Cookies and Christmas Memories

So, as promised, my rundown of my Christmas cookie baking adventure.

Something has been lacking in my family's Christmas celebrations for the last few years, and that thing is my Nona's Italian Christmas cookies. I remember her baking tons of cookies and laying them out all over the two unused queen beds in her house, and enjoying them every Christmas. I figured that they would be nice to make for everyone at home, to send to all our family members who have moved all over the country over the last couple years, and now Corey's family. Needless to say, it was a pretty ambitious endeavor.

First, i needed to find the recipes. The thing about Nona's recipes is that they were all in her head. Towards the end, my sister and I worked with her to try to write them down, but looking back on all of the scrap-paper recipes that we were able to salvage, all that really got written down was a list of ingredients. Thankfully, I was able to find similar recipes online to fill in things like cooking times, temperatures, and recipe yields. After that, I had to figure out how many of each cookie I'd need in order to make the number of cookie plates I wanted to give away. I had a huge baking grocery list, and I did all the shopping in one shot. Fortunately, the shopping trip was quick...thanks to Price Chopper's "baking needs" aisle :-) Then I also had to make all the recipe cards, as I was including the recipes for the cookies with the cards and gift cookie packages.

So on Sunday the 12th (obligatory comment about how this blog post is late, har-har), I spent the entire day Corey's parent's kitchen...because it's MUCH bigger than ours, and I don't think out tiny oven and little bit of counter space could handle it. Here we go...

The Stelline d'Oro cookies are Molly's favorite, and she usually makes them, but I thought I'd give them a try. They have orange juice in them and are really thin, so they're just a little bit crispy with a little bit of citrus flavor in the cookie and icing. I had a hard time finding yellow sugar sprinkles, but I managed to find some in a multi-color sprinkle package. They seem to only look right with the yellow, but pink didn't look too bad when I ran out of yellow sprinkles.

Stelline d'Oro (Star and Moon) Cookies

I think the anise cookies came out the best, although they were a little bigger than Nona's. I didn't expect them to expand as much, but they are really light and cake-like.

Anise Cookies

I wasn't too thrilled with these lemon cookies, but it's a really simple recipe, and I could put just about any flavored extract in it. Maybe next time I'll try almond or maybe rum. I decided to add some icing and sprinkles to sweeten them up a bit, as the cookie itself was rather bland. not sure I'll make these again.

Lemon Cookies with Icing

The almond biscotti was difficult because you have to bake it a really really long time. They were the last ones of the day, so I was pretty impatient at that point. Corey did an awesome job with the chocolate dipping though!

Almond Biscotti

 The wine biscuit recipe made WAY more cookies than I expected. they are an interesting purple color. I remember Nona's being less purple and more of a light brown, but I think that was just a difference in the wine that we used. They look kind of weird, but they are SO good. Not a super sweet cookie; more like a scone, but still definitely delicious. The butter balls were the only cookie that I had made before, and they are pretty easy anyway, so I was happy with how those came out as well.

Wine Biscuits (left) and Butter Balls (right)

After an entire day of baking (11am till about 9pm), I was pretty beat. I packaged everything up and then came back to the cookies the next day to put together the 10 plates and 4 tins (that I mailed out today). I was a little scared when I organized my recipes and went shopping that there wouldn't be enough cookies to fill the plates, or at least make them look full, but I think my estimates worked out perfectly.

Christmas-ey Tins

And the fanciest paper plates ever!

Aaaand...the final product!

  

I'm pretty happy with the way everything came out. I've pretty much only ever baked cookies from a box or ready made dough, so this was a feat in itself for me. It was a good opportunity to try everything out, and decide which cookies I really want to make for future Christmases. I definitely got unanimous thumbs up (and requests for "taste tests") for the anise cookies, so those will definitely be a staple for many Christmases to come. It's nice to share the recipes from my family with Corey's family, and I know that all who enjoyed Nona's cookies will be happy to see them again this Christmas.

