Updates from the long weekend
After cutting some lilies from our garden to take to a friend's house, I discovered a tiny green praying mantis on one of them! I have fond memories of capturing and caring for a praying mantis one summer as a child, and that one actually laid an ootheca. Although I let the mother go in the fall, I saved the egg sac over the winter, and in the wpring, right around Easter, I was rewarded with millions of unbelievably microscopic baby mantids. I kept them for a few days until I realized they were starting to cannibalize each other, and let the survivors go (about two, as I recall). Anyway, I thought it would be fun for Audrey (OK, yes, for ME!) to have a similar experience, so tiny green praying mantis is in an empty vitamin bottle at the moment. Unless I can't find food small enough for it to eat (a good possibility), we'll keep it for at least a few weeks. Ironically enough, although this is the first praying mantis I've seen since I was a child, we found yet ANOTHER one today in the lilies while looking for suitable bugs to feed the first one. We've got it in a separate container too; don't want them to try to eat each other like my babies did so long ago. I've tried taking pictures, but so far have not had much luck. I'll try again tomorrow when the battery has juice again.
Our 4th weekend was pretty good. Went to Fazoli's for lunch, did a little shopping, a little party-hopping, then did the fireworks in the evening. Even though this was Aislinn's second experience with fireworks, and she was pretty nonchalant about them the first time, this time she FREAKED OUT. This was a more explosion-rich show than the first, to be certain, and I think we were sitting a bit closer to the launching source than the first time, so this did not help at all. I decided I would just nurse her through the show (darkness being a good cover for boobage), but after the shock of the noise wore off, she decided, "Hey...those are kind of pretty...but still so loud and scary!!!" This meant that with every explosion of light, she would pop off to look at the pretties, then at the following BOOM! (drat physics, speed of light > speed of sound), she would latch back on...then pop back on again at the next display. Oh well, at least, as I said, darkness covered us well, even with all the bright lights of the fireworks!
Today I got an e-mail from my dad, with an attached pictures. Apparently he took my sister and her kids to watch her father-in-law at a horse pull, but the biggest excitement was this (look just above the telephone pole):
Although I am terrified of tornados , I have always secretly wished to see one in real life, from a "safe" distance. I was nowhere near this one, so I'll have to wait a bit longer, I guess. (This one never touched ground or even made it on the news, according to my dad, so no one was hurt).
Confessions of a Raw Cookie Dough Addict
Does rehab exist for this? Is there a clinic I can check into? Because cookie dough, both the store-bought variety and the homemade, have been my biggest stumbling block on my goal of avoiding sugar at home.
I know, I know, you're not supposed to eat cookie dough raw anyway. So how come they make cookie dough ice cream? Huh? I know it's something about pasteurizing the eggs in the dough, yadda yadda yadda. And when the dough is homemade, I'm really tempting fate. Oh well. I like to live dangerously.
This weekend I was going to make chocolate chip cookies to take to one of the parties we were invited to. One panful made it into the oven; I just ran out of time. Hence, no cookies even made it out of the house, and there was almost a whole bowlful of the dough left in the refrigerator (I say "was" because now it's down to about a quarter of a bowlful). This cookie dough in particular is special. Why, you ask? Because it's the first time I have EVER bought butter, real butter, to make cookies with. Probably the first time in my adult life I have bought real butter at all. I wanted the cookies to be the really soft, chewy kind (I detest crunchy chocolate chip cookies), so I thought real butter would help.
IT DID. And not just with the nine that actually got baked. OH. MY. GOSH. Cookie dough with real butter makes ordinary cookie dough without butter seem like...like...like that nasty ice milk stuff that tries to pass itself off as ice cream. Or, diet pop, with that nasty aspertame/saccharine/Splenda crap in it that they SAY you can't taste (GIVE ME A BREAK!).
Real butter...I may be mainlining this cookie dough. And it will require much effort to restrain myself from making more when this is all consumed.
Throw it out? Get rid of the temptation? NEVER! What a waste of wonderful, delicious, REAL BUTTER-filled cookie dough that would be!
For me, cookie dough is like pie is for mrtl. Do you see what I'm getting at?
Our 4th weekend was pretty good. Went to Fazoli's for lunch, did a little shopping, a little party-hopping, then did the fireworks in the evening. Even though this was Aislinn's second experience with fireworks, and she was pretty nonchalant about them the first time, this time she FREAKED OUT. This was a more explosion-rich show than the first, to be certain, and I think we were sitting a bit closer to the launching source than the first time, so this did not help at all. I decided I would just nurse her through the show (darkness being a good cover for boobage), but after the shock of the noise wore off, she decided, "Hey...those are kind of pretty...but still so loud and scary!!!" This meant that with every explosion of light, she would pop off to look at the pretties, then at the following BOOM! (drat physics, speed of light > speed of sound), she would latch back on...then pop back on again at the next display. Oh well, at least, as I said, darkness covered us well, even with all the bright lights of the fireworks!
