Nancy Pearl Wannabe

Dearest readers, I want you to know that I have very much enjoyed these Whip It Up posts; both making the recipes and documenting them for you. That said, I am glad that I will be free to create my culinary chef d’oeuvres without having to take pictures of them. Photographer, I am not. Which is why I did not take any of this latest recipe!

Despite the lack of pictures, let me assure you that my Oatzravaganza Cookies turned out delicious and fluffy the way oatmeal cookies should be. Unlike the last recipe I tried, where they turned out flat and crispy and I cried (shut up, I was hormonal).

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure it’s because of my KitchenAid mixer that the cookies turned out so wonderfully. It made it so easy to aerate the flour mixture beforehand and mixes everything so thoroughly. Props, KitchenAid.

I also added chopped dried bing cherries and dark chocolate chunks to make them the most super duper cookies I’ve ever had! For the ways and means, please see the rest of the recipe after the jump.

Here’s the recipe:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup toasted finely chopped pecans

Was the recipe easy to follow?

It was, and I recommend getting all the ingredients out first, something I normally can’t be bothered with.

Did the dish taste good?

They are cookies. Butter! Chocolate! Cherries! Coconut! Pecans! Yes, they were decidedly good.

Would you make it again?

Definitely. Cookies are a real crowd pleaser.

Two quick things I learned about oatmeal cookies:

First, that oats absorb lots of moisture from the other ingredients in the dough, so the longer you let the dough sit the less they will spread. Cool, yes? Now I know why my cookies are always flat!

Second, if you drop the dough onto the baking sheet in balls the cookies come out less flat as well. So really what I’m saying is: I am so damn awesome at making non-flat cookies!

Now I have 5 bazillion cookies to bring up to the beach today. Did I mention I’ll be there until Saturday? So you probably won’t hear from me? And that I will miss you all terribly while I’m away? It’s true! I’ll save you a couple of blueberry beers in case any of you want to drive up the coast of Maine to find me.

And when I get back: SCHOOL DAYS!

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Just about a week left in my summer vacation and all I’ve found myself wanting to do is to hang out, watch movies, read my books, and drink the occasional margarita or glass of wine. I suppose if there were anyone around to drag my ass out and make me do fun summer things I wouldn’t object- much- but it seems that everyone I know is of the same mindset.

Adding to my reluctance to leave the house, all the college freshmen have arrived for their orientation programs and the streets are a mess with weeping parents leaving their babies behind to start their drinking adventures, all while double parked with their hazards on. But I shouldn’t complain, this weekend’s traffic is nothing compared to what it will be next weekend when the rest of the kids move in. They don’t even have parents with them to prevent them from unpacking the kegs first. I’m just happy that Chris and I had the foresight to plan to be enjoying the sand and surf when those kids report for duty.

As usual I have no idea how I’ve managed to squander two months of free time with nothing to show for it. At least I’m consistent though, eh? Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I mean, no, I haven’t yet written my bestselling novel, but I did make, document, and post seven new recipes. That’s not nothing! Go me!

Unlike past years when the August ennui kicks in I am not feeling ready to head back to school. My sleeping schedule is all messed up and I’m hoping that I’ll somehow be able to hop out of bed at 5:30 every morning while still staying up until one or two. I should be able to function on, like, three hours of sleep a night, right? I aim to try, and anyway the back-to-school anxiety dreams have already begun so it’s not like my sleep is exactly restful. You know, the dreams where you’re huddled in the poetry section with a school lunch tray, trying to keep kids from stealing the Shel Silverstein. No? That doesn’t happen to you? Ah. Well then. Lucky you.

I got a call from the Assistant Principal last week letting me know that the maintenance people were in to install a new air circulation system. I’m hoping that translates from Administration speech to “your office will no longer smell like a sewer system is being pumped through it” and not “they installed the air pump but the rest of your office didn’t survive”, because the last time I was in there it looked like some electrical work had been done by a pack of wildebeests. After the painting crew had finished up I realized they had rearranged half of my bookshelves, and when the summer reading program was over the place was riddled with empty Goldfish packets and juice boxes.

So, yeah. September can wait.

