I'm edging into dangerous territory.

It was a divine weekend. I baked and baked and enjoyed The Messiah at our church.

And...yesterday it was back to the salt mine. I am about done with this job. It's boring. I've spent all my work time since May working on a stupid project organizing thousands of paper files, sorting, completing, and alphabetizing. Then I started scanning. I've scanned and scanned and scanned until the world looks level, my brain melted and ran out my ears, and I feel nothing but loathing every time I pull up to the building.

My hope is that I will be finished the scanning part of my job before I leave for Christmas. After that I have no idea what my Corporate Overlords will find for me to do. I just hope LIKE FUCK it does not involve scanning. If it does, I feel I have some choices. One is pulling off all my clothes and running naked and screaming from the building, convincing them that I'm too unstable to continue working for them. I've thought about it, oh yes I have.

Tomorrow is shopping day. I have to get the Christmas presents for...everyone. This is one of those tasks that is up to me, and tomorrow is my chosen day. I know what I want to get for everyone, I just hope tracking it down, killing it, and strapping it to the top of the SUV isn't too difficult.

If it was up to me, I would not exchange gifts with my adult family members. Alas, it is not up to me, so Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, Off To The Mall I Go.

Cookies coming out my ears

It was a busy and rewarding weekend.

Friday night I baked cookies with my Best Baking Friend. We made a bunch of Russian teacakes, or Mexican wedding cookies, or whatever you call them. Basically they are delicious balls of butter, sugar, and flour, rolled in more sugar.

Saturday we baked sugar cookies again. Rolling, decorating, baking. Rolling, decorating, baking. Sugar cookies are delicious and very popular...and a lot of work!

After a certain amount of time, we decided if we rolled out one more tray of trees and holly leaves, someone was going to get hurt, we moved on to cranberry-pistachio cookies. We got 12 rolls of those sliced and baked in about 2 hours, so that was super satisfying.

The Handel Choir of Baltimore performed The Messiah today. They used traditional musical instruments, like harpsichord, violincello, and these wacky looking old-style trumpets. It was a beautiful performance with talented soloists.

Then back home to make sausage balls and binge-watch Grimm. It is a humble life, but it is mine.

Sweet and savory

I went over to Best Baking Friend's yesterday afternoon and made two batches of sugar cookie dough. Then I hung around and helped cut out and decorate five trays of cookies. We made reindeer, holly leaves, and pine trees. Then I had to leave. It reminded me how easy it is to make the dough we made, which is from THE cookie Bible, the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion Cookbook. BFF has everything in his kitchen set up for mass production of cookies. In the next three weeks he will make about 10 different types of cookies, which he packs in tins and gifts to his friends. Before it's over he will have made hundred (maybe even thousands) of individual cookies. I am proud that I am completely Certified to help in all aspects of cookie baking!

I am making cookies later this week.

Today, instead of the sweet stuff, Thomas and I mixed up a bunch of cheese pastry dough, wrapped it around olives, and froze the resulting cheese olives. Later in the season, when I need something to take to a holiday party, I have them all frozen and ready to pop in the oven. I use a recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I think it is a good recipe, more flavorful than a lot of others I have found on the interwebz.

I also have the ingredients for sausage balls. I'm going to try to knock those out some day this week and will also freeze them. Getting that chest freezer for the basement has changed my food life. I can make things ahead of time and just bake later.

The sausage balls I make are so easy and delicious. I use this recipe with Bisquick. Don't mock, food snobs, Bisquick is just the flour and rising ingredients. The important thing about making good sausage balls is that you have to use some hot and spicy sausage. If you and your family enjoy spicy flavors/foods, use all spicy sausage. If, like me, you like a little zip, but not too much, use 1 lb. of regular sausage and 1 lb. of hot/spicy sausage. Don't wuss out and go with all regular sausage, they will be too bland. Trust me on this, you need some spice for flavor. If you are me, you will also add a few dashes of Texas Pete's hot sauce (or Tabasco), just to make things even better.



