Ere The Other Side Ye See

[mrissa]

I am awfully short on answers today (even to questions like, "Am I thirsty enough to go get a glass of water?", and that kind of questions really seem like they should be okay), so I'm going to try to spread some questions around a bit and see if you folks have any answers. Any useful answers, I mean. I'm sure you have answers. scottjames and I had that conversation something like 14 years ago. Something very like 14 years ago, in fact. Oof.

Anyway: do you have recipes for good cookies that don't have nuts in them in any form? I mean no peanut butter, no almond extract, no nothing. My mom has discovered that if she avoids all nuts, she doesn't get hives. Considering our Norsky affinity for almond extract, this hits the Christmas cookies pretty hard. Suggestions? (I'm still making spritz. I just want to serve my mom things that won't, y'know, kill her. Or cause her great discomfort. I'm silly like that.)

Also, what should we get timprov's dad for his birthday? He already has more unread, interesting books than he could read in the next two calendar years at least (and is not such a bibliophile that this would not faze him). He doesn't watch a lot of movies or listen to a lot of music (though some CDs might be an idea). He does crosswords, but doesn't have enough free time to far exceed the paper's allotment, so a crossword puzzle book is only a good present every so often. He isn't the sort of person I could buy clothes for, though I don't know why this is the case, since he clearly wears them and all. I might make some breads, cookies, homemade candy, that kind of thing, but I did that for Christmas. He plays tennis, but not so much in the winter here in MN. He and T's mom enjoy plays when they get a chance, but I don't want to buy them tickets and find out that he has an unavoidable conflict. Ideas? Help!

And again on a different note, if you had a friend who had gone and written a bunch of books, and you asked to read one, how would you prefer that your friend decide which one? Should she give you the one she thinks is best done first? The one she thinks is most concurrent with your interests? The one she's willing to let out of the house without immediately trying to dive on it and wrestle it open and scribble edits on the pages as you take the binder out with you? The first one? What's the magic formula here? If you read the best one first, will you be disappointed in the other ones? Because your hypothetical friend is a little spooked by sad disappointed faces in people who have just read her hypothetical books. In this entirely hypothetical situation that is sure to never come up again for the rest of my life. I think this is what other people are for, is what. Because C.J. didn't ask pameladean which of her books he should read first, he asked me, and then she didn't have to deal with it. (Er. Sorry if you wanted to deal with it, Pamela. I'll take them away from him and make him talk to you if you like.)

This is not a question at all: I don't like wearing glasses. I knew I didn't. Peripheral vision! Nothing fogging up, nothing getting rain on it, nothing getting smudged when I hug people. This is another case where "Big Yellow Taxi" does not apply: I did know what I had before it was gone. But it's only temporary, and I will be duly grateful when I get my new contacts.

It's still lovely and rainy and fall-like. I'm wearing a sweater. I wore a jacket over my sweater when I went to get lunch with Ceej, and I still got a little chilled through my jeans. So fabulous. So fall.

Comments

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Baked goods are always well received by someone who knows how well you bake. It's very personal and a lot of thought and effort went into the making of a homemade present.

Does he work in an office, drive a lot, or have a hobby you could enhance?

Office: a plant or other stress-reliever, chair massager (the kind you plug into the wall and drape over the chair, or desk blotter set (if he uses this sort of thing)

Time in car: books on CD/tape, car freshener (not the kind that dangles from the mirror but the kind where you clean out the car), detailing (interior and exterior), something to help make driving more comfortable and/or convenient (cup holder, coffee thermos, etc.)

Hobby: new tools, new materials, latest greatest gadget, certificate to someplace so he can get things to add to hobby

None of the above: um... you did mention baked goods, right? And you can't buy a nice sweater, fleece pullover, shirt, or other clothing items? Um, a new wallet? Watch? Key ring? Does he drink beer--what about a membership to a beer of the month club or his own brewing kit? Um...?

[sraun]

Non-nut cookies? Snickerdoodles! This looks like a good one - http://www.recipesource.com/desserts/cookies/15/rec1540.html

Dad present? If he likes plays, what a gift certificate to Chanhassen Dinner Theaters? Then they could pick the play and the date.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

He does work in an office. Hmmm.

I can't really explain why I can't buy him clothes. As I said, he wears clothes, and I've seen him enough to know which clothes. I just...I don't know. Apparently it doesn't work that way.