You know how babies look really cute so that when they cry you don’t get mad at them, you just want to comfort them and make everything okay? I imagine relationships to be the same way. Yes, love and attraction evolved so that we can perpetuate the human race and all that, but I firmly believe that it also developed so that you don’t take your true love by the shoulders and shake them senseless after walking past the same sink full of dishes and overflowing trash day after day.

Now, I’m not even necessarily talking about the Christopher, although he has on occasion done those very things. I know for a fact the same to be true of my own father, relatives, and friends. And it’s quite possible that those genetics that prevent Chris from turning off a light switch when he leaves the room are too deeply-rooted and innate to ever overcome. Still, I try.

The problem, then, lies in the fact that as hard as I try I cannot understand how the male mind works. Believe me, I have plumbed the depths and come back empty-handed. We are just too different. Here is an example:

There is a giant pile of clean laundry to fold. I dump the laundry on the bed and start folding, separating things into piles according to the person the garment belongs to and where those garments go. When I am done, I put said garments away in the proper place and continue on to the next mundane task at hand.

Then there’s this:

There is a giant pile of laundry to fold. Chris looks at the laundry pile and suddenly remembers he forgot his pre-lunch mid-afternoon checking of email. While reading the internet he suddenly becomes hungry and makes himself a snack, but since there’s so much laundry to fold he doesn’t bother with putting anything away or washing those dishes because there’s just TOO MUCH TO DO. He heads back to the laundry, contemplates it a bit, and then starts a rhetorical discussion with me as to why we create so much laundry for ourselves. Also, he needs some tunes to work by so he fiddles around with his computer until he finds the perfect sock-folding accompaniment. He picks out his socks from the pile and notices one missing and flies into seek and destroy mode. The sock is likely in the next load of laundry coming out of the dryer but that is not good enough, he must find it. Once he has come down off Red Alert he starts in on how we should have a better “system” for doing laundry, by which he means “next time, please make sure all my socks are together in the same load of laundry because otherwise I will go insane and I WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME”. Then he halfheartedly folds some underw– oh shit! He forgot his pre-lunch, post-snack, mid-afternoon email check! An hour and a half later after he has eaten and used the bathroom and gone for a run and taken a shower he sits down at his desk to start designing a robot that will fold laundry and possibly also bring him beers while he sits on the couch. When he realizes I won’t let him go to Home Depot to acquire all the requisite robot parts until he has folded the laundry he starts pulling out some t-shirts to unwrinkle. I stop in to grab something from the bedroom and take pity, pausing to help fold. Thirty seconds later, the laundry is folded in neat piles ready to go to their respective homes. I leave, satisfied with my good-natured help. Fast forward to bed time, when I enter the room and the clothes are still in their neat piles all over the bed. I sigh, put my piles away, and resign myself to an extra 45 minutes added to his bedtime routine so that he can pontificate about how the towels are stored too high up in the closet, he doesn’t like to keep the dishtowels above the refrigerator because it’s dusty, he can’t find his swimsuit, we need more shelving space, and OH MY GOD ANOTHER SOCK IS MISSING.

And maybe only half of that is exaggeration.

Fun fact I bet you didn’t know about me: I am a quarter Lebanese. Yes, my maternal grandfather was born in Lebanon, and if the rumors are true I still have family over there, though I’ve never met them. Sadly, my grandfather passed away while I was in college and he was the last real tie we had with the Old Country. I don’t speak Arabic except for a few choice slurs, I don’t have a perma-tan like most of my mother’s side of the family, and I have very few ties with the Middle East save for my undying love of their cuisine.

Anyway, I don’t always share the fact that I am of partially Arab descent because let’s face it: much of the world are still bigots when it comes to the Middle East.  I wouldn’t deny my heritage if someone asked, nor do I feel ashamed of it in any way, but I don’t necessarily volunteer the information to just anyone. Mostly, I don’t feel any connection with it at all until I get into the kitchen. I swear, I could have mint and lemon in just about every dish.

