Well, Hello There!

Glad to see you again.

I am getting started later than I thought.(8 pm)

I could blame it on the decision to make  cookies for our new neighbors. But in an effort to tell the truth, I do have to say that I went into Cub  with a recipe for sugar cookies and came out with the ingredients for both sugar and chocolate chip cookies.

Yep. That  package of  Toll House Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips just leapt  into my cart.  Right after I checked the backside to see if it had the cookie recipe on it.  A person is not safe at the grocery store anymore when they can be accosted by packages of chocolate chips.

So, of course I had to make a batch of those, too.  And as long as we ‘re on the subject, do you think that the recipe on the back and the amount of chips in the bag accounts for the chips that you eat while you’re waiting for the butter to melt in the space box, measuring out the dry ingredients, and mixing the dry with the wet ingredients? It just seemed to me that maybe the Toll House people might have taken a look at that in the test kitchens.

Why am I asking?  Well, basically I am wondering if the cookies I make tomorrow will look a little naked due to the number of chips I scarfed down during the mixing process today.

In my defense, it’s been a long time since I have had the old mixer out to make cookies. I was out of practice and I needed sustenance to get me through the rough patches.

Nyah. That’s not it, although I am out of practice with baking which is one of my favorite sports.

What do you mean it’s not a sport??  Listen, just because the Olympic Committee hasn’t sanctioned it doesn’t mean that it’s not a sport for the people who love it.  It gives me a workout lifting the mixer to the counter, getting out the cookie sheets and then putting them into the oven, not to mention  bringing them out again.  I wear special clothes: apron, oven mitts, and often, a short sleeved nurse’s scrub so I stay cool. And let’s not forget the constant dash between the oven to get the cookies out before they get too brown and the counter to protect the cooling cookies from the cookie snatchers.

Sounds like a sport to me.

I did find that a skill I have developed with smaller eggs did not work for the jumbo eggs I used today. I was adept at cracking the large eggs in two and dumping the egg whilst keeping the shells in my hand. I could even do it gracefully AND efficiently.

Until I got to the jumbo eggs tonight. Hahahahaha!  What a klutz! It was as if I had never cracked an egg in my life. I was busy picking shell bits out of three of the four eggs I cracked! I may have to return to the two handed method for the rest of those jumbos.

But, it did remind me of a funny story to share with you. Long, long ago when my now thirty something children were two and three, I  directed first the one act play and then the three act play at a local high school. It was an opportunity to get out of the house since I stayed home with my kids. A wonderful babysitter came in the afternoon to watch the kids.

By the way, this babysitter had been allowed to paint her bedroom any color she wanted. She chose black. And her parents allowed this. All four walls, not just one. And she was one of the best babysitters I ever had. I’m just saying, she was normal. Teenagers do weird things.

Back to the story. We had rehearsal right after school and the kids were often hungry. So we took turns bringing snacks. When it was my turn, I made cookies.

And they were good cookies, too. It’s just that I had to warn the kids that they might find pieces of rubber spatula in them.

What?? Why did I have to warn them that they might find pieces of rubber spatula in my  homemade cookies?  Well, because I couldn’t find them all. You know, in the dough before I baked them.

Oh, you want to know why I had pieces of rubber spatula in the cookies in the first place!  Well, it’s like this: whenever I was about to get my period, I  became very uncoordinated. Even for me.  I would drop something and then take three tries to pick it up off the floor.   That’s how I knew it was coming.

When I was mixing up the cookies that day, I was using an old stand mixer. And wiping the sides of the bowl with my mom’s old rubber spatula. Trying to save time because I was on a schedule here, I kept the mixer on while I tried, in my best Betty Crocker style, to wipe the sides of the bowl.  And whump!  The beaters caught the spatula, stopping the action. Quickly I turned off the mixer. Okay. The beaters seemed fine, nothing bent or out of place. And then I lifted up the spatula .

Oh, dang! Part of it was missing. I didn’t have time for this.

I looked and looked and looked for the piece or pieces of rubber spatula in that cookie dough, but I only found one piece. And it wasn’t big enough to be the only piece missing; believe me, I held it up to the hole in the spatula to check.

I had to bake those cookies in order to get them and me to school on time. Directors of school plays need to be on time or the rehearsal can be lost in lack of focus for the night. I needed to bake those cookies NOW.

So I did. I took them to rehearsal, and  told the kids, ” Oh by the way, you may find a piece of rubber spatula in  your cookie.”

To their credit and perhaps mine, they didn’t blink an eye at this announcement.

And a few did find some pieces of rubber spatula in their cookies.

But most of them didn’t.

And they all enjoyed their cookies and we had a wonderful rehearsal.

This brings me to “Fish, Fairies, and Raccoons.” The transition, you are wondering? Both happened in a school. I never said it was a strong transition.

On Tuesday I was sitting in the back of the second grade classroom in which I volunteer, watching the young student teacher go through her lesson on the colonists of  Jamestown and Plymouth. I came in after she had already started with her Venn diagram so I had to read the first few items which were sized to be read from the front of the room by the kids. I was straining to read it at the back.

And what I read on one card was, ” They ate fish, fairies and raccoons.”

Hmmmmmm. I was thinking about the pictures of the colonists in my social studies books. Serious demeanors, plain clothing, dull colors.

Now I added fairies to the pictures I remembered. Boy, they just did not fit. Too many colors.  Too much flitting around. Too joyful. And yet, I couldn’t keep from thinking that perhaps the colonists would have had more happiness in their bleak and stark settlements if they had had fairies. Just a thought.

Do you know that a good exercise for students, for anybody really, is to compare and contrast two things that normally wouldn’t be compared or contrasted?  Like fairies and colonists?

Wow. Where did that come from? The teaching gene is strong with this one.

ANYWAY, according to my eyesight, the colonists were eating fairies.  You can imagine my relief when I walked closer to the board and saw that instead of consuming fairies, the colonists were eating fish, TURTLES, and raccoons.  Whew.

+++++++++Absolutely no transition whatsoever here+++++

Co-inky-dink (Coincidence)

Saw a few seconds of a commercial with Dorothy Hamill the other night and the next day her name was in a word puzzle I did. HWIT!!!!!(How Weird Is That)

++++++++++++Nope. Not here, either.+++++++++++

The hubster needed a funnel for his new flask. It was time he had one. Both children have had  theirs for years. But he needed a funnel so he didn’t spill the Koloa Spiced Rum from Kauai!

I checked on Amazon and there were single funnels and then sets of three. Not knowing the size needed, I ordered the set of three.

And reminiscent of the Three Bears, one was too little, one was too big and one was just right. Made me smile!

I hope I’ve made you smile tonight.  As promised, there was nothing of heaviness or policy or politics, because we need a break from it.

You can count on me for the light stuff, just watch out for the bits of rubber spatula!

Have a fun filled Friday!

Love,

Janet