T's parents avoid alcohol for personal reasons, but beer of the month is something I might want to keep in mind for some other people in my life....

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Gift certificates are a very good idea.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Cookies: date-filled oatmeal cookies. You make and refrigerate logs of this oatmeal-butter-brown-sugar mixture, cut slices, and put two together with some dates mashed up with water (or liquor) between, and bake. The edges collapse together and seal and the result is absolutely *wonderful*. You can also just bake the slices without the dates. I have an actual recipe somewhere I think, if you like the idea and need more details to do anything with it. I had, at least, a recipe the last time I made these. The one thing wrong with these for Christmas, though, is that they're fairly fragile and not all that elegant-looking.

Also, how could a molasses ginger cookie be wrong?

For people I end up having trouble picking gifts for, I try to move to some kind of expendable thing. Then I can use the same idea again and again, if it's a success. Liquor and food come to mind. Cheese? Fruit? Or a *series* of things from Harry & David? Chocolate?

[sraun]

My mother has given us a Chanhassen gift certificate every year for the past three. She gives us enough for the main stage on Saturday night - if we go some other time, we can use the extra to off-set extra food costs (a bottle of wine, a non-base-cost entree, appetizer or desert). We like it a lot.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Cookies: I have a recipe from my uncle (one of the better cooks in the family) for chocolate cookies - these are dark chocolate cookies; the secret is a pinch of pepper that somehow intensifies the chocolate taste. (Or if you overdo the pepper, leaves them tasting sort of like chocolate gingersnaps.) I'm pretty sure there's almond extract. They're freezer cookies; you make the dough, put it in the freezer, and slice and bake a little later or when you're ready. If this is appealing, let me know and I'll try to post the recipe this weekend.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, pepparkakor is a given. It's our molasses ginger cookie. I'm interested in the date recipe. I may take a survey of who likes dates around our cookie-eating circles and try alternate fillings if it's a small number, but the basic idea seems sound. And we're always more for tasty than for elegant-looking.

We keep returning to giving Cal food, and if I don't give him something foodlike for his birthday, I almost certainly will for Christmas. And that's probably okay.

One thing I did learn is that not everybody is as good as you are about listening when I say "You have such-and-such nice thing coming to you, so arrange it with me when you want it." I gave him "tickets" for barbecue and for homemade taffy last Christmas, and while I know he likes those things, he hasn't said a word. I think he's being considerate of our schedule. We can't have that!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What kind of chocolate goes in them? That is, what form of chocolate?

[pameladean]

I'm TERRIBLE at figuring out who would like my books. This is why I have a publisher. If I were trying to figure out which of somebody else's books somebody would like, it would depend on the author -- is there a huge long series like the Vorkosigan books in it, for example -- but mostly I'd try for the one I thought, however erroneously, best engaged the known interests of the questioner.

In the case of this questioner, whee, I haven't a clue, really, though if absolutely pushed to the wall I could quaveringly proffer a particular volume.

As for the cookies, I also thought of Snickerdoodles, which are festive and slightly unusual. Also those little teacakes made with honey. Yum.

Pamela

[(Anonymous)]

As far as cookies go, I would recommend sanbakkels as they are my favorite and require no nuts. I have a recipe I like and tins if you need them. I'm sure you have also thought of rosettes, fattigman, and krumkake, but those come to mind. If you want just cookie recipes, I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe I love that also requires no nuts.

For Tim's dad, I have to concur on the gift certificates thing. I like to go for a gift certificate to a restaraunt you know they like and don't always get to or else some sort of service like a pedicure (which I realize may not be appropriate for him :)).

And as for book reading, I think I would recommend against sending out something you want to edit like crazy unless the person wants to be a first reader because it won't truly be representative of your work. Other than that, I think that for myself reading an author, I like to read sequentially and see how they have grown and what sort of new perspectives pop up along the way.

I'm glad you're enjoying the fall weather. I really enjoy it myself and am happy that it finally cooled down and feels like fall.

Talk to you soon.

Heathah

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

1) I have a yummy sugar cookie recipe from Aunt-Lucille-by-marriage that I will post. No nuts or extracts. You can see if you like the looks of it or not.

2) My father-in-law is hard to buy for. So we've started getting him gift cards to Lowe's, because he's never happier than when he's in a hardware store. The gift is not what he buys, or what he does with what he buys, but the trip to the hardware store to buy whatever he wants. Is there a similar store-interest for T's dad?

