Friday, May 22, 2009

There's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.

Current book: O Pioneers!
Pages read: None!

Today I took a walk, gave blood, went to three grocery stores and a butcher, gave my friend a ride to the airport, and made triple chocolate cookies (With melted chocolate, cocoa, and chocolate chips, in case you were wondering what the three kinds of chocolate are. Also, a little bit of coffee.) The recipe included the words "fudgy consistency" and "reduce an adult to tears of joy." (Ah, Baking Illustrated, how I love your diction.) I haven't tried them yet, but the entire apartment is so thick with the smell of warm chocolate that it's almost enough just to smell it. Almost. Also, I used parchment paper on my baking sheets for the first time, and I'm an enthusiastic convert. The cookies just slide right off! No spatula or anything! No half-squished cookie edges or little rings of crustiness to scrape off your baking sheets! Convert! I say unto you that I bring the good news: parchment paper will deliver you to eternal bliss! Kind of.

I'm fully aware that I sound more like a cooking blog than a literature blog right now, but I figured you'd rather have a run down of what I did instead of reading than nothing at all. Maybe I'll convert it into a cooking and literature blog - I'm going to make pot roast on Sunday, after all. The 5.65 pounds of beef brisket in the fridge is solid, meaty proof. But I digress. (Well, or do I, since this whole thing is a digression? That's right, folks; come for the literature, stay for the deep metaphysical reflection.) Ahem. The point of all this, of course, is that there was no time for the pioneers, though I'm quite looking forward to them. Probably tomorrow?

3 comments:

  1. Oh, Piney-Ears, which is what I always call that book to myself, is pretty short. If you have a chilly Sunday suitable to curling up with a good book, you can finish it in a day easily. As you know, I am a staunch Willa fan, so I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As a loyal Deus ex Libris fan, I can say that I would support the addition of cooking stuff as well as the book stuff. I mean, you are going to run out of books eventually, right?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I baked chocolate chip cookies today and for the first time ever, used parchment paper...and the result was terrific. Thanks for the tip. A question, can you use the sheet of parchment paper more than once. I didn't this time, but they weren't even dirty so it would seem that it would be okay. Also, I did not miss having to wash the cookie sheets when I was finished. I also put in double the amount of vanilla as we discussed one other time, and that seems to have contributed to the goodness of this batch.

    ReplyDelete

Labels

A Clockwork Orange (5) A Good Man Is Hard to Find (4) A Passage to India (6) A Room with a View (3) A Separate Peace (2) Absalom Absalom (6) Achebe (5) Adams (3) All the King's Men (8) An American Tragedy (17) Atlas Shrugged (16) Babbitt (8) back from hiatus (1) baking (11) Baldwin (4) Baum (3) Bonfire of the Vanities (6) borderline (12) Brideshead Revisited (9) Burgess (5) Burroughs (1) canon (1) Capote (6) Cat's Cradle (3) Cather (19) cheesecake (4) Chopin (4) Conrad (5) cooking (25) Death Comes for the Archbishop (6) DeLillo (6) Dreiser (17) du Maurier (2) Edith Wharton (1) emergency (2) Ethan Frome (1) excuses (141) Faulkner (9) Felicia DeSmith (3) Finnegan's Wake (1) Fitzgerald (24) For Whom the Bell Tolls (3) Forster (19) Fowles (7) Franny and Zooey (2) Go Tell It on the Mountain (4) Grahame (2) Guest post (3) Hammett (2) Hemingway (5) hiatus (4) holiday (5) horrible (4) Howards End (6) In Cold Blood (6) In Our Time (1) Irving (6) James (25) Jazz (1) Joyce (1) Keneally (7) Kerouac (5) Kim (7) Kipling (7) Knowles (2) Lady Chatterly's Lover (6) Lawrence (26) Lewis (13) Light in August (3) London (3) Look Homeward Angel (9) Lord Jim (5) Mailer (7) Main Street (5) Midnight's Children (9) Miller (6) Morrison (1) Mrs. Dalloway (3) My Antonia (6) not a novel (4) O Pioneers (7) O'Connor (4) On the Road (5) Orlando (4) other books (7) page updates (1) Rabbit Run (4) Rand (24) Rebecca (2) recap (1) Rhys (6) Rushdie (18) Salinger (2) Schindler's List (7) Sinclair (6) Sons And Lovers (12) Sophie's Choice (10) Star Trek (1) Stein (5) Styron (10) Tender is the Night (10) The Age of Innocence (4) The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (5) The Awakening (4) The Beautiful and the Damned (8) The Bostonians (9) The Call of the Wild (3) The Fellowship of the Ring (5) The Fountainhead (8) The French Lieutenant's Woman (7) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2) The Jungle (6) The Lord of the Rings (16) The Maltese Falcon (2) The Naked and the Dead (7) The Naked Lunch (1) The Old Man and the Sea (1) The Portrait of a Lady (10) The Return of the King (6) The Satanic Verses (9) The Two Towers (5) The War of the Worlds (4) The Wind in the Willows (2) The Wings of the Dove (6) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (3) The World According to Garp (6) Things Fall Apart (6) This Side of Paradise (6) Thomas Wolfe (9) To the Lighthouse (3) Tolkien (16) Tom Wolfe (6) Triv (2) Tropic of Cancer (6) unworthy (33) Updike (4) vacation (2) Vonnegut (3) Warren (8) Waugh (9) Wells (4) Wharton (4) Where Angels Fear to Tread (4) White Noise (6) Wide Sargasso Sea (6) Women In Love (8) Woolf (10) worthy (25)