So for this week’s Whip It Up salad theme I knew I wanted to make something Lebanese. I thought at first about making grapeleaves but the very idea of rolling all those little things after making the potstickers last week made me want to stab my eyes out with chopsticks. Then I thought about making tabouleh, but I am far too busy to spend five hours chopping parsley. Fattoush it is. Which, whatever; fattoush is my favorite anyway.

I started off with the leftover syrian (pita) bread that I had in the fridge and sprayed it with olive oil. I sprinkled the bread with a spice called zatar, or sumac, which you can find in most specialty spice stores and certainly any Middle Eastern market.

Chris calls zatar “the dirt spice”. I can’t really fault him that one; it looks like topsoil with some sesame seeds and certainly tastes earthy. But it is the key to making this salad spectacular. He also likes to call this salad “Fuh-douche”, so make of his humor what you will.

Throw the syrian bread in the toaster over until browned and crunchy, remove and let cool.

Next I chopped up one head of romaine, half of an English cucumber, three or four green onions, and a whole bunch of heirloom tomatoes that I got at the farmer’s market.

Once the salad was all chopped up I left it in the bowl with some kosher salt until Chris got home.

While I was waiting I made the dressing- so simple. Half of a lemon, some olive oil, one teaspoon of sumac, salt and pepper. Once Chris got home I poured the dressing over the salad and crunched the zatar bread chips into quarter-sized pieces, mixing everything thoroughly.

I ate mine straight up out of a bowl and Chris had his as a wrap. Either way, the salad was amazing- fresh, light, crisp, and delicious.

Was the recipe easy to follow?
Super easy.

Did the dish taste good?
So, so great.

Would you make it again?
I would make this every day if I could get to the farmer’s market. It’s that good.

Fattoush or Peasant Salad (Adapted from my mother’s recipe, but I also used this recipe for reference.)

2 cups shredded lettuce (romaine and/or iceberg)
1 large or 2 small cucumbers, diced small
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup chopped parsley, leaves only, no stems
1/4 cup chopped mint leaves, no stems
1 bunch green onions, finely sliced
1/2 teaspoon sumac
2 pieces of pita bread toasted until golden brown, broken into pieces the size of a quarter

Dressing

1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 to 4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon salt
Pinch of pepper

In a small bowl mix all dressing ingredients well.
Put all salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with 1/2 to 1 cup dressing. Serve immediately.

It’s gorgeous outside and I should be out there riding my bike before Chris comes home from practice and we make the road trip up to the beach house in Maine. Instead, I am worrying myself to death about how insane my google reader has become and the fact that I haven’t posted in days and will soon be internetless for many more days on top of that. This morning I actually asked Chris if we should bring the computer with us in case we can steal a wi-fi signal from somewhere and he looked at me like I had suddenly turned into a martian, saying “Why on earth would we bring the computer to the beach?” He’s totally right. And when the man who can’t tear his eyes from his iPhone long enough to remember to eat thinks you are being over the top anxious about the internet, you probably should take that into consideration and chill out.

So! No internet for me for a couple days, except what I can manage to sneak in from my phone, which means no commenting. I would apologize for being such a bad internet friend with my lack of commenting as of late but, meh, I’m not too sorry, and anyway I will make it up to you all when I come back next week. I love you all! I really really do! I thought I’d be able to catch up with my reading this weekend but there was just no time. On Friday afternoon after I finally finished up my week-long class, the hilarious Noelle Tannenbaum came to visit and we had a blast at the Science Museum after drinking frozen margaritas, watching the Olympics, playing many rounds of Scene It, and throwing back a few beers. It was a late night.

On Saturday, Noelle and Chris and I headed to the infamous Hampton Beach strip to meet up with Aaron and his lovely lady Mara for Ben’s birthday party. It was a blogstravaganza, but none of us felt the need to talk shop when we were surrounded by skeeball and air hockey at every turn. Happily, Noelle and Aaron finally got to meet. Sadly, our festivities had to be cut short because we needed to pick up Ms. Noelle’s sister so they could head back to New York. Next time: full weekend of partying. Promise.

Where am I, you ask? Standing in an area marked DO NOT ENTER to take this picture. Am a rebel!

