust again.  Joy is a risk.  It's a risk because you might connect to something that will be taken from you, or you might never find joy at all.  But there must be something about being human that drives us to take the risk again and again, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Last week, on one unseasonably warm day, I decided to take N. for a walk before we met I. at the bus.  We locked the door and picked our way down the steps as toddlers do, and when she hit the sidewalk, N. began to run.  And run.  "RUNNNNNNNNNNNN," she chanted, punctuating her footfalls with "NNN...NNN...NNN," only to rev herself up and do it all over again, occasionally turning around and saying "Mommy's turn?"--encouraging me to run, too.  I decided to follow her, just to see where she went.  When we got to a street, I asked her to hold my hand to cross, but otherwise, I made sure she was the one in the lead.  I don't know if it was the weather, or if she loved being in front, or some of both, but she ran that way, "RUNNNNN .... RUNNNNNNNNN!" for the better part of a mile, to downtown.

I felt lucky to witness that exuberance, to be part of it.  And really, that kind of joy is worth the risk, isn't it?

Cornmeal Lime Cookies
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens 
These cookies are an unexpected combination, a bit of a risk on your holiday cookie plate.  But totally worth it.

3/4 c. butter, softened
2/3 c. powdered sugar
1/8 t. salt
1 c. flour
1/2 c. cornmeal
2 t. finely shredded lime peel
1/2 t. vanilla

In a large bowl, beat butter until fluffy with an electric mixer on high speed for 30 seconds.  Add powdered sugar and salt, and beat well to combine.  Beat in flour, cornmeal, lime peel, and vanilla.  Cover and chill at least one hour, and preferably longer.

Preheat oven to 350.  Roll dough 1/4" thick; using a 2" cookie cutter, cut dough into shapes and place onto a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.  Decorate with sugar if desired, and bake 8-10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges.  Transfer to wire racks to cool.

Hope, and Pistachio-Rosewater Slice and Bake Cookies

My oven broke last night.

It was a small tragedy.  I had designs on a batch of granola last night and more cookies today.  My husband had bread on deck.  We did everything we could: restarted the oven, unplugged the oven, flipped on the cleaning cycle (sounds like tech support, doesn't it?), only to be faced with the grim reality: the oven would turn on, but not heat up.

Of course, it will be repaired.  We're lucky we can afford to fix it.  This is not the end of the world.  I went a full week without oven access when we had no power, and I lived to tell the tale.  But it's holiday baking season, and the oven is my refuge.

I was thinking yesterday about my complicated feelings about the month-long celebration that December has become.  I dislike the shopping season that arrives earlier and earlier every year, the decorations in stores that make you feel like you're behind on your gift-giving preparations (not to mention assuming that everyone who shops celebrates Christmas).  I dislike my trifecta of family gatherings--the Thanksgiving/Birthday(mine and my brothers')/Christmas get-togethers--that make me feel pressured to give out of obligation.

But I get it.  When I was a practicing Catholic, I loved advent.  I loved the lights, the candles, the music, the smell of pine, the general feeling of goodwill.  Advent was appealing because it was about nurturing hope.  And if you're feeling like you need hope (and really, who doesn't?) there's nothing better than more of it.  Days and weeks of it.  And it's for those reasons that I don't mind the December holidays taking over the entire month.  The people who shop?  Misplaced hope, manifesting itself in consumerism.

These days I don't celebrate advent, really.   My son requested an advent calendar this year, because his grandpa (who is Jewish, mind you) gave him a secular one created by a famous illustrator last year, so we got one and we open one window each morning.  We also tear one link off of a paper chain he made in his (Unitarian Universalist) religious education class.  But those nods to the countdown until Christmas are background to the baking I do during late November and December.

It's not that the world needs more cookies.  I sure as hell don't need to eat more cookies.  But holiday baking is my coping mechanism, it's my reminder to hope.  When I feel depressed about the obligatory elements of the holidays, I retreat to the kitchen and chop nuts and beat sticks of butter into fluff.  Baking gives me a sense of purpose and accomplishment and forward-looking-ness that has been particularly welcome this year, as I continue to job-hunt and ask myself what it is I "plan to do with [my] one wild and precious life."  When I'm done baking cookies, I have cookies.  I can count them.  They're a measurable achievement.  And then I can give them away, which makes me feel good.

So here's hoping that the nice repairmen (and yes, they are men, because I called the old guys who have a shop down the street) will work their magic soon, and restore my coping mechanism to me.  Because I need a little Christmas, my way.

What is your favorite way to prepare for holidays, whether they're the Christmas holidays or other important holidays in your tradition?

Pistachio Rosewater Cardamom Slice and Bake Cookies
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1/2 c. butter, softened
1 3 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 c. powdered sugar
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
2 t. rosewater
generous pinch of cardamom
2 t. finely shredded lemon peel
3/4 c. salted dry-roasted pistachios, finely chopped

Beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl for about 30 seconds on high speed.  Add sugar, baking soda, and salt, and beat until combined.  Beat in egg, vanilla, rosewater, and cardamom.  Beat in flour and 1/4 c. of the pistachios (you may need to knead them in).

