candy corn cookies

Baking cookies calms me. I like the manual labor of mixing and shaping the dough, the creative planning part when the decision is made as to what kind to make and how to make them. The rummaging through cookbooks for a recipe to use to use as a base but one that you can change a bit to make it your own. I like the eating part too, but neither Bill or I allow ourselves to indulge much. But I never have to worry about who is going to eat them. I simply take them to work and they are gone in a matter of hours. Friday I got the idea for candy corn cookies. I used a simple butter cookie recipe that I have used often.

1 c butter
1 c powdered sugar
2 1/4 c flour
1/4 salt

Mix butter and sugar thoroughly. Measure flour by dipping method or by sifting. Mix flour and salt, stir in. At this point, I divided my dough into half. I added two squares of semi-sweet chocolate (melted) to one half. To the other half I added 1 t orange flavoring and a few drops of red and yellow food coloring.

Mold in shape of your choice. Wrap in waxed or parchment paper. Chill several hours or overnight. To form a candy corn shape, I formed my chocolate dough into a rectangle which I then sliced in half longways. I then divided the orange dough into two parts and formed two triangular logs. I placed a triangle of orange on top of each chocolate layer and made sure the resulting log had a triangular shape.





Cut and ready for the oven.




Watch them carefully. They don't take long to bake.



Cool on a rack. At this point I always eat an ugly one that didn't turn out so well.



When they have thouroughly cooled, melt some white chocolate (I used Ghirardelli white chocolate chips) with a dash of oil (I used Wegmans sunflower oil) and dip the tips of the cookies into the chocolate. Lay out on parchment paper to dry.
Pour yourself a glass of milk and enjoy.

sunday

it's sunday. i long ago made my peace with not attending mass. i take the advise of emily dickenson who wrote that some keep the sabbbath going to church i keep it staying home with a bobolink for a cloister and an orchard for a dome.
when i made my first confession i learned a short little list of sins to tell the priest. each time that i went to confession after that i rattled off the same list. i told a lie, i talked back to my mother and father. sometimes i had to stop and think about whether i had told a lie or not because i always tended to tell the truth back then. i dreaded going to confession and running through the same little list of sins. when i went through puberty my list seemed babyish and i felt inadequate. i needed some bigger sins to tell. but when i did have a sin that seemed a little bigger i didn't really feel like sharing it with the man in the box. i knew it was a sin if it made me feel bad and i preferred it to be between just me and god. i stopped attending mass as soon as i went off to college. there i found some new sins that i could have added to my list but i didn't feel that they were sins. and saying forgive me father i have sinned and saying that i was truly sorry for this sin and that i would go forth and sin more would have been the real sin.
i didn't like hearing in church that we were all such bad people and so full of sin. most of the people i knew were good people. and there were certain gospels that just infuriated me. like the one where god says that a man should leave his family and follow the lord. but i always liked the beauty of the church and the calming hymns that poured out of the organ and the mystery of the mass in latin and all that bell ringing and ritual. then one year it became the fashion to strip churches of their beauty and simplify them. our church was stripped of it's magnificent floor-to-ceiling altar and a simple laminated altar that faced the congregation replaced it. simple language replaced the latin. and i dreaded all that hand shaking and peace sign offering. should i turn and offer the sign of peace? will so and so offer me the sign of peace? should i reach a little farther and offer the next person down in the pew the sign of peace? whew! that part of the mass is finally over and i can feel some peace.
when our son was born i had to start attending mass again so i could have him baptized. then i spent sunday mornings in the cry room with all the other mothers and crying babies. that soon wore thin and i stopped attending again. when he started school i had to attend again so he could go to catechism classes and from here until he reached confirmation age i deligently attended so he could get confirmed. but then he refused to go to these confirmation classes even though i threatened and begged. how would he ever be able to be married in the church if he didn't go? one day while i was out running and fretting over this a calm came over me and i made a decision and i don't think it came from god. confirmation was about confirming your faith and if he didn't want to confirm his faith then why would i ever want to force him to? it was his decision. he stopped going to catechism and i stopped attending mass for good this time. it felt good. i always came away from mass feeling like i was a bad person. they certainly told me that often enough. i developed a strong sense of right and wrong at a young age. i try to do right and i feel bad when i do wrong. but there are certain things that go against the rules that i just don't feel are wrong. religion has been the source of most of the turmoil in the world. i don't know for certain what i believe anymore. most of the time i believe that stuff just happens. it's random. it doesn't happen for a reason. but then some serendipitous thing will happen that makes me doubt this and make me believe in fate. i believe that anything is possible so i can't say that there isn't a god out there just as i believe that the supernatural and extraterrestial life may exist. there may be other dimensions and forces that we have not identified. i can say that in my darkest days i've tried praying and my prayers have not been answered from above. and this is when you find the strength inside yourself. when you delve down and find that strength to carry on and believe in yourself. for those that attribute this to god answering their prayers, i'm glad that they have this backing to help make them strong. maybe i am even one of them. I think nature and the beauty of the world and the beauty of life itself does this for me. so again to quote emily, instead of getting to heaven at last, i'm going all along. and btw i think think my son turned out to be a wonderful person even without being confirmed.

