Using this recipe (link in Danish but worth google-translating) I baked Yule cookies on Saturday. Don't laugh, but it was the first time I ever used Lyle Black Treacle and I fell head over heels in love with both the beautiful tin and the rich, almost-licorice-like taste. Baking the cookies proved a bit of a challenge as our kitchen is poorly designed with very few places to put things, but I managed.
(I still miss my Copenhagen kitchen, though. It was very small but functioned a lot better as a working space. Our current kitchen is one of the main reasons why I do not cook nor bake as much as I did in Denmark)
Sunday we decorated the cookies - D. took great delight in making aesthetically pleasing cookies whereas I just piled on the icing - just in time for the annual Yule bash in our tenement. After an hour half the cookies had disappeared along with any feeling in my toes (it was an outside do). It is usually a lovely get-together filled with carol-singing, plenty of mince-pies and happy children. This year we all just huddled around the small wood stove and hoped no body parts would off due to frost bite. The snow has disappeared for now, but it has been replaced by a bone-chilling frost. I gave up after 90 minutes and retreated to the flat with its warm quilts and hot cocoa. Brrr.
Changing the topic: lately I have been receiving a slew of emails from The Christian Coalition of America (wikipedia link). Nice, polite emails asking me to support God's legacy by using my God-given vote to be pro-family, pro-life and pro-America. Nice, polite emails filled with homophobia, anti-women's rights and a downright nasty attitude towards anything Not Christian (i.e. their version of Christianity). I have been doing a bit of on-line sleuthing and have deduced that someone must have signed me up for these emails. Deliberately. I wonder why? Was it a joke that misfired or someone who thought I'd benefit from these mails? I much prefer the former to the latter, you know. I don't like the idea that anyone of my acquaintance genuinely thought I needed to hear from the CCA.
Now for assorted randomness:
- Lifehacker gives you Top 10 DIY Food Geek projects although some of it is a bit .. I mean, "make fresh bread without a breadmaker"?! Really? Is that so new and controversial and life-changing that it needs its own entry?
- I loved David Lynch's Twin Peaks so this makes make feel so very sad.
- Everything We Know About Scotland We Learned from Romance Novels: "All Scottish men wear kilts, even when they were outlawed and even when they didn’t exist. All clans have an identifying tartan."
- I'm getting ideas above my station and I don't even have a (working) sewing machine yet! (youtube link)
- Fable III is taking over my life not-so-slowly. I'd blame it on the dog you have as an companion but, really, the combination of the Vortex and the Fireball spells is just so much fun.
- Sarah Hatton of Rowan and genius knitting design fame has her own website now complete with a knitting app for your smart phone (if you have one - I don't, actually).
- And, oh, how I would love spending a holiday here. A long holiday. A really long holiday.