My mom kept lists every year of the cookies that were baked for the holidays, with notes about which of us kids helped with which cookies. Some years, those lists had 30 different cookies on them, I swear. Usually it was more like 10 or 15, but there were a few years that had super long lists (or do you think 10 or 15 is already super-long?). I' ( Read more... )

Out where a friend is a friend . . . *

I am not going back and reading the last month's worth of entries from y'all, though.

Our new/used computer at home is up and mostly running, although we're missing things we had on the old one (which started making really funny noises the night before Thanksgiving, and the_original1 was afraid if we kept using it, the ( Read more... )

This past weekend I made Thomas Keller Oreos (AKA TKOs). They're apparently from some fancy schmancy east coast bakery. Being a loyal Midwesterner, I don't generally have a lot of use for fancy schmancy east coast anything (yes, in fact, I do still call it Marshall Fields), but these looked good when they showed them (as bats!) on The Kitchn, so ( Read more... )

Pampered Chef has a proper (mostly) cookie press. It's plastic/plexiglass instead of aluminum and copper like a good old Mirro press, but it's not a gun! You turn the top to work the press! It doesn't have all the right disks (meaning the ones that used to come with the good old Mirro press), but maybe the ones from my icky gun-press would fit ( Read more... )

Prices at the grocery store could go up as much as five percent in the next year. That's bad enough, but if you read the article, it uses the example of a person who now spends $300 a week on groceries.

Who the fuck spends that much money on groceries? We are a family of five, plus three cats, and we're trying to cut back on the $150 we spend ( Read more... )

Dungeons & Dragons themed sodas from Jones, the people who have in the past brought you a traditional Thanksgiving meal in soda form. I want them.

I have a recipe for "Soft Orange Custard" from Taste of Home: Healthy Cooking (my mom got me a subscription). It sounds really, really good. Unfortunately, it calls for baking it in five 6-oz. ramekins at 325° for 35-40 min. Well, I don't own any single-serving size ramekins (someday I have to change that). So, I want to make it in a larger ( Read more... )

There's been a fair bit of hoo-ha over Whole Foods's CEO John Mackey's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Well, I've read it (you can, too, if you follow that link), and I don't think it's all that contentious, which leads me to believe that most people who are complaining about it haven't actually read it. Isn't that surprising? They heard ( Read more... )

Today, being tax day, we get to take part of the day off as a holiday. You want quiet? Go to a public accounting firm's office on the afternoon of April 15th.

I got home and decided to make something stacye13 brought to my attention, ( Chocolate Caramel Crack(ers) )

( TMI, but with a recipe! )