New Year’s Cookies

I wound up making dropped sugar cookies tonight for Chinese New Year. I wanted to do something for the three Asian kids that live on my dorm (four actually, but one went home for CNYE). It turned out to be surprisingly difficult. I made the mistake of asking permission to set off fireworks, and got turned down. I tried to order Chinese food, but then couldn’t figure out a window of opportunity in which to pick it up. I settled for cookies, but then once again hit the two-hour window problem of dropped sugar cookies, which need refrigeration for two hours after the dough is mixed.

Even so, I was able to turn out the cookies before midnight local time. I have a crescent moon shape, for making cookies for pagan-ish holidays and Christmas, so it was easy to re-adapt that shape to a Lunar New Year cookie. I added ginger and lemon (not really Chinese taste, especially not with all the butter), but the three kids appreciated the late-night arrival of a plate of cookies, shortly before midnight local time.

I have to do this better next year.

Good Chocolate

Good Chocolate
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

This chocolate — this label, and this particular variety — was quite delicious the other day. I recommend it highly.

You could really taste the honey and vanilla as you let it melt in your mouth. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very much of it. There were a lot of people, and most everyone had some; I think it got broken up into over 40 pieces, which isn’t a lot per person, when you come down to it.

Layering of Information

Layering of Information
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here’s an example of some recent work from my ninth grade history class, if anyone’s interested in seeing what I do, and maybe participating in some of the exercises along with them. Here, the assignment was to write a paragraph on how comedy and tragedy were different in the Greek theatrical tradition.

Chinese poetry

Chinese poetry
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

I spent a very frustrated class period with my seventh grade the other day, trying to get them interested in Chinese poetry. Many Chinese poems of the Song and Tang Dynasties consist of very long titles and very short poems, so I wanted them to write a few. It was very difficult to get them to sit still and try.

Finally, I just created this poem on the fly, and formed the branch with a bird (I need to re-read the Mustard Seed Garden Manual‘s section on birds) as a way of dealing with my own difficulties with this class. It wasn’t a bad exercise, but I wish I had a few poems of theirs to share, rather than my own.

The poem reads…

My class becomes distracted by a titmouse hanging on an icy branch at the window; angry, I wrote this poem

Bright faces
watch peak-headed
bird happily — my
fury can only point
at the clock in rage.

It’s not bad, I guess. But it’s not particularly good, either.

Sugar Roll Cookies

Sugar Roll Cookies
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here are the cookies from the other night. Don’t they look delicious?

Here’s the recipe:

Sugar Roll Cookies
Made experimental sugar roll cookies tonight for the dormitory. I forgot to add vanilla, but they were fine without it. A brief description of the recipe:

1. cream 2 sticks of butter.
2. add 1 cup white sugar.
3. mix in one egg and one teaspoon vanilla extract.

4. In separate bowl, mix 3 cups bread flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 teaspoons grated ginger.
5. Add mixture to creamed butter, sugar & egg; add 1-2 tablespoons of milk. Knead together.
6. Wrap mixture in plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for 2 hours.

7. Preheat oven to 400° F.
8. Unwrap mixture, and roll out with rolling pin.
9. Use cookie cutters to cut cookies out.
10. Transfer to greased cookie sheets with spatula.
11. Bake 7-10 minutes, until core sets and edges brown.

The glaze — lemon-almond — did not set properly and did not form luscious coats of delicious flavor over each cookie. I do not include the recipe for it since I can’t figure out what went wrong; not measuring ingredients, and using powdered milk instead of real, may have had something to do with it. There were, surprisingly enough, still cookies left at the end of the night, though.

300! London Taxis!

The BBC took the GPS data from more than 300 taxis, and animated them with bright gold dots, and then laid the GPS data over a satellite map of London. The result is extraordinary, and beautiful.

Clearing the desk 0

Clearing the desk 0
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

This is the first of seven or eight photos chronicling the clearing and cleaning of my office space. I did a pretty good job of sorting and cataloguing. There was also not as much trash here as elsewhere. I also held off on sorting through all the papers, though I did at least separate financial from academic materials. Still, I filled a trashbag with junk.

The photo here links to a Flickr photo series showing the gradual cleanup of the desk, if you’re interested in seeing the progression, along with all the interesting things I found along the way. Plus lots of library passes. Lots and lots of library passes.

My mom says that any motion toward cleanliness and orderliness is a movement toward calmness and sanity. You can judge for yourself whether or not I’m any saner today, as a result of having a clean desk, than I was yesterday.

The other nice effect of posting this stuff is that many of you, my readers, commented here or on Flickr about how cool it was that I’d decided to blog about this, or explain the process a little, or show my cleanup progress, and that made me want to do it again. So help me out… go view the photos, comment here or elsewhere, and tell me how good it looks, so I can get the rest of my apartment clean.

Clearing the Dining Room Table I

Clearing the Dining Room Table I
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

This is the first photo in a series of five about cleaning the mess from the dining room table in my apartment. It had gotten really bad, and the worst parts of it had been this way since September or even August. It was time. My goal was to leave a completely clear surface, and either to throw things away or move them to a place where they could be properly dealt with. Each photo has roll-over notes (thank you Flickr) that explains what the item is, and in some cases where it got moved to in the apartment.

I think it’s an interesting series, because it shows just how busy and chaotic my life had become. The photos also show how I went about excavating the layers to uncover a table where it might be nice to sit, eat, drink, and work from time to time.

Is there such a space in your house that needs cleaning and clearing? Have at it: set aside some time in your week, and figure out how to clear space and throw stuff away. For the record, I filled three (small plastic grocery bags, not kitchen) trash bags with garbage from this table, and got rid of the junk forever.

There are at least three more such spaces in my house right now — my office desk is absolutely appalling, for example. The kitchen needs a lot of work too. Just having done this much, though, feels like a huge weight off my chest, and I’m really happy to have gotten it done.

Google Calendar of Pagan Days…

I’ve been meaning to do this, and a few friends bullied/inspired me into doing it, finally. It’s the list of the various pagan/spiritual days that I tend to notice and celebrate in some fashion when they pass by. Currently, I’ve not added in the poetry associated with each day, but it is a basic guide to the 113 festival days. Hey, any excuse for a party.

Because it’s on Google Calendar, you do have the ability to add this to your calendar there. Because it’s on Google Calendar, you can download it and install it on programs like iCal and the freeware programs like Sunbird/Thunderbird. You can even download it and put it on Microsoft’s program, whatever it’s called. Enjoy.

XML:
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/dcg3rk9388q6j9v74ldf8pe34s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic

iCal: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/dcg3rk9388q6j9v74ldf8pe34s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

plain HTML: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=dcg3rk9388q6j9v74ldf8pe34s%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York