Ccccold.

Right. I might as well face it. This is the no-going-back part of the year. The time where I know my body won't be warm until late May or early June. There will be balmy days between now and then, but not the bone-soaking warmth I like. Not until I go back to the gym for the hot tub. :D

What have I been doing? Baking:The image doesn't do the little guys any justice. They're snowy white with red streaks, and are such a perfect peppermint. Very easy to make, three large egg whites, one cup of granulated sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract. Create merengue of the top three. Stripe a pastry bag with red pasty food coloring (liquid beads too much, mix with a tiny bit of the merengue to make it stick), load the bag up with merengue, and squeeze onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. After an hour in the oven at 175F, they're just right. The little guys just slide off, and I used a rather small frosting tip. Any size will do, but the medium starred ones are best. I was going to do a Gingerbread cookie bake off, but don't have the crystallized ginger called for in the competing recipe. Sigh, I guess I'll have to go to Dean & Deluca's this afternoon. Happily, I have a class to teach in the south.

There's also Amaretti Crisps here, another nice merengue cookie. Maybe this afternoon, in between hugging the space heater by the computer, knitting, and watching National Geographic, I'll whip up some drop cookies. As long as there's no Tropical cookies made... Whenever I mix a basic sugar cookie dough, a bag of tropical trail mix, and a 1/2 teaspoon of coconut extract, the result is a cookie that's highly addictive. Not very seasonal, but very good.


Knitting:All right! The white is a hat, the Yarn Slingers out there could guess that, experts that they are. There HAS been progress on the mitten. I'm thrilled with how much everyone likes it. Washing will even out the stitches, hopefully. Then the beloved Jaywalker. I shouldn't be working on that and the mitt, considering the Christmas knitting yet to do, but once the sock is done, I can finish Fry's other Jaywalker, then I need to get her mittens done as well. There's tons of gloves running around here, but none are as warm as the fair isle fabric.

Yesterday was busy with the cooking, knitting, and watching my Fry sing in the choir. Sadly, no picture of that. The nice camera's flash bulb is out, and I bought an outside camera accidently. It'll be good for snow angels later. Hubs took late afternoon off, and after the concert, we busted Fry out of school. We ate spaghetti, made cookies, and watched Spongebob. Fry had already been to her newspaper to get paid, then to Catholic school while I fixed dinner and gathered cookie ingredients.

Cute Fry story: Sunday, we all went to church. I am not a church person, was raised in a Baptist atmosphere, converted to Catholic for the first husband, then Episcopalian so I could marry the second and am rather secular now. It's a can of worms. Anyway, Fry was up at front with two other girls, both teenagers wearing belly-baring jeans(!!!), answering three questions. First one was what do you want to be? Anyone with teens know the lovely way they respond in one word sentences, as in "UhwannabuhuhChrischun." Both teens did this. Then, when asked, Fry received the extremely enunciated reply, "I want to be a veternarian and a Christian."

This brought down the house. What a sweetheart! Hubs said the priest had a tough time keeping a straight face. The Father said something about her going places, having goals, something like that. I kept having visions of Fry replacing little Ernest Angsly on television, slapping animals on the forehead and yelling "HEE-ald." Earlier, she'd had a whole diatribe typed up on how she wanted to be a vet, work in the zoo or in Africa with the big cats, and keep all animals from becoming extinct. If a person wanted to get a reaction from the Fry, saying something like, "Animals becoming extinct don't bother me at all." Them's fightin' words.

When Hub reviewed her homework, he mentioned that maybe since it IS for church that she might want to mention, oh, I don't know, God, Jesus, or something. Which prompted the "Oh yeahhhhh," response.

This just in: In the Oh No!, then Oh Good Gravy catagory. There was breaking news of a shooting in one of the city's nicest malls. There's a Nordstom's so you know the Mercedes-BMW ratio in the parking lot is high. I was shocked, thinking if the rich aren't safe, then no one is. Turns out, a former police officer turned security guard accidently shot himself. Odd that he's not on the force anymore, huh??? ;)