I think my favorite part of this whole adventure was going through all of Nona's old recipes. Seeing how she had only written down the ingredients for herself really showed just how much she knew the recipes by heart. I'm sure she baked these cookies every year, from when she was a teenager during the great depression, until right before she went into the nursing home and passed away. So much has changed in our family since then, especially for the holidays. Everyone has grown up and moved away to all corners of the US. I never thought I'd be mailing Nona's cookies to California, Virginia, North Carolina, and Illinois, after so many years of being able to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together. Holidays have been so different, as Nona has been gone for almost three years now. I think about her every day and what she would think of where I am now. She was the biggest influence in my life, and the one person who I know always believed in me, no matter what. I guess this was my way to bring some of these memories back for Christmas and make at least this one thing like it used to be. I know she'd be really proud.

1941

1988--the baby is me

2005

Big Changes, Apartment Hunting, and Logical Conclusions

Drumroll....I've accepted a real-live, full-time job! The offer came a couple Friday ago, and I was incredibly excited to accept it. It's a sales engineering job in Windsor, CT, and basically the job I've been searching for all along. They seem really excited to have me there, and I'm psyched to start. I'll be able to work with a lot of different departments, as well as customers, so lots of learning will be happening. This also means that I have a solid plan for my next step when my temp assignment ends on December 23rd. Right now I'm in temp limbo, as all my work is done, but my contract has me still here until the 23rd, so it's been pretty discouraging showing up to work with nothing to do. I'm ecstatic that I was able to get the job that was right for me, rather than having to settle for the first thing that came my way, like I had to do with this temp thing.

In the very same weekend, Corey found out about his year-long rotation in Seattle (starting in early March), and got into grad school (part-time online at USC). It was a pretty exciting weekend, getting all that good news at once, but that also meant big changes and decisions to make.

I will be starting my new job in Windsor on January 10th. The commute is about an hour and 20 minutes, so it's doable, but not particularly desirable. I decided that I should probably start looking for a place to live that is closer to work. Since Corey would be heading out to Washington late-February, early March, I wanted to find a place that would be halfway-ish between Windsor and Pittsfield, so that he wouldn't have to be bouncing around between where we live now, and my new place, in order to commute to work. This would mean a roughly 1 hour commute for both of us...not much of an improvement, but it could work. So I spent the last week or so making phone calls and arranging visits to apartments so I could move after Christmas.

Saturday, Corey and I woke up early (a feat in itself, as his company holiday party was the night before, and he was still jetlagged from a business trip), and started our schedule of apartment visits. The first place we checked out was a bit far, in South Hadley. The location was nice, and I liked the outside of the apartment complex, but once we got inside, I realized that it definitely wasn't what I wanted. The one-bedroom apartment was really small, and I felt more like I was in a hotel than an apartment building. It wasn't bad for my first-ever apartment visit, but not for me, and too far for us to both live there for the time between when I start work and Corey goes to Seattle.

The second place we visited was basically the complete opposite of the first. It was in a really small town, and about half an hour from the Masspike. Now I enjoy living in a rural area now, but for commuting, this place was a little removed from where we want to be. It was a really nice, completely redone 2-bedroom upstairs in an 1850s era house. I liked it, but calling it a 2 bedroom was a bit of a stretch. Two roughly 10' x 10' rooms with teeny tiny closets. I probably would need to use both as a single bedroom, with my bed in one and dresser in another--definitely not ideal. Additionally, the only way to do laundry would be to drive half an hour to Westfield or Northampton, and I just wouldn't have the time or energy for that. Additionally, the really sweet older lady who owned the home is probably looking for someone like her previous tenant who would help her around the house and such. Between work, commuting, and flying out to visit Corey on weekends, I just wouldn't have time to be of much help to her. Again, there were good and bad things about this one.

We drove around the Westfield area for awhile, browsing complexes, and when we found a nice one, we stopped by the Leasing office on a whim. This seemed like a really nice place with everything included. At 700ish square feet, the one-bedroom apartments were much larger than the first one we looked at, and amenities were nicer. This one was still pretty far from the highway though, and we'd both still have a relatively long commute. We didn't get to see an actual apartment, but the girl there was really nice and showed us pictures and floor plans and such. It was a nice complex, but I guess I haven't fully decided it's where I want to be.