Divide dough in half.  Roll each half into a log about 1 1/2" diameter.  Place remaining pistachios on a sheet of waxed paper, and roll the dough logs into the nuts.  Wrap rolls in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hours.

Preheat oven to 375.  Cut rolls into about 1/4" slices.  Place 1" apart on cookie sheets and bake 7-9 minutes or until the edges are slighly browned.  Cool on cookie sheets 1 minutes, and transfer to racks to cool completely.

Baking A Difference: A Bake Sale/Auction for Sandy Relief

Welcome to our nation-wide blogger baked goods auction to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy!  UPDATE: BIDDING IS NOW CLOSED.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO DONATE TO THE UNITED WAY HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF FUND, BELOW.)

Though the headlines have begun to fade from the national media, the work to rebuild in New Jersey has barely begun.  Many people, especially those at the shore and in Staten Island, are still without power, weeks after the storm.  Cleanup will take months (see the image below, courtesy of one of my blogging friends, Mastering Mommy Brain, whose parents' home in Ortley Beach was among the affected properties).  Families have been displaced, forced to leave their homes.  Though donations of food and clothing have been plentiful, the difficult work is still ahead, and I'm proud to have so many blogging friends who agreed to participate in this auction, and raise some awareness and funds for the ongoing relief effort!

Proceeds from the auction will go to the United Way Hurricane Sandy Recovery Fund.  My family has worked with the United Way over the years, and I feel confident about their plans to support communities through the rebuilding and recovery process, not just in the short term, but in the long term.  Moreover, they have informed me that they will charge no administrative fees on donations to the Fund!  They are making cash infusions to community-based organizations currently unable to deliver at full capacity, so that those organizations can better serve the needs of those affected by Sandy at the grassroots level. Rebuilding and expanding the capacity of these organizations are critical to overall recovery efforts.  The Fund will be distributed through grants to community-based health or human services organizations in order to bolster or create services that directly address the unmet needs of individuals and families adversely affected by the hurricane.  Near and long-term supports may include: basic needs, such as food; medical and mental health services; transportation assistance; housing and utilities assistance; legal assistance; and job retraining and counseling.

 

Let's Bake a Difference for the Garden State!

We have fabulous items up for auction below!  However, we understand that some of you might prefer to contribute directly to the cause; if you would like to make a contribution to the United Way Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund without bidding on an item, click on the button at the right, and where it says "organization," please write "A Half Baked Life Auction" in addition to any other organizations that may match your donation.  I'd love it if you'd leave a comment on this post, too, or email me, letting us know that you donated, even if you didn't bid, so we can include your donation in the final fundraising tally.

Now without further ado, on to the auction details:

• Bidding opens at 8pm EST on the evening of Sunday the 25th.  Bidding will close at 11:59pm (one minute before midnight) EST on Monday the 26th (Cyber Monday!).  Please tweet the auction as much as possible, so that we get lots of traffic and bidders during the day!  It would be great if you would use the hashtag #Sandy in your tweets, and #bakeadifference.
• Each individual item has its own page with its own comments section.  These pages will include information about the starting bid, and will be available for you to view by Sunday night.  The bidding will happen in the comments section on each item's page; it will be up to you to refresh the item page to see the highest current bid and bid above that amount.
• In order to be eligible to win an item, bidders are required to leave a name and valid email address in EACH bid comment.
• Your bid must be at least $1 higher than the starting price or previous bid (if there are any) but can be as high as you’d like!  Bidding will go up in increments of $1 (not $.50, or $.25, etc.).
• Comments/bids are timestamped; if you are the final high bidder, you will be notified that you won within 24 hours.  Timing of shipping for items won may be negotiated between bidder and seller, though we prefer that items be shipped within a week, and all transactions must be complete by January 1.  Seller will cover shipping costs.  (UPDATED in response to comment below: items will be sent to U.S. shipping addresses only.  Apologies to my international blogging friends!)

Winning bidders must make payment and send their mailing address to me via paypal within 72 hours of the auction ending.  If payment is not made, winner forfeits item and the next highest bidder is awarded item. Once payment is made and shipping address is received, winning bidders will receive contact information of individual in charge of shipping their item.  Once all payments have been received, I will send a single donation, on behalf of the auction participants, to the United Way fund.

Get ready, get set, BID!  Here are our Fabulous Auction Items:
(click on the link above the picture to go to the bidding page for that item):

Ten Trail Mix Cookies As Big As Your Head

One dozen Vegan Gingerbread People

A 9"x13" Pan of Blondies

Holiday Set: Key Lime Fudge and Dark Chocolate Espresso Shortbread

photos courtesy of Southern Living

8x8" Pan of Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

Gourmet Granola (2 winners)

Two Dozen White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies

Fifteen Gingerbread Muffins

Four Dozen Stained Glass Cookies (2 winners)

Banana Bread (with mix-ins of your choice, 5 winners)

Completely Delicious Oatmeal Cookies (with mix-ins of your choice)

Zucchini Bread