4 p salad

pears, pecans, parmesan and prosciutto on field greens

now i need a nutmeg

A warm sunny Saturday late summer morning. After my workout at the BAC I stopped at the annual block garage sales on Cadman. What a pitiful showing this year. All I found was a Christmas piano music book and a nutmeg grater. A dollar well spent. ;-).
But now I need a nutmeg to grate.



Driving back home I passed a sign for a garage sale on Oakgrove and decided to stop there too. I had a very pleasant conversation with a very pleasant man. Seems he was selling all the things that his wife had collected for years. He pointed out many of the items that he thought were pretty special. Ivory handled buttonhooks and lacy knitted baby layettes. Old glass bottles with glass stoppers. He said that people tell him that these things go for quite a lot on eBay. He said he wasn't very computer savy but his kids had just bought him an iPad. I told him I was jealous. He offered up that his wife had died and that he had a girlfriend. I asked if she had died of cancer. He said she had died on the ski slopes in Colorado while on a trip with girlfriends. Heart attack. We talked about raising children in the village and about how both of us were the middle child in a family of three children. I looked through the old dresses. He said I was about the size of his wife and maybe these would fit me. I could see that his wife had been a very tiny woman and these dresses would not fit me. They had labels like Gay Gibson. He said make an offer.



He pointed out his 1947 Ford that was hiding in the back of the garage under piles of stuff.



I asked if I could take a picture of it. I told him I had $7 worth of stuff to buy and he said to just give him $5. He said that he didn't advertise. If he had he could have had a lot more people at the sale. He said he wasn't trying to make money...just get rid of some stuff. He would pull the garage door down and just leave it for another time. He said the day was beautiful and shouldn't be wasted inside. The fire siren went off and he remarked that it wasn't to mark noon because it was still a little early for that. I agreed and told him to have a good day. I felt a human connection with this man. A good feeling.

wtf its 2 late now 2 worry lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so i woke up this morning with a to do list a mile long and the first thing i did after i ate a bagel was to finish reading my book because i was so near the end and then i brushed my teeth because the taste in my mouth by then was starting to make me gag and i followed this up with a shower

so then i drove over to the car dealership to get a 55k service and a light bulb replaced in the shift console. they are so nice at the dealership that i dont even feel that fear that i used to feel when a pulled my car up for service. she tells me that im at 59k and the 60k service is a lot more involved so would i want to go with now. isaid let me call my husband and ask him but he probably wont answer the phone but he did and he said ok which was what i was going to say if he didnt answer.

so then i walked to the nearby shopping plaza to kill some time while my car was being worked on and i walked by a nail shop and thought maybe i should have a pedicure because everyone else always seems to get them and say how great it eels. i have never had 1 before and dismissed this idea and continued on but then i turned and went back and had 1. it was great and my toenails look great and are trimmed so neat and i felt so pampered and i might do this again some day

then i went to chilis and had a margarita right at noon and the mexican chicken rice soup that was all brothy with chicken and rice and avacado and cilantro. it was sooooooo ggod and low cal that i had a second bowl. then a quick trip to goodwill but my heart wasnt in it so i went back to the dealership and read while the finished up.

the light bulb was $3 and the labor was $95 to install it lol

so now i had this decadent self indulgent day and had to rush home to get a few key things done so it looked like i had been busy working all day lol!!!!!!!!

so we had this teambuilding exercise at work on thursday morning about emotional intelligence and enchancing relationships thru commiunication. i hate the way these stupid personality tests pigionhole people and i hate the way people are compartmentalized into groups.traditionalists, baby boomers gen x and gen y. they tell me baby boomers are not comfortable with tech stuff they dont text

im sitting at a table with a bunch of Cs.....we are compliant and introverted. we love facts....facts are facts...we analyze facts for weeks before making decisions. how did i get here? this impulse buyer we are rule followers not breakers. so they say. i took this test in 2004. the facilitator says your personality doesnt change. you would get the same results today. unless maybe you have had a life changing event. i think maybe i have. i didnt fit in at that c table at all. i felt drawn to the I table....influencing. sociable warm enthusiastic optimistic talkative. i fit in a little at all the tables including the one that i sat at sometimes. we are not 1 personality.

then we talked about gen y a lot and how to communicate with them and then it was over and this baby boomer pulled out her cell phone an texted her family and friends. lmao!!!!!!!!!!!

the real me

I gave my first speech in Toastmasters today. It was called an Icebreaker and was supposed to be a speech about yourself. I had one little glitch where I lost my train of thought for a few seconds and had to glance at my notes when the timer flashed the card that I was nearing the end of my time. Other than that I was quite proud of myself and my speech was very well received. This is how it went....more or less...

