Trash or Treasure?
I have a coke bottle. (It was full of sugar and attached to a light fixture I wanted. Don't ask.) I think glass coke bottles are sort of nifty, and didn't really want to pitch it in the recycling bin, but the label is enameled on. (If I could scrub it off, I'd probably keep it). It's a commemorative bottle. People collect these things, I think. In a fit of time-wasting, I attempted to look it up on the web: 50th anniversary of the Cape Cod bottling plant, 1939-1989, Carver, MA. I didn't find exactly that, but bottles for the same anniversary but different towns (where they were to be shipped to, if I understood correctly) were listed on the web for ~$15. (I've no idea if they actually sell for that.) This hardly seems worth figuring out ebay for, but adds the tiny additional twinge of "What if it was just the thing to complete someone's collection?" Any suggestions? Do I know anyone who collects such things?
The first pottery class of the term was yesterday. When I arrived, someone else was making little clay pipes -- she'd made a whole pile of narrow clay tubes (with the extruder? I didn't ask), and was cutting them to length, notching them, and testing the sound. I boggled -- they play when wet? -- and asked silly questions. She said they go up in tone about half a note when fired (but she hadn't tested them very carefully), and showed me one of her finished pipe-pots -- a roughly spherical creature with two tubes sticking out of it, one a pipe and the other a plain tube. She had partly filled it with water, and could change the pitch by changing the angle she held it at.
New Year's happened, crochetting happened (I finished a silly hat), baking with eredien happened (coconut cherry cookies, yum!), experimental baking happened (first draft atkins-friendly cookies with stevia, need work), birthdaying for tirinian happened ... and I seem to've slept through most of the rest of the long weekend and a number of plans. I meant to get more done.
Atkins-friendly cookies, first try -- for my reference, as these really aren't right. I think the cocoa and the stevia aren't playing well -- the next try will probably be just peanut butter. I may also have overbaked them. They were dry and crumbly in almost but not quite the way most peanut butter cookies are.
1 cup peanut butter (smart balance)
3 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa powder (penzey's dutch process)
1 1/2 tablespoons stevia powder (powdered leaf, not extract)
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Mix, roll into balls & press with fork as for peanut butter cookies, bake at 350F for ... ten minutes was probably too long.
Shiny thing of the day, via siderea: Frozen bubbles.
The first pottery class of the term was yesterday. When I arrived, someone else was making little clay pipes -- she'd made a whole pile of narrow clay tubes (with the extruder? I didn't ask), and was cutting them to length, notching them, and testing the sound. I boggled -- they play when wet? -- and asked silly questions. She said they go up in tone about half a note when fired (but she hadn't tested them very carefully), and showed me one of her finished pipe-pots -- a roughly spherical creature with two tubes sticking out of it, one a pipe and the other a plain tube. She had partly filled it with water, and could change the pitch by changing the angle she held it at.
New Year's happened, crochetting happened (I finished a silly hat), baking with eredien happened (coconut cherry cookies, yum!), experimental baking happened (first draft atkins-friendly cookies with stevia, need work), birthdaying for tirinian happened ... and I seem to've slept through most of the rest of the long weekend and a number of plans. I meant to get more done.
Atkins-friendly cookies, first try -- for my reference, as these really aren't right. I think the cocoa and the stevia aren't playing well -- the next try will probably be just peanut butter. I may also have overbaked them. They were dry and crumbly in almost but not quite the way most peanut butter cookies are.
1 cup peanut butter (smart balance)
3 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa powder (penzey's dutch process)
1 1/2 tablespoons stevia powder (powdered leaf, not extract)
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Mix, roll into balls & press with fork as for peanut butter cookies, bake at 350F for ... ten minutes was probably too long.
Shiny thing of the day, via siderea: Frozen bubbles.