Saturday evening my parents and sister came down to the city from New Hampshire to go to dinner. I had been complaining recently about their lack of visiting so they made the ultimate sacrifice- driving in Boston- and also treated Chris and I to a lovely dinner. They even kept their complaining about having to walk from a parking spot to the door of the restaurant to a minimum, especially when we promised them that another quick walk would yield cannolis from the North End. Promise people Italian baked goods and it’s amazing how far they will walk!

Now I’m just hanging out, waiting for Chris so we can get on the road and enjoy the first non-rainy day in what seems like months. I’m so excited about spending a few days in the sun and surf you’d think I was born in the Midwest, with nary a coast in sight.

Kidding, Midwest! You’re great too, in a non-ocean way.

Have a happy Monday, people. I’ll think of you when I’m getting my fillings pulled out from salt water taffy!

Chris and I watched with rapt attention the other day when Alton Brown made the perfect potstickers. I mean, we pretty much watch anything on the Food Network with rapt attention because it is like inhalants and you always need more, MORE!, but this time we paid special attention. I think the AB deserves that.

After the pressure of rolling out the dough for ravioli a few weeks ago almost cracked my usually composed kitchen demeanor I figured I would give these wonton wrappers a go. They certainly seemed easier than the pasta machine, AND they came already cut up into handy little squares. Thank goodness I live in modern times, when wonton wrappers come pre-sliced and even the most ghetto of grocery stores carries them for a paltry $2.49.

So here’s the skinny on AB’s potstickers: the recipe makes a LOT of filling, since each of the wonton wrappers only gets 1/2 teaspoon of the pork mixture. I don’t think I quite grasped just how much there was until an hour later when I still had half the bowl of filling and approximately eleventy million wrappers left. So if there are two of you to man the kitchen, the wrapping part would be twice as fast; otherwise I would suggest cutting the recipe in half unless you really want to spend some quality time with your kitchen counter.

First off, I gathered up all the ingredients. I improvised a bit, adding in ginger and substituting red pepper flakes for cayenne because I refused to buy cayenne at Whole Foods. Damn Whole Foods and their convenient location! Damn it to hell!

Very simple, I mixed the first eleven recipe ingredients in a mixing bowl.

I then grabbed a little bowl of water and my first wonton wrapper and got to the potsticking. At first I was very careful about how much filling I put in each one and spent time making each crease pretty.

By the end I was slopping in pork filling and folding the creases haphazardly, but they all turned out okay.

Make sure to get all the excess air out of the little pocket of filling.

Then, after filling and folding forever, I finally had a giant bunch of potstickers all piled up, with a wet cloth between each layer to keep them moist. You don’t want them to dry out!

This is like 112 layers. Just sayin’. I already froze the other half. Then Chris decided to take a shift on kitchen duty to give me a break. He sprayed a large frying pan with olive oil and heated it to medium high. When it was hot enough he added as many potstickers as he could fit evenly across the bottom and let them sear to the pan for two minutes.

Not to worry, they didn’t burn! They merely got a toasty brown on the bottom.

They did, however, stick to the bottom of the pan, which was the whole point. AFTER the two minutes of searing (and not before!), you then add a bunch of chicken stock to the pan so they lift cleanly up off the pan bottom. And then, ta da!

Yes, those are the little darlings.

We served with a side of soy sauce or hoisin and some steamed broccoli with garlic. Well, the ones Chris didn’t eat while he was making them, anyway.

Was the recipe easy to follow?
Indeed.

Did the dish taste good?
Yep.

Would you make it again?
The next time I have the urge to spend hours doing tedious, tedious things.

Recipe after the jump!

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So this course I’m taking, Movement in the Classroom, started off pretty well. One of my friends is actually teaching it and right off the bat she proposed that rather than being there for the full 8 to 2 that we skip the lunch hour and use from 12-1 as a “working lunch”, which basically means go home and make yourself a turkey sandwich while watching reruns of Forensic Files. Yay.

