I finally updated the Google Analytics code in this blog since the delightful redesign courtesy of Melissa and Robosaur, and found out that my blog got hits for the following three web searches:

1. real twinkie filling recipe
2. multicultural Christmas cookies
3. weird twinkies

I don't think my entry about having a twinkie tasting helped whoever was the first and last searches. But I do wonder what the second searcher thought when it led here.

Today I made a pistachio pie to bring to New Year's Eve tomorrow. I tried to be clever and used the crumbs from the leftover Christmas chocolate chip cookies for the crust, but as I mixed in the warm melted butter and baked it in the oven to brown it I realized I had forgotten a basic characteristic of chocolate: it melts. So it looks kind of funny, but it should taste all right. The cream cheese layer tasted fantastic, and I would know because I used every single one of my fingers to wipe off the implements it was that good. Just cream cheese, powdered sugar, some CoolWhip (which they've reformulated and tastes less plastic), a little vanilla, and a drop of the pistachio flavoring my mom gave me for Christmas. It's good enough that I'm not worried the cream cheese layer is twice as thick as the pistachio pudding layer when it was supposed to be reversed.

What with the color of the pistachio pudding and its various parts I should call it "Frankenpie".

Normally, at Christmas, I describe my baking as whether or not I had a good "showing". This year was definitely a good showing.

Since I was off work I had a lot of time to bake. I started first with what I thought would keep the best: candies. Homemade caramels, almond toffee (like Almond Roca), and the Heath bar/toffee candy/cracker candy my roommates dubbed "fire candy" in college because you only have to light something on fire once before your friends won't let you live it down.

Then I moved on to the longer-lasting cookies shortbread and snowballs, my great-grandmother Mimi's candied orange walnuts, and sweetened condensed milk fudge.

Then I made divinity, the fluffy white confection I resent having called "white fudge", because fudge is much easier to make than divinity. Divinity is like a nougat because you cook a sugar syrup and whip it into egg whites. Growing up, our neighbor Mrs. Barnes, used to make it at Christmas each year, and every year since she passed away my sister has judged my divinity against the high standard of Mrs. Barnes'. Since it's been eight years I'm not sure my sister can remember what Mrs. Barnes' divinity was like anymore, but the texture of this year's was very good, and it's even keeping longer in the tin.

To round off the platters I fulfilled my dad's request for non-chocolate cookies with snickerdoodles, molasses crackles, and macaroons. I don't see the appeal of macaroons. And I made chocolate chip cookies because they're my favorite, and everything else I made was everyone else's favorite.

A pretty good showing.

I also made golden cake to use up the egg yolks left over from the macaroons and divinity, which I'd do again if I use a lot of egg whites. It used orange oil so it was nicely orange-scented and had a good texture. And enough cholesterol to down an elephant, but it's the holidays. Whatever.

Besides the baking, I have not been very productive on my vacation. I have made three pairs of latex-safe underwear. I've almost finished a baby quilt for Project Linus. I have quilted less than one square on the quilt for myself. I have flipped through and discarded five books from the library; stopped reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe twenty pages from the end because something in the style was simply off-putting besides the fact that I think Mr. Tumnus is a pedophile; and ignored my usual budget and frugality and spent more money than I like on various things like underwear supplies, filters for my vacuum cleaner, incandescent lightbulbs for my stockpile, and duplicate makeup to simplify packing when I travel.

I also have gone puddle stomping and played on the park across the street.

And essentially, right now I'm stalling before I go do several months of shredding. What might be fun is that I found a can of WD40 my landlady left here when she was repairing my doorknob with screws and woodglue and made it so it didn't really turn. Normally I use Pam on my cheap, Walmart shredder but WD40 might make it work even better. It will also be mind-numbing. Even my DVR'ed Mythbusters might not be enough entertainment.

It's Christmas break! For me at least - I'm taking some of the break I've saved up over the last "challenging" year (in work speak, "challenges" is code for "problems" but it's become so common that we're probably going to euphemize it even more to "opportunities for improvement").

I won't get to separate completely from work. I'm going to the work lunch next Tuesday since I will literally be right around the corner from the restaurant, I have to finish a performance review request I got at the last minute on Friday, and I have to follow up on something else that has been difficult because someone isn't emailing me back.

People not emailing back on a timely basis is a new pet peeve of mine. It joins the list with people twiddling on their phones while they're supposedly talking to you, toilet paper coming from the back rather than the front, drivers who purposely speed up or linger beside you so you can't merge, and charity marathons.