For holidays, we usually have these at least once as a snack/appetizer, and usually once for breakfast. Make ahead and freeze, then bake until golden brown and sizzly. So delicious. Nothing says loving like sausage balls fresh from the oven!

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch

I feel somewhat like Mr. Grinch tonight. My heart's an empty hole.

I have GOT to stop listening to the news. But being on a news diet doesn't mean that awful things aren't happening, just that I don't know about them. Is willful ignorance really the way go to here?

Early this year, a friend's beautiful 48 year old wife killed herself in their home. He found her body hours later. His whole life was shattered at that moment. I think about her a lot. And him. At the time that she committed suicide, she was in a major depression. She fully believed that things would never get better, and that her husband and child would be better off without her. So she took a step that made sure that nothing would ever get better for her. It was, bitterly, a permanent solution for a temporary problem.

The way I feel today is pretty awful, but I know that some other day, maybe a day soon (I hope) I will not be filled with such feelings of pessimism and doom. Maybe my heart will grow three sizes and I'll be able to remember all the things about the world that are good and hopeful.

Here are some things that are good about my life, that I can appreciate right now:

• Thomas fixed me dinner and had it ready when I got home from work. A hot dinner is a comforting thing.
• I have a little dog on my lap, keeping me warm.
• I have plenty to read in the house.
• We have a roof over our heads, food in the freezer, and money in the bank. There are people in the world for whom that is an impossible dream.
• Tomorrow I am going to a concert with Thomas and friends to hear the talented John Gorka. Music is also a comforting thing.
• I will bake cookies and make cheese olives and sausage balls this weekend, so I have things to take to the holiday parties that are happening this month.

If anyone out there reads this, what are you thankful for?

The Russian judge gave it a 10, but you know those Russians!

I finished The Crappy One and Only. It ended the way I knew it would, with the Walker team winning the big game, and Shea and elderly Coach Hottie getting together. Even though we are told over and over again that Coach “looks ten years younger than his 55 years,” his age didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that he had watched her grow up. It was like a girl falling in creepy incestuous love with the stepfather who raised her from infancy. YUK. I was skeeved.

My grade: D- I am going to stay far away from Giffen from now on. I will say that she’s not a bad writer, which is why I did not give this an F. Story was an F but the prose was a solid B.

Now I’m listening to the mournfully beautiful The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman. I first read this book years ago; I chose it because I needed something I knew would not disappoint. It is not a traditional novel, but a collection of stories set in the same place: the town of Blackwell, Mass. Starting with the coming of white people to the icy, bear-filled wilderness of the Berkshires, going forward in jumps of 16 or 20 or 45 years. The same families show up again and again, and characters often refer to their parents and grandparents, the protagonists of previous stories.

I find the stories beautiful, though they are strange and full of loss and sadness. Johnny Appleseed shows up, and gives a suicidal widow the gift of knowing she is alive. A strange, plain young girl from Amherst meets a blind man, and although they only know each other for a few days, he gives her a dog named Carlo and she plants a scented garden for him.

A young girl drowns in a surprising summer snowstorm, in a cold year where one of Johnny Appleseed’s trees saves the lives of the town. A murderess’ daughter remembers sadly the execution, by electrocution, of an elephant named Topsy. I don’t know why I love Hoffman’s books as I do, I have friends who do not think much of her, but I find her writing so beautiful, clear and yet with a sense of how much wonder there is in the world. This book is full of beautiful descriptions of nature. 

I need things right now that help me forget the stuff that is going on in the world. So much awful stuff. I may have to put myself on a news diet, because two solid days of obsessively reading and listening to the news about San Bernadino is not good for me.

Here's a guilty secret: when I feel as scared and upset by the world as I do right now, I read children's books (especially old favorites) and Regency romances. Excuse me while I head off to an evening of extremely light reading.