Madam Toastmaster

Ladies and Gentlemen

It is nice to see your smiling faces here today. Allow me to tell you a little bit about myself.

I fancy myself to be an interior decorator

And a fashion designer

And a gourmet cook

And a dedicated athlete

And a budding author

When I was a young woman heading off to college I thought that there were only two professions that I could pursue…..nurse or teacher. But since the very mention of illness made me want to run the other way, that ruled out nurse. I went off to Illinois State University where I declared a major in Special Education. After two and a half years of courses in Special Education, I made the decision that teaching was not for me. I had met my boyfriend Bill, now my husband, at the beginning of our sophomore year. He had been a music major but decided that maybe he did not have the talent for a career in music. He had switched to accounting. I was head over heels in love with him so when he suggested I switch to accounting also, I did.

If I had known myself then the way I do today, I would have known that anything in the area of Home Economics or health and nutrition would have better suited me.

I love color. When someone asks me what my favorite color is….I can’t answer. I have no favorite color. One day I may like the way paprika red pairs with goldenrod. Another day I may like the way chocolate brown plays against sky blue.

I love decorating. Over the years I have filled notebooks with decorating ideas for my home. I have carried out few of these ideas in my home due to lack of time, money and consent from my partner. However, word got out that decorating was one of my interests. When my company’s office was located on Delaware Ave the office manager approached me and asked if I would be interested in redecorating our conference room. Would I? I thought this was the dream of a lifetime. They were on a tight budget and there were certain obstacles I had to work around such as the gray carpeting and shocking pink window blinds that were staying in the room. I managed to take this room from cold and austere to glowing and welcoming. The room drew so many compliments from clients that when my firm moved our office to the Larkin Building they invited me to be the interior decorator for our new space.


Another career that may have suited me well is fashion designer. I learned to sew at an early age by making a simple elastic waist skirt. One of my first projects in sixth grade home ec was a disaster. A navy blue dress with yellow collar and cuffs. I received on D on this project. I took it home and my older sister tore it apart and fashioned a similar dress for our baby sister. I got better after that. I sewed most of my own clothes from junior high school through college. I was flattered when an older girl offered to pay me money to make her a psychedelic tunic top and bell bottoms. A couple of the projects that I’m most proud of are my sister’s wedding gown, a navy blue corduroy sports jacket for my husband and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Halloween costume that I made for son. I got away from sewing but recently got the itch again. I bought myself a new Bernina sewing machine in January. My first project was this skirt that I am wearing today.

The food industry may have been another area where I would have fared well. I got an early start here as well. In junior high I started a cake baking business. I grew up in a very small town and many of the locals ordered birthday and special occasion cakes from me. I started cooking Sunday dinners for my family. I love to plan meals and set a pretty table. Over the years I have learned what flavors go well together and I only use recipes as an inspiration instead of following them to the letter. That doesn’t stop me from owning hundreds of cookbooks. I don’t really consider myself to be a gourmet cook but it seems that others do and I’m proud of that.

Personal trainer may have been a good career for me. I’m very concerned with health and exercise. I started running when I was a senior in college and have kept it up ever since. This is one area of my life where I have complete and total control. Some days I don’t feel like going and it is not always easy. But I always make the decision to go. I always feel good afterward that I did. Sometimes I motivate myself by making up little games that I have to complete three miles in order to deliver a message that will save the world. Maybe I could motivate others as well.

Another career I may pursue someday is author. I started blogging in 2008. I found I liked writing and others thought I was good at it. I am very proud of some of the pieces I have written for my blog. Twilight is one of my favorites. I wrote about how my favorite time of day is twilight and how the happiest times of my life were not when I was the happiest but when I was content.Twilight is a time of day when I feel melancholy but content. I enjoy the challenge of putting my feelings into words for others to read and enjoy.

Any of these careers would have better suited me than accounting. Don’t get me wrong. I like my job. I get a thrill when I reconcile a bank account to the penny and I feel satisfaction when I am able to help a client with a Quickbooks question. But every morning I don my accountant disguise and every evening I come home and slip it off and become the real me.

Interior decorator

fashion designer

gourmet chef

dedicated athelete

and published author.

Maybe someday I can add accomplished speaker to my list.

Thank You.