On Monday morning I showed up bright and early with my travel mug of coffee, ready to pretend to be cheery that I was awake and functioning before even the construction crews were out. I puttered around in my library a bit because shuffling around some papers and moving book carts made me feel a little better that my library currently looks like a bomb went off in there. I didn’t want to be that nerd that shows up super early to class (even though I totally am) so I waited until five minutes till it was supposed to start and headed up to the classroom where it was being held.

From down the hallway I could hear people already chatting away in the classroom so I sped up a little and just as I rounded the corner into the room, WHAM! There was a giant puddle of water on the floor that sent me flying, landing with all my force on one butt cheek and sending my entire mug of freshly-brewed coffee skittering and splashing all over the room. It was a very pleasant scene. You know how you get that embarrassed flush and you just hope that no one asks if you’re okay because you so obviously are not? Yeah, I had that.

Of course, everyone tried to help. To their credit, no one so much as let out a giggle, even though people falling is probably one of the funniest things I can think of as long as no one really gets hurt. But my ass did hurt. And still hurts, but no more so than my pride. Then I had to clean it all up and pretend to be concerned that no one else skated through the doorway by standing there issuing warnings. “Watch out- slippery wet floor!”

And you know, not one other person slid even a little bit on that puddle. I’ll give the two pregnant ladies a pass- I didn’t want them sliding around and potentially crashing- but it would have been at least a little less horrible if I wasn’t the only tool who managed to start off a class with a bang.

Yeah. I know. I’m a horrible person. Sue me!

You would think that after past experiences like my Technology for the 21st century Classroom course I would have learned to be wary about what I sign up for. Alas, I am a sucker for higher pay and so I continue to sign up for whatever they offer, even over the summer, which means that I will be spending the coming week learning all about Movement Activities for the Classroom I Don’t Actually Have from 8 am to 2 pm. I also have a library to put back together after a crew of knuckleheads spent a week painting in there, so that basically equals a full unpaid working week that could be spent watching 2,000 hours of Olympic games.

But I guess all that’s okay because I just spent an awesome four days in New York and I have two weeks at the beach in Maine coming up afterwards so I really don’t have too much to complain about. Until this class starts, of course.

As for the past weekend, Chris and I ditched Boston on Thursday afternoon and drove through hail and Hartford to arrive in Manhattan before dinner time. My cousin and his wife are the King and Queen of gracious hosts and made us dinner and provided us with a special screening of Lost Boys II: The Tribe. In case you were wondering, it rivaled The Ruins as worst attempt at scary movie in recent history.

But wait, there’s more!

• On Friday, Chris and Gabe both had to work so Renna and I hit up the Palisades Mall. As I texted to Noelle, it was dreamy. Four floors of good old fashioned shopping mall, nary an Anthropologie in sight.
• Later that night we met Gabe downtown at his work and hopped on the subway over to Little Italy and Chinatown, neither of which Chris had seen during his previous trips to NYC. There was some kind of festival going on so the streets were closed. We made the unwise decision of ordering the house wine at a seedy bar.
• We had an unmemorable dinner, but still a great time being out in the bustling streets and beautiful weather. I also got to catch up with my friend Alex from college.
• After dinner we walked to Chinatown where Alex sampled her very first bubble tea (the girl may be a New Yorker now but she had never tried bubble tea. How is this possible? And how is it possible that she doesn’t text? WHO DOESN’T TEXT?) We all took the train back and stopped at the corner bodega for the fixings of ice cream sundaes, since our dessert of marzipan clearly wasn’t cutting it. We were all tuckered out and fell asleep immediately.
• Saturday Renna braved city traffic to drive us down to Coney Island so we could see the freak side show. This was my first trip to Coney Island ever and I have to say, I am a huge fan. Beaches? Boardwalks? Rides? FREAK SHOWS AND BEER? What is this place, heaven? The side show was amazing, worth way more than the $5 admission price. They also have a “Freak Bar” where you can buy giant beers and bring them into the show. We saw a dude drill a giant drill bit 5 inches into his nose, a woman breathing fire, a sword swallower that got the drunk dudes in the back yelling inappropriate comments, and an honest-to-goodness lobster man. It was unbelievably awesome. We also had Nathan’s hotdogs from the original Nathan’s stand that were very meh considering how long we had to wait for them (hint: a long time) and cotton candy that tasted better just because it was at the beach. I think this picture sums up our day at Coney Island:



