Baking in Chicago with my Sister

I took a long weekend and went to Chicago to visit my sister and her growing family. Her second child, a boy, is 6 weeks old and was as amazing as newborns are supposed to be.

To welcome this beautiful boy to the world, I baked the boots off his momma's kitchen. We made three, yes THREE, batches of my "signature" chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and one HUGE  batch of the Old Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookies. 

This was a small, staged sampling. Rest assured there were about a million more cookies than I've shown you. There are also small containers of chocolate chip oatmeal cookie dough stashed in her freezer for future use: 

Then we made artisan bread, which didn't look exactly like this but will when my sister figures out the optimal setting for her oven: 

She has a baking-with-yeast phobia, so I walked her through the basics of making the simple dough, letting it rise, then letting it rise/rest/relax again, then baking it in a hot oven with steam. That's all that stands between you and delicious homemade bread, BTW. We opened early Christmas presents the night before I left, and not surprisingly I gave her her own copy of the book -- now we both have copies since she gave me mine for Christmas last year. 

The chocolate chip oatmeal cookies served a very noble purpose on Monday afternoon. Shortly after I left for the airport, her heat quit working on a day that was predicted to peak at 18 degrees. She called her heating guy and told him he'd get cookies if he bumped her to the top of his list. He arrived within the hour and fixed her right up!  Not only are these cookies tasty, they make great currency too!  

Sunday Weigh-In... on Sunday, how novel

This week: +1.7
Total: -9.8

Meh. Whatever. It was Thanksgiving. It was a fantastic meal. I have a TON of leftovers. And it was a wild ride, emotionally speaking, so I'm ok with the numbers this week. Today I walked for 40 minutes and that felt great.

You may have noticed there weren't any cookie updates. I've been doing more run-of-the mill baking. I made a batch of the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for friends who came over to visit after dinner last night. Then I sent all the rest of the batch home with them as an early Christmas present. So I'm still mindful of The Cookie and The Challenge, but I'm not blogging as much about it and I'm not making any progress in The Book.

There's a lot going on. It's Holiday Season. I'm going to Chicago this weekend to see my sister, brother in law, niece, and brand-spanking-new nephew. I'm nearly done with the Christmas shopping. And there's a fair amount of Family Drama (extended, not immediate) going on in the background. This is all just a way of saying that I'm making progress in some ways and I'm treading water in others, but I'm mostly ok and I don't have a lot of baking or weight loss topics to blog about. Sorry to disappoint.

Weigh-in (success) and an update, but no cookies

This week: -0.9
Total: -11.5

Not bad. Really, not bad at all. I'm not going to make my Thanksgiving challenge, but I'm still losing and that's the point. No Gourmet Cookies this week or last, it's all about Thanksgiving. Frankly, that has me pretty stressed out so I'm not holding myself to extra high expectations regarding weight.

I could go on at length here about the family stress that is Thanksgiving, but I'm just not going to blog that much about my personal life. At least not the seriously neurotic parts of my personal life. If I write THOSE stories I'm going to publish a book and make a gazillion dollars and sell the movie rights to Matt Damon who can play my ex-husband. But I digress...

I will say that I've finished some cool Christmas knitting and craft projects, but I can't post pictures because the gift recipients' mother reads this blog and I don't want to ruin the surprise. I'm also getting close to finishing a pair of socks for my son. They are special toe-socks that can be worn with flip-flops, the footwear of choice around these parts. I'm nearly done with my Christmas shopping, and that brings me great pride and even more relief.

I've been reading like a fiend lately. I'm working my way through The World is Flat which is highly readable since Friedman is a journalist, but also very meaty (to me) so must be taken in small bites. This book is referenced in so many other books and articles that I decided I need to know what it says to understand the context of discussions about The World We Live In. It's very interesting and I highly recommend it.

I'm also working my way through The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It. Not because I'm unhappy with my child's education this year, but because I want to understand the educational paradigms that influence my child's education over the next 12 years. Next up on this topic is 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times. My kiddo's (expensive private) school is all about 21st Century Skills and I really don't know what those are.

I flew through The Cardturner by Louis Sachar this weekend, mostly to see if I wanted to give it to someone as a gift for Christmas. I do and I will, and it was a great read if you're even remotely interested in young adult literature (Sachar is an amazing storyteller) or the game of bridge. This book tells a wonderful story in its own right, but it's also a loving ode to the game of bridge.

Lastly, I finished The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie just last night. It's also shelved in young adult literature, but Alexie is such a great writer that this story can be enjoyed by anyone. It's narrated by Junior, a 14 year old Spokane Indian, and illustrated with Junior's cartoons about life and the people around him.

So my dear friends, I wanted to give you the weigh-in stats and a little update about what I'm doing besides baking cookies. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Sunday Weigh In

This week: -0.2
Total: -10.6

Sound familiar? I know. 

Last week was just too much. Too much Old Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookie. They were awesome, but there were far too many of them. I took them to my work, I sent them to work with the husband, and I took them to a BBQ.  And there were still too many around for me to exist safely in my own home. 