A girl I know from Tech had a wreath making party, so now I have a wreath on my door. Paired with my 3-foot prelit $15 Target tree, this is the most I've ever decorated for Christmas. Laura had pine branches she said she got for free from a Christmas tree lot. Good to know. I saved the white ribbon of a present years ago and finally got to use it. I'm very magpie-like with ribbon. I like keeping pieces of ribbon. I even always want to keep the ribbon that comes on the free toothbrush I get from my dentist, but I normally can convince myself to throw it out since it has his name repeated over the entire length. I'm glad this piece of ribbon finally came in handy. After the branches die I'm going to retrieve the ribbon and ornaments just in case I want to use them again.

I'll probably have to wash them. I sprayed hairspray on the wreath to try and make it live longer. I should have thought more about that before I did it. The wreath smells like Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine With Natural Bamboo Extract rather than pine. Oh well. I don't sniff my front door too often anyway.

My activities during my vacation are limited for now because I'm not completely mobile until my burn heals more. I also don't want to start my Christmas baking yet because I don't have freezer room and the candies that would last until Christmas require whole pots of boiling sugar and ::cough:: I'm a little hesitant to do that right now, considering. So I'm working on my latest quilt.





This is a quilt I pieced several years ago. It's all built around the center fabric, which is a pattern of narcissus, daffodils, and hyacinths. That fabric is one of only two I have ever been so struck by that I purchased without having a specific project in mind. When I did set out to design a quilt around it, it took a long time to find exactly the right complementing fabrics. The yellow wasn't too hard - it's a very small yellow/white check. The purple came along after I realized a purple would match the hyacinths better than a deep blue. But the green took forever, and I actually had a spotted medium green that I wasn't completely won over by, but which was the best I could do, until I found this dark green.

So I want to do this quilt right, and tonight spent a few hours trying to design an appropriate swirly pattern to quilt into the borders. I'm blogging now because I gave up after I was using Excel to graph a sine wave, thinking that might work (it doesn't). So that'll be a battle for tomorrow.

Feel the Burn

I got burned.

Not in the "my date never showed up" sense. Or the "I thought it was a good idea to invest with a guy named Bernie Madoff" sense. But in the literal, scalded, apricot-sized-blisters sense.

After the Thanksgiving dinner with my dad's side of the family but before the Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's side of the family, I wanted to breath steam from my mom's steam inhaler on the off chance my slight nasal congestion was a cold. But while I was holding it a little water splashed out and burned my left thumb. In the recoil I dropped the entire steamer, and spilled the entire contents of boiling water onto my lap.

Gotta say, I don't think I've ever gotten my pants off that fast. But it wasn't fast enough. My left leg got a swatch of first degree burn and my right leg got a second degree burn larger than my outspread hand. I didn't have the heart to ever measure it with a ruler because I thought that would depress me.

But it's better now. I was hoping the Internet was overestimating the two- to four-week healing time but no, I'm on right on track. Tomorrow I'll be two weeks in and the gooey center is starting to close up. But luckily it has stopped hurting, and only is uncomfortable when the bandage inevitably slips down. Of course, my scale for pain has been completely reset, so "uncomfortable" might not be what I would have called it before.

But in good news, today was my last real day of work until January. I accumulated a ton of vacation and extra time off over the last year and I'm finally taking it. I have a scientific writing class for the next two days, and then it'll be sleeping in, watching TV, and baking for Christmas. I also have other goals for my time off like eating more cheese, going to the Round Table Pizza lunch buffet, making spaghetti squash, and backing up my parents' computer for them. I've been meaning to do all those things for a while and I finally get a chance. Yes, I really do have "eat more cheese" on my goal list. It's on the whiteboard above my heater. (It's the whiteboard at work that has my list of cheeses. It took about two months before anyone at work noticed it.)

Another thing I should accomplish during my vacation is finish re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm trying to see if I can understand any of the Christian symbolism now that I'm older and have read the Bible the whole way through. So far, no. I might know more now but I'm still me and I never get symbolism. Things are what they are.

Plus, I just can't get over my conviction that Mr. Tumnus is a pedophile. I mean, an adult male naked except for a red scarf encounters a small girl alone in a strange place and persuades her to come back to his house where he plies her with food and music so that she falls asleep? Come on!

I can't take James McAvoy serious in any of his roles because of that movie.