• After heading home to change we took the crosstown to a vegan restaurant where a friend of Gabe and Renna’s was a server. We were starving and tired and the prospect of vegan food after a lunch of hotdogs and candy floss was not necessarily appealing. Luckily, Candle 79 was one of the most amazing meals I’ve ever had, period. I would highly recommend checking it out if you’re ever in the city whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, or a raging carnivore like myself. I never knew seitan and tempeh could be so delicious, but if I had someone to cook me meals like that every day I would give up my bacon-loving ways immediately with no regrets. You really must try the Coconut-Mint Frappe because it is no joke.
• When we arrived home we were stuffed full of deliciousness and happily threw on a movie about a giant lunatic crocodile called Rogue. It was fun and ridiculous and featured a too skinny Michael Vartan.
• This morning we watched the US Men’s Basketball team crush China and refused to turn it off until the very end because we were mad that George W. walked out during the fourth quarter. Rudeness.
• Then we climbed back into the car and cruised back up to Boston without even getting stuck in beach traffic. Obviously, we rock at driving.

My previous claims to hating New York City are now null. I won’t be moving there or anything, but maybe now I will at least try to visit more often than every couple of years.

And yeah. I went there with the bullets. So how was your weekend?

Remember the good old days, when I didn’t bother to post much during the summer? I miss those sweet weeks filled with nothing but books and sun, especially when I’m sitting in Chris’s stuffy office banging on my keyboard.

But!

This recipe makes my blogging blood, sweat, and tears worth it.

Chris’s favorite dessert of all time is key lime pie and I have been on a seemingly endless quest to find a recipe that is not key lime pie, but that he still loves. Preferably something that does not involve me making a pie crust, as I have recently realized that I have an aversion to pie crusts. Or really I should say, I have an aversion to anything that involves close measurements, timing, and the possibility of it not turning out the way I want it to the very first time I attempt it. Cookies it is!

I started by dumping all the wet ingredients, including the room temperature butter, into my mixer, plus 1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar. Since I couldn’t find key limes anywhere (or at least, I couldn’t find them anywhere in the one store I bothered to look) I bought key lime juice. It has all the same bitterness, minus the cuteness of miniature limes (and thus also minus the zest; sorry I half-assed that part but Whole Foods claimed they only get key limes in the winter and the gentleman in produce looked so sad that he had disappoint my key lime dreams that I felt uncomfortable for him and escaped to the baking aisle before he could offer to grow me some on his back porch).

Where was I? Oh yes. In another bowl I whisked together the flour, cornstarch, and salt, and then slowly added it to the wet ingredients already in my mixer. Once they were all mixed together I took half the dough and dumped it onto some parchment paper and stared at it, perplexed, for a minute. How does one roll dough into a log? Eventually I just sort of rolled it around the counter until it looked like this:

I made them about an inch and half around, I’d wager. Then I threw the rolls in the fridge and waited until after dinner. Once I brought them out I decided to only use one of the rolls since I cut off what seemed like a bajillion million cookies. The other roll is currently residing in my freezer for future use.

Throw those oddly-shaped, unevenly sliced cookies in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, and voila!

Slightly burned cookies. Fifteen minutes, my ass, Martha Stewart! Oh well, I have another whole roll to try again later. For now, I tossed the cookies in a ziploc bag with the remaining 2/3 cups powdered sugar and gently shook them around to coat them. The recipe says to do this when they are still warm, a few minutes out of the oven. I would recommend not doing it directly from the hot pan as I did because the sugar heats up and gets melty and the cookies stick together. Then you cry.

But then you eat one and all your worries melt away (get it?! Meltaways?!). They are delicious, rich and buttery, even though they are not particularly pretty and they have too much powdered sugar and some are a bit too… crispy. And also the lighting in my kitchen sucks. Sorry about that.

Wait, you want to know Chris’s verdict?

The first one he had was that totally burnt one there on the left. Not so good, but he chewed thoughtfully and chose his words carefully when proclaiming his judgment that the cooking time may have been off. But his second was perfect and he declared them “suitable” as a key lime dessert. I have since caught him furtively grabbing two or three every time he walks past the kitchen. They must have grown on him.

A few notes: next time I will leave them in for 10 minutes, then check on them every minute until they are done. I will also cut them a bit thicker so they’re not so delicate. And I will definitely add the zest because I love the color and also I think it will add some extra tartness to balance out all the sugar and butter.

Was the recipe easy to follow?
Yes, and will be even easier in the future with my adjustments. I do wish it explained better how to roll the cookies out to get a perfect circle but I guess Martha Stewart has advanced beyond such menial tasks as rolling.

Did the dish taste good?
They’re butter and sugar! How could they not taste good?

Would you make it again?
Sure. I have another whole roll in the freezer, and they seem like they’d be great to bring to a party because the recipe makes so many.

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It’s no secret that I am a New England girl at heart. I love New Hampshire and it’s tiny little fourteen-mile coastline and absurd number of vanity plates. I love Vermont for the fact that you can order up Ben & Jerry’s in every bar. I love Maine even though someone there went a little overboard with putting up signs on the highway to the point where they are completely nonsensical, i.e. “Maine: Come for a Visit, Stay For A Lifetime” and “Snack Wisely: Remember Snacks Are Not A Meal Replacement!”, and sometimes just cartoon drawings of lobsters.

If only I were kidding.

But most of all I love Boston. It’s small and manageable, yet I still feel as though there are parts of they city I have yet to discover like the South End (not to be confused with Southie!) and East Boston. And as soon as those places get T stops I will be all over that. The historic buildings are beautiful, and when people-watching in the summer you are guaranteed laughs from the dopes dressed in Revolutionary War regalia when it’s 95 degrees and the backs of your knees are sweating even when you are just wearing a cotton sundress.

There’s always tons of live music, great restaurants, and good shopping. Hell, I have four Targets within a 10-mile radius of my apartment. Now THAT is living.

But really, there’s only so much one can accept even after citing all the awesome parts of living in Boston. At twenty-nine years old I don’t feel as though I should still be saying things like, “Well, our apartment is nice if only we didn’t live on a street where children scream so endlessly that we wouldn’t even know if they were being abducted and tortured next door because it just ALWAYS SOUNDS LIKE THAT.” And maybe that joke would be funnier if Chris didn’t discover last week that there is a registered sex offender, charged with sexual assault on a minor, living three houses up from us.

We were completely excited that our next door neighbors moved last week because in close to two years they had never once turned off their kitchen light, which shined directly into our bedroom window all night long. When they were finally gone we marveled at the total darkness of our room and slept the deepest, most wonderful sleep we’ve had since moving to this neighborhood, without so much as one Tylenol PM.

We’ve considered moving to a different neighborhood. But I don’t feel that moving one mile closer to the T should equal a $400 hike in rent prices and the loss of my shoe room. Being here shouldn’t mean that I have to put up with drunk hipster college kids with their neon Nike high tops. I shouldn’t have to wear full body armor to ride my bike or live in fear that the Massachusetts trademark road rage might someday strike the driver behind me; no Schwinn helmet would save me then.

I actually tried to search craig’s list for places outside of the city. I thought maybe if we could just get a little further outside of the boundaries of the 253 colleges and universities we would feel a little less cramped, a little less like we should be watching The Hills instead of PBS specials, a little less like paying $9 for a PBR tall boy is totally normal and not completely insane. What I found on craig’s list was discouraging, to say the least, and not just because the prices were the same as the city.

The best was this house of horrors; a fully furnished Victorian mansion, where you are not allowed to have pets so as to preserve its historic nature, but it is completely cable and wifi ready. Because those Victorian era poets were NOTHING without the internet.

The only way I would move into that apartment is if I had a strong desire to be dismembered in my sleep, then sewn back together and used as a dressmaker’s dummy. Or if I wanted to see those twins from The Shining for myself. And you know, I don’t have either of those desires at all.

So for now we’ll stick with the neighbors we’ve got. They may be crappy but at least they’ve never tried to kill us.

Yet.