I did manage to exercise three times for 30 minutes, and that's better than zero times, right? I'm tracking points this week and exercising too (rode my bike today) and remain optimistic that I'll have a bigger loss to report next week.  

But man, oh man, did those cookies try my will. In fact I think they temporarily broke my will. I let a cookie rule my life. I turned it all over to a cookie. Humbling. 

But it was one seriously good cookie. More later. 

Happily ever after

Made more cookies today with my best small helper. 

We made sunshine stamps,

and we made pink bunnies, 

and we made moon and stars.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Until 8 PM tonight when "we" went out to the garage 

and pumped away on the elliptical machine for 30 minutes. 

Ugh. 

But the cookies made it worth my while.

Oh! My! Good! Ness!

I am swooning - absolutely SWOONING - over the Old-Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookies. 

From start to finish these are a hoot. The recipe calls for 3 hard-cooked egg yolks. In a cookie. Who's ever heard of such a thing? 

You press the yolks through a fine sieve and get the strangest velvety stuff that evidently works magic in cookie dough. You also add three raw yolks. That's a lot of egg yolks by any measure. 

The recipe gives you a choice of adding the zest of half a lemon or 2 teaspoons brandy. I opted for lemon zest but will try the grown-up version next time. And believe you me, there will be many, many next times for these goodies. 

The dough chills pretty firm but rolls out without too much work or crumbly mess. Even at 1/16" (yes, I measured) the dough holds its shape well enough to transfer easily to a cookie sheet. 

On baking, these cookies hold their cut shape beautifully. The cookies pictured above were made with William Sonoma's Circus Cookie Cutters which are not, contrary to their advertised promise, kid-friendly and easy to use. 

I've tried these crazy cutters on several cookie doughs and failed every single time. The dough sticks in the delicate animal limbs of the cutters. The decorative impressions are too shallow or deep. The cookies inflate on baking and you lose the animal detail. But they worked on this dough like a charm. A charm from Tiffany's. Did I say swooning already?

On to taste. And texture. Deliciously buttery. And deliciously flaky. And 100% awesomely yummy. They taste old-fashioned by today's standards, but they earned that title in December 1947!  These taste like love coming out of a warm oven with a tall glass of milk chaser. 

If I weren't professionally committed to copyright law I would type out the entire recipe right here right, now because you have got to make these yourself and share the love. 

Here's the final kicker, and if you've read old posts you know how I love this detail. The last sentence of the instructions read "...bake in a moderate oven... removing each cooky as it is ready." I love, love, LOVE cooky instead of cookie. I might start using it myself. 

Sunday Weigh In

This week: -0.2
Total: -10.4

Weight Watchers says: "You lost again this week! Congratulations, and keep doing exactly what you’re doing! See you next week."

I'm totally over exaggerated (exasperated?) enthusiasm and really need a kick in the pants. Sure, I'm happier having lost 0.2 lbs than gaining 0.2 lbs, but c'mon, it's not awesome. Who are we kidding. 

So. I've set a mini-goal to lose 6 pounds by Thanksgiving. Mini-goals are meant to inspire you to break routines and push yourself beyond whatever has you stuck. Six pounds is reasonable but will require a little extra OOMPH on my part. 

I'm doing ok with eating, mostly, but I'm still not exercising. So in preparation for Thanksgiving I will do *better* with eating, mostly, and I will exercise. I can't commit to being *excellent* with eating since I'm also committed to the cookies. Such is life. I'm willing to live with that eensy-weensy self-imposed handicap. 

And I'm proud to report - drumroll please - that I did exercise tonight. I used the elliptical machine that's otherwise gathering dust in my garage and I listed to half of a This American Life podcast (Superpowers, if you follow TAL). Elliptical machines are deadly dull, but it's dark so early now and I'm not likely to exercise during the day because I'm schedule challenged. Anyhow, I think it's good for the other members of the home team to have time together  without me, so after dinner works ok for now. 

And I also packed a lunch today, which helps a ton with the eating. I get too hungry at work if I don't go prepared. And then I eat too much unhealthy stuff. Today I had a delightful sandwich with leftover roasted chicken, cucumber, and Laughing Cow cheese on a toasted English muffin. We have a toaster in the lunch room, I love sandwiches on toasted English muffins. 

On the cookie front, I was tragically disappointed by the macaroons I prepared for First Friday. Instead of improving with age as they had done last time, this batch hardened to the point of being embarrassing and I had to substitute The Pioneer Woman's Sugar Cookies at the last minute. They really are the world's best sugar cookies, but still. I wanted macaroons. 

I made date bars and they were wonderful. They looked wonderful too but I forgot to take a picture. Darn. 

So I'm a little torn on moving forward in the Cookie Book - December 1947 is Old Fashioned Christmas Butter Cookies - veresus obsessing over macaroons and making all the recipes I linked to in my last post. 

In the spirit of the mini-challenge, however, I think I should leave the macaroons behind and move forward. I'm a little stuck on macaroons and need to break through that routine. OFCBC, here I come!