Today I got an e-mail from my dad, with an attached pictures. Apparently he took my sister and her kids to watch her father-in-law at a horse pull, but the biggest excitement was this (look just above the telephone pole):
Although I am terrified of tornados , I have always secretly wished to see one in real life, from a "safe" distance. I was nowhere near this one, so I'll have to wait a bit longer, I guess. (This one never touched ground or even made it on the news, according to my dad, so no one was hurt).
Confessions of a Raw Cookie Dough Addict
Does rehab exist for this? Is there a clinic I can check into? Because cookie dough, both the store-bought variety and the homemade, have been my biggest stumbling block on my goal of avoiding sugar at home.
I know, I know, you're not supposed to eat cookie dough raw anyway. So how come they make cookie dough ice cream? Huh? I know it's something about pasteurizing the eggs in the dough, yadda yadda yadda. And when the dough is homemade, I'm really tempting fate. Oh well. I like to live dangerously.
This weekend I was going to make chocolate chip cookies to take to one of the parties we were invited to. One panful made it into the oven; I just ran out of time. Hence, no cookies even made it out of the house, and there was almost a whole bowlful of the dough left in the refrigerator (I say "was" because now it's down to about a quarter of a bowlful). This cookie dough in particular is special. Why, you ask? Because it's the first time I have EVER bought butter, real butter, to make cookies with. Probably the first time in my adult life I have bought real butter at all. I wanted the cookies to be the really soft, chewy kind (I detest crunchy chocolate chip cookies), so I thought real butter would help.
IT DID. And not just with the nine that actually got baked. OH. MY. GOSH. Cookie dough with real butter makes ordinary cookie dough without butter seem like...like...like that nasty ice milk stuff that tries to pass itself off as ice cream. Or, diet pop, with that nasty aspertame/saccharine/Splenda crap in it that they SAY you can't taste (GIVE ME A BREAK!).
Real butter...I may be mainlining this cookie dough. And it will require much effort to restrain myself from making more when this is all consumed.
Throw it out? Get rid of the temptation? NEVER! What a waste of wonderful, delicious, REAL BUTTER-filled cookie dough that would be!
For me, cookie dough is like pie is for mrtl. Do you see what I'm getting at?
posted by Andrea | 11:23 PM
9 Comments:
Oh noooooooo......
In the book BABY (or is it UNCLAIMED TREASURES) by Patricia MacLachlan, one of the ladies loves to eat raw dough and batter stuff. Now I'm gonna have to go find it and read that chapter.
And mrtl's right, it's because of the shell. My pappap raised chickens and the best eggnog is made from the freshest eggs, the ones just brought in from the coop and washed off.
ok, so I have deprived my children of licking the spoon all these years for naught? and the mantis story reminds me of a similar tale...I may have to blog about it.
That's a great 'almost tornado' picture.
mrtl, no worries. It didn't stop me before, so it won't likely be a factor at this point!
And weetzie, I will continue to deprive my kids of licking the spoon. Even if eggs are not an issue, SUGAR is. My oldest is extremely sugar-sensitive (gets very hyper and cranky if she has very much at all, and she would want the spoon AND the bowl). And the baby, well, she's just too young yet. And frankly, I don't even let Audrey know that *I* eat the stuff because, shamefully enough...I DON'T WANT TO SHARE :)
Raw cookie dough is my downfall too. I try to walk past it quickly at the grocery store, but Nestle seems to call out to me. I like to tube one better than the square, ready to bake cookie dough because I can eat more and not realize that I ate half a tube whereas if I get the square ones, I know how many I ate. Denial, I know.
There is no shame in eating cookie dough if you are a consenting adult, which you are. DO NOT THROW IT OUT. Eat it, my friend. Eat it and be merry.
Hmmmm raw cookie dough. I'm drooling just thinking of it...
if there's any left (which there isn't, I know, so use this for later), freeze it. Then you can duck into the freezer every now and then to grab a little snack. (I know, the whole world is helping you undermine your weight loss on this one.)
And a little trivia from the 1886 farm regarding eggs: when you wash them, you have to use them right away because there is a very thin coating on the shell that keeps it from going bad. Else it would be rotten before the chick grew! That's why in way-oldey-times they would lard the eggs -- that would seal the shell even more and prevent air from entering the pores in the shell. The thin layer does it on its own, for a time, but lard would do it longer.
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