Apartment hunting has proven to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. The situation with Corey leaving in March has complicated things because of the two months between when I start and he leaves. I guess we've been kind of spoiled because we live in such a great place right now. Moving into an apartment right after Christmas has a ton of downsides: not a lot of time to visit and make a decision, I'd have to rush to move during an already stressful time of the year, and Corey would be bouncing from our current apartment to our new apartment, depending on where the new place is in relation to his work. When he leaves, I'd be left with a commute that is still long, and possibly in a place that I rushed into just for the sake of moving. The obvious conclusion is that this is a bad idea.

So, I have a new plan that makes much more sense. I'm staying put. I absolutely love where I live right now, and there's not much of a reason to move right this second. I can tolerate the long commute for a couple more months (it's all highway anyway, so snow shouldn't be as bad), and I get to stay with Corey before he goes away for a year. This also gives me more time to shop around and really find the right place, as I'll be there for a year. I can look for places closer to work, so that I have a 20 minute commute, rather than an hour, and I can feel better about not making a rushed decision. I'll probably sign a year lease (March 2011 to March 2012) and then when Corey comes back, we can find a place that is halfway between Windsor and Pittsfield. In the areas halfway between (where we'd both have a ~45 minutes commute, so not bad), there aren't really many small apartments that would be suitable for just me anyway, so we'll have more luck there when we're looking for a place for both of us.

It's kind of weird making all these long-term plans, but I know it's going to turn out for the best. Apartment hunting has been much more stressful and overwhelming than I thought. I think my new plan is much more well thought out, and will be much better in the end. I have a great place to live (with a pretty sweet roomie!), a wonderful family, and a real job to look forward to. I'm thankful for what I have right now, and there's no reason for me to rush into something that will mix that all up.

Sunday was spent baking tons and tons of Italian christmas cookies...I'll update about that soon, hopefully with pictures.

Adventures in Cooking (and Employment)

I've been feeling motivated to cook actual food lately. This is a big turning point in my life, as my family thought that I would be forever reliant on my microwaveable frozen entrees, mac and cheese, and ramen. Corey has been really adventurous with finding recipes to try, especially for the crock pot, but I've been feeling an urge to get in on the cooking creativity. I made couscous last night---fried it up with olive oil, an onion, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and coriander, and it didn't come out half bad. Tonight I'm going to try to make latkes. We have a bunch of potatoes, and it is Hannukah, so I'm feeling "culturally festive", heh.

For Christmas gifts, I've been planning on making some of the Italian Christmas cookies that my Nona used to make. I'm excited to make them, so hopefully they'll come out "right". A lot of her recipes got lost through the years, or were never written down, so I've found a few similar ones online. I did this with Rice Pie at Easter, and it took a couple tries of recipes I found on the internet before I found the one that was most true to the way she made it. When I went to my parents house for Thanksgiving last week, I was able to find a big bag of scraps of paper that she wrote recipes on. It's going to be a task in itself to decipher everything and get the actual recipes written down and made. A lot of the "recipes" are just ingredient lists, so I'm relying on the internet (and possibly a little experimentation, but with the price of ingredients, I'd like to keep this at a minimum and only make one batch of each) to fill in the blanks as to oven temperature and cooking time and such. I'll definitely document the process, so that I can continue to do the cookies at Christmastime. There's been a void during the holidays, as we're coming up on our third Christmas without Nona, so I'm hoping to be able to bring back some nice memories with her cookies.

In other news, I've been informed that my temp assignment ends on December 20th... it wasn't too much of a surprise, and I was expecting it. I actually feel better knowing that the end is in sight, and that I don't have to go through the process of giving notice and everything whenI find something new. It's been out in the open that I've been looking for something more permanent, and there is a possibility of having that here if I want to, which is good. I've been busy with a couple rounds of interviews the last few weeks, so hopefully that will mean I'll have options. I'm looking forward to moving into a more stable position, and also eager to be able to have my own benefits and start contributing to a 401k (who gets excited about that, seriously?---I'm a nerd.).

My first student loan payment is due in a couple weeks, and I'm prepared for that. Life is starting to happen really quickly, and I feel like I've prepared myself well for post college life. I'm pretty proud of being able to do the things I've been able to do as far as being independent and supporting myself, and I'm confident that I can keep moving onward and upward.

I guess it's good to be a "planner". It's served me well in school, with my finances, and maybe now with cooking and baking too.

