Thursday, August 28, 2014

Catching Up - Part One


I will have all the blog posts for my trip to Bavaria/Austria up soon, I promise. I just have to find a wifi connection that I can stay on long enough to upload them. :D
 

Not much to blog about the last few days. Mainly, I’ve hung out around the apartment, doing some cooking and a heck of a lot of reading (last night I read Cruel Beauty, a beauty-and-the-beast retelling that really reminded me of Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, which as it turns out, was a bit inspiration for the author). Monday I made potato soup (turned out quite well, considering how long it’s been since I attempted potato soup), and Tuesday I went to the mall, hoping for some free wifi.
 

Unfortunately, due to the super strict anti-piracy rules and things that Germany has, it’s almost impossible to find a place with free wifi. The mall has it, but it’s only strong in the middle of the building, and not on the edges. And there are no plug-ins in the middle of the mall. My dear old laptop only has about 20 minutes of battery unplugged. So I can’t find a place where I can both a) be plugged in and b) have an Internet signal. :) Go figure. I’m going to check for another Starbucks today, see what I can find.
 

Wednesday night, I got to chat with some of my friends back home over Skype – Jaimie, Sadie, and Evie back at College of the Ozarks (school just started for them – best of luck, guys!) and my erstwhile-roommate Emily. Emily’s moving to Alaska for her new job, so this is probably the last chance I’ll get to Skype with her for a while, since there’s a 9 hour time difference. (Three in the afternoon here, is six in the morning there. We’ll have to coordinate carefully. :D) So we chatted until nearly 1 in the morning my-time, and I slept in until, like, noon on Thursday. :D I did nothing Thursday. Ok – scratch that, I made cookies.
 

They’re a variation on the turndown cookies they serve to guests at the Keeter Center, where I used to work at CofO. These don’t have the pecans they’re supposed to (because pecans are freaking expensive) and I forgot I needed brown sugar, so they’re straight up white-only. Also, I can’t find “normal” vanilla extract here, so I had to buy these little packets of something called “Bourbon-Vanilla Aroma” (???) which is a lot thicker and stronger-tasting than the cheapo-artificial-stuff I’m used to. Oh yeah, and there’s chunks of dark chocolate, rather than milk-chocolate chips in there.

However, in the end, they turned out ridiculously good, and go very well with a mug of Earl Gray tea. Want the recipe? Sure, why not – try these yourself and tell me what you think.

 

Non-Keeter Turndownish Cookies: German Edition
 

  • In a bowl, cream together half a cup of butter and not-quite-two cups of granulated sugar.
  • Add in 1 egg, a tablespoon of milk and a teaspoon of something vanilla flavored. Extract, bourbon-vanilla aroma…whatever. :D (And I literally used a spoon for the table and a spoon for tea, because I don’t have measuring spoons.)
  • Stir in two cups of flour, a dash (erm…a teaspoon-ish?) of baking soda, and a sprinkle of salt.
  • Last, mix in one and a half cups of oatmeal, and a cup of shattered bits of a chocolate candy bar (I like dark, but some people don’t. Up to you.)
  • Scoop into ping-pong-ball sized dollops (they’ll spread as they bake, and get about twice as big) onto a greased cookie sheet (or better yet, parchment paper) and bake on 350°F for 10 minutes, or until the edges start looking brown. Remove immediately from pan and let cool – they’ll harden as they do.
  • Yields about 18 cookies.

Enjoy!

~Mags

2 comments:

  1. Glad you are back "home" safely. Missed your blogs. The cookies sound great, but I will have to use Splenda instead of sugar if I try them for Grandpa. Sounds like you are feeling better, glad to hear it. Looking forward to further posts. Love and miss you.
    Gramma and Gramps

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  2. Sounds like you had a good time before you got sick

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