Long time no see, per usual. My work hours have decreased a tad, so perhaps you will begin hearing from me more. Or not - we'll see. On my days off, I have been busy cleaning house. We live in an apartment the size of a walk-in closet, and yet after two straight weekends of unpacking, decorating, and rearranging, we are still not done. But the good news is we now have an entertainment center! It was our first furniture purchase together, and it was a very exciting one. :) It looks awesome, too! IKEA is my new favorite store; I'm obsessed. This is the one we ended up purchasing. We are using all the cubbies to hold wedding paraphernalia, books, barware, our Wii, and miscellaneous media items in little baskets. It looks so legit! I'm very proud.
After setting up the entertainment center (to which I contributed very little), we decided to celebrate by making cookies from scratch along with hot apple cider. We thought we had all the ingredients already for the cookie dough, but as it turns out, we only had half the amount of flour we needed. We went ahead and made the dough anyway, which Mr. G likes to eat uncooked, and I decided to try and bake them just to see how they would turn out. They turned out to be a big hot mess. I smelled something burning, which I thought was the cider, but it was actually the mass of gooey cookie dough oozing off the cookie sheet in the oven. The smoke alarm went off, of course, and we had to open the door just to get all the smoke out... Oops. When I pulled out the cookie sheet, it was entirely covered in cookie dough; it looked like one large cookie cake that had the consistency of cookie soup. It looked delicious, but tasted like grease and chocolate chips. Definitely a baking fail. I can't believe I messed up chocolate chip cookies! I have achieved the impossible. I think the oven and I should take some time apart, and next time, I think I'll just suck it up and buy some flour.
The cider, on the other hand, turned out great. It was delicious! I got the recipe from my Betty Crocker app again. Betty always knows best. Here are the ingredients:
- 6 cups apple cider
- 1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 3 cinnamon sticks
In other news, Mr. G and I went to Harry Potter 7.1 last night along with our couple friends and the entire tween population of CT. I was disappointed with how few people dressed up for the premiere (not that I did - I'm just amused by those who do), but the movie didn't disappoint in the least. It was amazing! I read all the books at least once, so yes I am an avid fan. But I found it to be a good film in its own right as well as a fair representation of the book (the first half at least). Very much looking forward to 7.2 next summer! If you have yet to see it, here is a really good review of the movie I found online. Perhaps my next cooking project should be butterbeer and chocolate frogs. ;)
As for this week, my parents are coming into town on Tuesday, and I can't wait for them to get here! I'm excited for them to see our apartment all set up (hence the cleaning frenzy), and I'm very excited for Thanksgiving. We're going to the Macy's Parade in New York! We will literally have to get up at 3 am, but it's so worth it. We'll definitely be cooking the day before, though. Here is what we decided for our Thanksgiving menu:
- Turkey (duh)
- Dressing (mom's recipe)
- Broccoli casserole (mom's recipe)
- Sweet potato casserole (mom's recipe)
- Mashed potatoes (Mr. G's recipe)
- Deviled eggs (mom's recipe)
- Biscuits (probably store-bought)
- Apple crisp (family friend's recipe)
- Pumpkin pie (no idea... open to suggestions!)
Happy cooking! And Happy Thanksgiving planning!
- Mrs. G
No comments:
Post a Comment