3) Tam Lin.

It is also lovely-foggy-rainy here, but iuliamentis thinks it smells like chocolate covered coconut. I'm very... confused.

er, Tam Lin

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Not that I understood the third question fully. If the answer is not Tam Lin, pick the book with the most elves.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Cocoa.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

Gifts - I tend to make charitable donations in my parents' names. Which is maybe nothing more than a failure of imagination.

Books - The one that's most done, or that needs to be read first, or that does not depend on reading other books first.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm interested.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's okay. I have already given him his marching orders, and you need not quaver.

Snickerdoodles are unusual??? I thought everybody learned to make Snickerdoodles in Scouts or home ec class or got bored making them in home ec class because they'd already made them in Scouts. I thought they were the cookie everybody can make, right up there with the peanut butter kind you fork and, of course, chocolate chip. Very strange.

I make teacakes, but not with honey, and mine have almost more pecan than anything else in them, so I think we're talking about something different entirely.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do have sandbakkel tins. And rosette irons, as per the picture (hmmm! my first year with rosette irons). And a krumkake dealiewhompus. I am the Scando baking implement queen, apparently.

I haven't had fattigmans in soooooo long. But I associate Scando baking with almond (in fact, I think the recipe I have for sandbakkels has almond extract), so there's that.

Re: er, Tam Lin

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Err, right. See, the question was more for my benefit than Pamela's, so the answer is not, in fact, Tam Lin. (Nor is it The True Tale of Carter Hall, because timprov and I haven't gotten there yet, and damned if I think we will in a strike year, sniffle sob....)

And I don't have any effs in my books yet. Maybe never will. Hmm. Well, there might be alfar in one of the sequels to Dwarf's Blood Mead, but only if they're sneaking around pretending to be Aesir. Because one of the indications of Odin's wisdom in...errrrg, I forget which saga...is that he can tell the alfar from the Aesir, so that must mean it's pretty hard to do. Because nobody says, "Oh, lo, praise the wisdom of Odin, for he can tell his ass from a hole in the ground." Well, actually, Hjordis says exactly that in The Mark of the Sea Serpent, but she doesn't get along very well with Odin since even before that unfortunate lapse in divine patronage.

Umm. Perhaps I oughtn't to be allowed to think about these things when tired. Or perhaps only allowed to think and not to type or talk.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can get my mom's Smucker's Jelly Cookies recipe.

[pameladean]

Good. I get enough quavering anyway.

I never learned to make Snickerdoodles in Girl Scouts, or any other kind of cookie either. In home ec I learned to make biscuits, omelettes, pie crust (and probably stuff to put into it, but I don't recall that one way or another), souffles (I suspect somebody had a lot of surplus eggs lying about that semester), scrambled eggs (yes, definitely, somebody did), pancakes, and spice cake.

When I was in college the mother of the Molly-analog sent Snickerdoodles. So I think of them as weird exotic holiday things from the East Coast.

The teacakes are very simple and rely largely on butter, honey, nutmeg, and some kind of baking alchemy that only works about half the time. If it doesn't work you have some very nice moist little dumply things. If it does work, you have those, with a crispy buttery rim as well.

Pamela

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

1 1/2 c. flour
3/4 c. unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 c. sugar
pinch black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 large egg

Sift together dry ingredients and set aside. Cream butter with mixer. Add vanilla and sugar. Beat thoroughly. Beat in egg. Slowly add dry ingredients. Beat only until mixed. Finish mixer with spatula if dough starts to climb mixer. Flour board and turn out dough onto it. Flour hands. Shape dough into cylinder 10" long and 2" diameter. Wrap in waxed paper and freeze one hour or more.Preheat over to 375 F. Use racks to divide oven into thirds. Unwrap dough. Cut in 1/4" slices. Bake 10-11 minutes, turning cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back in middle of baking. Cook on upper rack of over if only using one sheet. Cool before removing from cookie sheets.

Note: I don't know about other people, but I always find creaming butter with a mixer fairly difficult. I usually just s-q-u-e-l-c-h it togther with my hands, especially if I'm making something like chocolate chip cookies where you have to cream large amounts of butter and sugar together with no liquid ingredients. The heat of your hands makes it all together much easier.