'Tis the Season

I have a problem. As my readers know, I'm a bakeaholic. I spend a lot of time concocting in my kitchen. You would think I knew how to use a potholder.

The sad truth is, a few times a month I get a little buzzed from all the culinary excitement, and, woops, grab a hot plate/pie tin/baking sheet from the oven, promptly giving myself second-degree burns. Tonight marks the worst yet:


That is, thankfully, my left hand, after using my right hand to pull a batch of cookies out of the oven with a dish towel and, upon the cookie sheet being too hot, and coming in for the save with a whole lot o' nothing protecting Leftie. Poor Leftie.

Since then (about an hour ago) I've taken 3 Excedrin (no sleep for me tonight, hence this blog) and been running my hand under freezing cold water. I've also been alternately clutching a paper towel filled with ice and splaying my hand so that the skin stretches a bit (the internets says that if you don't stretch the burned skin it could heal too tightly, thus making your life extra miserable forever). Most of this post was typed with one hand.

Incidentally, the cookies I pulled out of the oven were burned, too. First time testing a new recipe. I put them in a tupperware for my room mate with the following note:

CARRIE - THESE BURNED COOKIES TRIED TO TAKE MY HAND. PLEASE EAT THEM. THANKS. -EMILY. (DETAILS IN MY BLOG)

Hi, Carrie.

Don't worry, folks. I give Carrie plenty of non-burned cookies, too. She ate half the sugar cookies I made in November, and was shocked and disgusted to learn tonight that they have Crisco in them. Oh yes, I do love my Crisco. All my old family recipes have them. Holiday treats shouldn't be healthy anyway.

In any case, I'm calling my new recipe "Burn Unit Special Xmas PB Cookies." They're basically peanut butter cookies, with a little candy twist: Hershey's candy cane kisses. Yes, friends, peanut butter and peppermint work shockingly well together. I would normally use my mum's recipe, but her's calls for, well, Crisco. I had to invent this one. Get out your sprinkles:

1 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C unsalted butter (softened)
2/3 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C light brown sugar (packed)
1 large egg
1 1/4 tsp vanilla
colored sugar sprinkles
1 bag of Hershey's candy cane kisses

Preheat oven to 375 F

Mix together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Set aside. Using an electric mixer or a quick hand, blend butter and peanut butter, then add the sugars. Beat in egg and vanilla. When the mixture is smooth, slowly add flour. Pinch off teaspoon-sized sections of dough and roll into balls (dough will be soft, don't over-handle). Dip into colored sugars and place on cookie sheet about an inch to two inches apart. Squish a kiss into each ball of dough and place in the oven. Bake 9-12 minutes, until edges begin to brown. Transfer to rack to cool.


And, folks, please remember kitchen safety. Pot holders can save your hands from a shit load of pain. I promise.

Happy Accidents

These cookies are entirely a misunderstanding. My dear friend Amelia, who is, sadly, at current, trapped in a small town in Texas without internets, texted me a few weeks ago to tell me that she and her daughter had been baking up a storm. "I made chocolate chookies with peanut butter chips and Andes mints!" she said. I texted her back, "You're a genius! Mint and peanut butter together!" Well, Amelia hadn't put both in the same cookies — she'd made two batches, one with peanut butter chips and one with Andes. But, upon testing a bite of each together, she texted me with, "Wow, this is genius, salty and also fresh. Great combo."

Well, I think that's how the texts went. My cell-phone automatically deletes things after a while. But I have a pretty good memory.

So, today, I rustled through my baking cupboard and pulled out the ingredients necessary for this happy accident. Said ingredients are as follows:

2 C flour
3/4 C white sugar
3/4 C packed brown sugar
1/2 C cocoa powder
1 C peanut butter chips
1 C mini chocolate chips
1 package chopped Andes mints
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside. With an electric mixer cream the butter (softened) and the two sugars. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Slowy add dry ingredients and mix well. Drop by teaspoon-fulls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9-12 minutes.

And Then There Were Five

It's official: I'm off to Texas.

If you'd asked me a year ago if I were ever going to move to one of the redneckiest states in the nation, I would have given you the evil eye. However, after having visited the lovely city of Austin, its suburbs, and also having roadtripped to San Antonio, I'm making one of the craziest moves of my life. I blame my boyfriend, Mark, who has enticed me to join him there. Despite my lovely Brooklyn, and all the seductions of the city that never sleeps, he didn't want to come here. And, well, my roots are barely planted, so as a writer, why not wander?

After the initial shock of friends and family wears off, they've been asking a lot of questions. How will you get there? Are you living together? Are you living TOGETHER together? How will you get around? What about your job? And, finally: What about your cats?

As you all know, I have two special cats. On the left, Telemachus, my 16lb+ Maine Coon with a heart of gold and the will to snuggle. On the right, Mocha, the small but plump (about 10lbs, where she should be 6 or 7) Siamese that was abandoned by several owners before finding her way to me and peeing on my carpets and kitchen counter. More on that later. These animals are family and of course are making the trip with me to the Lone Star State. Most likely by plane. Because of Mocha's nervous habit of urinating-at-will, the plane ride is a huge concern. I brought her to the vet on Saturday to find out that, well, she needs kitty Prozac.

I shit you not, the vet gave her antibiotics in case of an infection, but assured me that her pee problems are most likely the result of anxiety. Given her abandonment issues and past on the harsh streets of the Boston 'burbs, I can't say I blame the poor girl. But cat Prozac? I thought this was the sort of thing that only ridiculous celebrities and crazy show dog breeders would recommend, not a nice, friendly neighborhood veterinarian. Mocha has run up a nice list of veterinary bills for me already - her former owner ditched her with me when she moved out of my current apartment. At the time Mocha had ear mites which lead to her scratching her ear so hard she gave herself a hematoma that required surgery. She also needed to be dewormed and demited.

So why, after all this, are Mark and I adopting another cat? No, wait for it:

a three-legged calico kitten whom Mark has insisted upon naming Imogen Beatrice SQL Fleeterson should the adoption papers go through. Yes, this is our soon-to-be-lovespawn.

She's precious! Just look at that face! She apparently suffered some nerve damage to one of her front legs before she was rescued from the streets of Austin and had to have that leg amputated.

I'm a veterinarian's dream.

So, in Austin, I will have three cats, a new house, and a new job. Which, of course, all ties into this post. I want to be a veterinarian. Sort of.

Whenever I take the cats to the vet I wish I'd had the brains to stick to biology and the stomach to do veterinary school. I know I couldn't handle a lot of the things vets do - invasive surgeries, euthanasia, etc. But, why not get a job at a veterinary office? Yes, right now I have a fairly successful publishing career under way. I am looking at a ton of publishing venues from University presses to Austin-based magazines. But if the price is right, so is a change of pace. And, hey, I bet I'd get a good deal on veterinary services for the animals, seeing as I have several sickies to take care of.

Given the fact that I have no experience in animal clinics or shelters, this is just another pipe dream. But, I can volunteer. With any luck Mark will keep me from bringing home every stray animal I encounter, and I can help some orphan cats and pups stay healthy and happy. And, with that in mind, I have two hungry cats waiting for me to finish this up so I can cuddle and feed them. Cat Lady Out.

Recipe Time

My room mate says I'm like Izzie from Grey's Anatomy. If you're not familiar with the show, she deals with stress by baking, to the dismay of her room mates who are then forced with the dilemma: to eat or not to eat.

I don't know what's come over me, but recently I, like Izzie, can't stop baking. Muffins, cookies, breads — it just doesn't stop. I've been modifying recipes (note: you can try, but you just can't make cumin cookies taste good) and heating up the kitchen. While it is probably stress-related, I haven't heard many complaints from coworkers, who are happy to share in the bounty of my bakathon.

