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
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.
ReplyDeleteGramma and Gramps
Sounds like you had a good time before you got sick
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