I guess it’s just going to be one of those years

When cookie season is terribly compressed. Not enough weekends, and the ones I do have, I keep giving up for trips to Chicago.

I’ve made one cookie kind so far, the lebkuchen. This year I tried a new recipe, from King Arthur Flour, and I kinda like it. I made my normal batch using the Joy of Cooking recipe – I mean it’s a German cookie, so Joy is the definitive source by my lights, written by Irma Rombauer, a German-American woman from St. Louis, born in the late 19th century, not unlike my grandmother, a German-American from Cincinnati, born in the late 19th century. The King Arthur recipe is softer and has egg, but no butter. Anyways, I’m making a second batch using the King Arthur recipe, so there’ll be about 100 of those, and 100 of the Joy ones.

But I haven’t even written my cookie list yet, nor sent the party reminder.

My aim is to get the jam cookies and the springerle done this week, because we’re going to Chicago again this coming weekend; an over-nighter this time.

Sunday we only spent the day there, but it was a long one. Train down, leaving at 6:30 AM. Brunch with John & Megan at this place called City Mouse, that was part of this kind of Pacific Northwest Portlandia enclave. Across from the Chicago Google offices, in the same building as the Ace Hotel, and Stumptown Coffee. Terminally hip, even for the West Loop. Really good Bloody, eggs and everything else OK. Except seeing John and Megan was the best part – they seem good, planning trips to New Orleans in January and Paris for John’s birthday in March. They were talking about how they’d both been biking to work, and I said yea, Megan’s new bike is in the background of all the kitty photos.

Then we went to the Opera, Don Giovanni.

I thought it was about the funniest opera I’d ever seen, especially Don Giovanni descending to hell, and Mozart’s moralizing at the end, when the lights come up and we are warned about the wages of sin. Although as Mark said the moralizing was really more about the kinds of things the rich and royals who funded Mozart were up to, than the regular people who might enjoy the opera.

But then yea, it was a little more snowy for the drive home than was really fun. We were home a little after 10:00, watched the Poldark finale, and went to bed.

Monday I didn’t have any meetings until 10:00, so I thought it would be a leisurely morning, but no. The only cookie thing I did was cut the lebkuchen. I gobbled some lunch, this mushroom-spinach galette that Mark didn’t particularly like because the crust is whole wheat, and headed off to the community center to prep the Tuesday meal.

When I got back, Mark and I ate baked beans and sandwiches, pepper & egg, and Mark had a slice of ham in his. I was trying to recreate a Pittsburgh pepper & egg sub, college student hangover food. These sandwiches were pretty close. The beans I’m less happy with. I made them with canned beans and a hunk of pork tenderloin we had with sweet potatoes a bit ago, so they’re kinda too mushy & meaty for my taste in beans. I had an online class at 8:00 and by the time that was all done, I took a shower and washed my hair and watched episode 1 of the new season of the Crown with Olivia Coleman playing an older Queen than Clare Foy in the first two seasons, and it was 11:30 before I went to bed.

Usually I feel OK on the days I go to serve the breakfast but somehow this time I just feel kind of miserable. Tired, I’ve eaten too much sugar and caffeine, I’m having those weird dizzies that mean I’m getting a cold or sinus infection, or else about to drop dead from a stroke, and I just wanna go lie down. Or watch another episode of the Crown. The plan is to make that after I am done moderating my online class session with a guest speaker, which ends about 7:00, I will go and bake that second batch of King Arthur lebkuchen, and mix up the dough for the jam cookies. We shall see.*

And, not to blame the pantry breakfast for how I’m feeling, the menu was taco pie: meat with pork, corn, cheese, peppers & onions; vegetarian with black beans, corn, cheese, peppers & onions, and both with corn bread on top. Pumpkin cranberry bread, root vegetable balsamic slaw, guacamole and chips and salsa, and fried apples – the pantry got all these apple slices in plastic bags – we opened up a whole case of them, and sauteed them in butter with a little sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

I had trouble with stuff getting done – the pumpkin bread was a bit gooey in the middles, and the veggie taco pie’s cornbread was spoon bread like. I kept putting it back in and it did get done eventually.

*and now it’s not quite 9:00 PM and the lebkuchen is baked and glazed, and the jam cookie dough is refrigerated and the kitchen is all cleaned up. So I do get to watch that Crown episode.