Tonight I made pumpkin muffins. Sadly, I was out of walnuts. Hazelnuts are no substitute, and neither are almonds. So I was forced down a different route altogether: chocolate chips. I added both miniature semi-sweet and white chocolate to the batter. And they are delicious. So, if you would like your very own muffingasm, try this recipe. It's my very own, so, you know, if one day I'm famous and write a cookbook, you can say you were privy to this information back in the day.

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup canned pumpkin purée
1/2 cup olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup water
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/3 teaspoon cloves
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Whisk together the flour, salt, sugar and baking soda. In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer, blend the pumpkin, oil, eggs, water, and spices. Slowly mix in dry ingredients until just combined. Add chocolate chips. Pour into papered muffin tin. Bake 25-30 minutes (until a knife comes out clean when poked into the center of a muffin).

I cannot promise that they will be beautiful, but they will certainly be delicious.

I'm Almost Proud of Him

This is my cat, Telemachus. He is a 15lb Maine Coon, and about two years old. He loves mischief.

When I woke up this morning, he had caused a bit of a massacre in my bathroom. As long as I've known him, Tele has had a fascination with toilet paper. As long as I've known him, he's loved to unravel it to play, generally creating a mess for me. However, I've never seen anything quite like this:


As you can see, he's quite proud of himself. This is a cat masterpiece. I think this is the feline version of TPing your teacher's yard. There's nearly a whole roll there, including some that is in the bathtub and behind the toilet. My other cat, a wee Siamese — who is, incidentally, dumb as a stick — was rolling around in it, as if trying to take credit for Tele's hard work. Sadly, yes, it's an incredible waste of paper. My grandfather used to roll it back up onto the tube, but I can't bring myself to do that. This is why my room mate shouldn't feel bad about the fact that I buy most of the toilet paper. When so much goes to entertaining the animals, I just wouldn't feel right asking her for TP money.

The Lock-Out Blog

If this were a proper lock-out blog, it would have been written while I was actually locked out of my apartment on Tuesday night. Of course that means I would have had to write it on my cell phone somehow, and, seeing as I don't have a Crackberry or any sort of high-tech CIA-issue tracking device variety of phone, this would have been a frightening endeavor.

I could have written it immediately after breaking in to the apartment, but it was, by that time, 3:15 am, and even this night owl needed some shut-eye.

The irony in all this (I think, anyway, as the true meaning of irony has always eluded me), is that i had my keys. My room mate and I spent a good half an hour banging on our own door after bending my key in the deadbolt lock. It wouldn't budge. We tried to MacGyver our way in, too, with a barrette but mostly wound up embarrassing ourselves. Eventually we called a locksmith who took a power drill the the cylinder and woke up our neighbors. They were not pleased. One of them is a scary feminazi who listens to Ani Difranco on vinyl (you can learn a lot of things simply by looking at a person's mail) and does not mince words. I made them cookies. That is how we deal with things where I come from.

So, who is to blame? Us or the landlady? After a shouting match with said landlady over the phone my room mate and I were too frazzled to think straight. All four of our parents told us to ask around and to stop freaking out. Apparently in NYC the landlord is only responsible for putting a regular lock on the door - like the one in the doorknob. The deadbolt lock, or any other locks, are the responsibility of the tenant to maintain. The landlady came over yesterday afternoon and hugged it out with my room mate who gave her the rest of my cookies. We're splitting the locksmith's charges ($255) three ways, which is better than footing the bill ourselves, but not as great as being reimbursed.

So, friends. Got any good lock out stories? The only one I have that beats this one is December 6, 2003. It was my 21st birthday, and had had a glass of cheap champagne, two bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade, and a Coors Lite. As a total lightweight, this rendered me totally drunk. My friends locked me out of my room for pranking purposes, then forgot to unlatch the lock before shutting the door and running away. I had to call a campus safety officer for a lockout, wearing a vintage 1980s evening gown (it was Festivus, as well, par-tay), and, of course, he asked me to sign a lockout form. I still have it, as a marker of the night I couldn't sign my own name.