Office Apocalypse

So things around the office have been a bit off kilter today.  In addition to my usual work-related turmoils, having to request access to the basic databases I need to do my job (again, and again, and again---as a temp, they like to take me out of the system every 3 weeks or so for fun), a lot has been going down today.

The day started with my phone clicking on and off every 15 minutes or so. The collective groans coming from the adjacent cubes signaled that this wasn't just a problem with my phone. Then the internet went. Typically this wouldn't be too big of a deal, as I'm working on Word documents all day, and whatever personal pleasure I take from surfing the web can be done through the limited capibilities of my (semi) dumbphone. No one responds to my emails anyway, so this didn't effect me too much, but boy did it cause problems for everyone else. This continued for pretty much the whole morning. Phone outage, followed by internet outage, followed by rebooting everything. The symphony of Windows startup sounds and Nortel tones was amusing to me, but surely not to those on conference calls.

Then a water main broke across the street. They turned off the water in the building. No toilet flushing, no hand washing, no watercoolers or coffee makers (they're all hooked up to the water supply...no Poland Spring tanks here). Around 1:00, after I tried to wash my plastic lunch container in the sink (duh), we got an email telling us not to use the bathrooms. At all. In order to use the loo, we'd have to go to another building. Good thing I haven't been able to fill up my water bottle all day, or make tea, because I'd be hurting right now.

Finally, when the water did come back on (allbeit for a very brief moment) all the fire alarms went off because of the change in water pressure. As soon as all the employees were gathered at the muster point outside,  we were told that the water problem was the cause of the alarm and we could go back inside. The problem is, the alarm won't stop. It's not an emergency, so we all headed back inside to do out work, but the alarm keeps going of sporadically. Fortunately I have some earplugs at my desk (from a trip to the manufacturing area...not because of my co-workers), so I've been sitting here, ears stuffed with foam, waiting for 5:00. Fortunately I sit right next to EHS, and they seem to be on top of these things, so I have the advantage of being a bit less clueless than people in other part sof the building.

Who knows what's gonna happen next. I think these are all signs that I should have taken today off.

Achievement Unlocked!

My dissatisfaction with the current job situation had me down for quite awhile, but I'm trying to dig deep and focus some of my attention on other things that make me happy. I've been trying to find a new hobby, and finally getting around to some of the things I've been putting off for a long time.

Just sold some things on eBay, which I've been meaning to do forever. Two pairs of shoes I bought for $5 at Goodwill that, unfortunately, were half a size too small. half a size is apparently just enough to seem like they fit when you try them on in the store, but feel like hell when you try to actually wear them for more than 5 minutes. The Black Danskos sold, but the camel Cole Haans didn't, but I've got $60 more in my pocket than I did before. Success? I think so. Now I have enough cash to go buy the same Danskos in the right size.



What can I say? I'm a sucker for old-lady shoes. These seemed like the perfect compromise of comfort/old lady-ness and style.

Next on my list is to put the Stereo and Speakers I salvaged from Winston the Geo Prizm on eBay. I managed to have them un-installed from the car before he was sold to my mechanic. They had been installed in the car for less than a year, and I have no need for them in the new car, so it's worth a shot.


The next thing I had been putting off was hemming pants. I have a problem finding pants that are the right length. Women's jeans and dress pants usually come with a standard 32" inseam, while Petite and short lengths are usually 28" or 29". I need 30". Since 90% of my clothing shopping is second hand, I find a lot of pants that are perfect, but I can only wear them with super mega heels due to the inseam. The low price justifies the purchase, even though wearing the pants is conditional upon whether or not I hem them. needless to say, I had lots of pants to hem. I have a sewing machine, but I'm definitely not the craftiest person, so I was hesitant and kept putting this off. I found this awesome tutorial for how to hem jeans and keep the bottom seam intact and tried it on a couple pairs. It worked great, and I even managed to use my newfound hemming confidence and motivation to mend a shirt of Corey's and hem a pair of his dress pants. I know it seems pretty mundane, but it was really nice to finally get around to something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

PS: Anybody interested in these?



Cole Haan City Camel Heels

 

So I have a blog.

Apparently. Trying to do a bit of a life overhaul here. Graduated from college. Just starting out in a lot of ways, feeling like an old fart in others. Stay tuned.