This was it. It was bake cookies today or bust.

Another grey day, damp, clammy, chilly. Tucker did all his good dogs, and then I promptly crated him again, since I had made sure I had wine, but not made sure I had enough flour. Since James was also planning to bake some sugar-free cookies, this was a must, and he also needed butter. This necessitated a short trip to Food Depot.

I'd set up all the other things, except the baking board, before I left, so it wasn't long before I was mixing and kneading dough for the wine biscuits. The new wine is just perfect; the dough is very purple, so purple that they looked like dark chocolate under low light. James came home just as I was starting the second batch (they let him out at eleven thirty—they wanted him to go at nine!), and I broke the cardinal rule of any sort of cooking or baking: I started chatting to him about his cookies and did not pay attention to what I was doing. I think I missed the final cup of flour, because when I put the wine in, the dough turned uber-sticky. So both James and I took some turns shoveling flour in until the dough was firm. It was smoother than usual (the cookies look like store-bought wine biscuits, except for the purple dye the supermarkets usually put in), and you can really tell the second batch from the first, but they both taste okay.

James baked for the rest of the afternoon, using a basic peanut butter cookie recipe from one of his diabetic cookbooks. He made the peanut butter cookies with crunchy peanut butter, then made almond cookies with slivered almonds and almond butter, and finally cashew cookies with cashew butter and cashew nuts. By the time he was done it was supper time. He scrounged out of the fridge and I had some vegetarian vegetable soup, which was a relief, since I'd eaten nothing since breakfast except for a slice of bread and butter and three of the cookies I'd baked.

Oh, I also washed three loads of clothes and changed the bed. :-)

We'd been listening to Christmas music all day, but about four I turned that off and watched Christmas Unwrapped, hosted by Harry Smith, and the British special, Christmas Past, before putting the news and Jeopardy on. For the evening I put on John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together (something I don't understand why it's not on legit DVD, as so many people have asked for it!) and the Hill Street Blues episode "Santa Claustrophobia," with killers loose on the Hill, Washington still suffering from remorse after having killed an innocent man, Bobby Hill's displeasure at having his deadbeat dad show up again, a sullen teen aborting Belker's stakeout, and the staff appearing at a Christmas show at a children's hospital.

In the meantime, the rain has arrived, pounding on the chimney and accompanies by occasional rumbles of thunder. Hope it tapers off soon.

Labels: chores, Christmas, television

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:49:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment