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LostSurprise

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  • Website URL
    http://www.lostsurprise.blogspot.com
  • Biography
    Mother, Writer, Teacher, Gardener, Explorer, Nomad
  • Location
    where pines tower and cranberries float
  • Interests
    reading, writing, gardening, scientific experiments, history, Americana music, flights of fancy
  • Occupation
    making beautiful things

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  1. Not very hard. Just an extra step. The dough is a bit stiff and you form it into flat logs. When it's done baking you let it cool a bit and then cut the log into strips. The strips go back into the oven at a low temperature and get toasted a bit (you flip them after 5-7min). How hard they get depends on what you like. I like mine a bit more American, so toasted but not super hard.
  2. I usually make: Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls...kind of like buckeyes but they have walnut and dates in them Gingerbread and/or cut out sugar cookies If my brother didn't make Almond Roca, I'd make that, but I really don't need it around the house. Pretzels dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with crushed peppermint Cherry almond biscotti to go with coffee Sometimes I fiddle with a lemon refrigerator cookie, looking for a more lemony recipe or try to cut down the Kardamon Plaetzchen recipe because I'm the only one that eats it. Or I try something new. So many Christmas cookies are fiddly, and everyone seems to be happy with just 1 or 2 cookies.
  3. This is very similar to the old Chicago Tribune recipe. Differences: mine uses brown sugar, uses cloves but no vanilla or zest and has 2x the spices, uses half a cup of water and half a cup of karo syrup instead of the molasses. It is very sticky, but it is great for building things. We made a viking ship one year. If you roll it out thin, it's crisp. If you roll it out thick, it's more cakey. Personally, I like it thin with a white glaze/frosting. The recipe itself is not super sweet.
  4. It's common to stagger medication if you find seizures increase when the medication starts to wane. It is important to talk about this with the neurologist though because different medications have different dispersal rates. We've staggered our bedtime dose (if you have 2 capsules taking one at dinner and one at bedtime) before if he falls asleep or if he's having trouble in the early morning.
  5. These Is My Words by Nancy Turner; I described it to my husband as 'exciting Laura Ingalls' and sent his aunts a copy to pass around. Turner based it on the the life of her great-grandmother, so it's fictionalized but based on the real settling of the southwest. Classic coming-of-age with Anne of Green Gables vibe: The Secret Garden, The Penderwicks, Little Women, The House at Green Knowe, Lark Rise to Candleford, The Summer Book. A little more modern: The Queen's Gambit, Tam Lin, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Wee Free Men, Spinning Silver. Coming of age but with a little less magical peace and a little more drama or social commentary.
  6. We've enjoyed both seasons. Season 1 was more tense than Season 2 IMO (except the Christmas episode which put everything into perspective). So if you make it to Season 2 there is a lot of positive growth for each of the characters. I really loved that. Between this and Everything Everywhere All At Once, she's going all out lately.
  7. We had 4 boys and always struggled with agreeing. If pressed I would go with Elias David. I might be able to convince him. Girls: Nina Angeline, Auben Elise, Eve Patricia.
  8. I worked for a testing/diagnosing psychologist for the court system. It was his opinion that tests for ADD/ADHD are not very accurate, and it was time-consuming and expensive to hire him for a diagnosis. He generally suggested people begin with their doctor. Medications are trial and error. It has more to do with what helps you.
  9. Lately...Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. "I am the Beloved Child of the House." If I'm having trouble getting through a novel...Murderbot Diaries (novellas, action-based) and Neil Gamin's Ocean at the End of the Lane (his youth fantasy is pretty accessible).
  10. I can understand how it would be 'easy' for some folks. Here, people dump old food in the sink all day, the hole gets plugged, icky water backs up, and everything is disgusting. Every day. It doesn't help that I have an aversion to lots of foods in general and old/chewed food specifically. If there is nothing in the sink I just push it all down with a long handled brush, grind, brush with vinegar or bleach, and get on with my day. If there's a grid I actually have to touch it...and it is slimy. You can't clean the bottom without picking it up. This is not a criticism of you specifically, Jean. Creating a routine is often the answer to making our lives better, but I find "X is SO easy if you make it part of your routine!" overly simple. Beneficial routines come in all shapes and sizes. We all have different living situations, family members, aversions, problems, sensitivities, preferences, order of things we find important. If it's a matter of creating a routine where I'm constantly reminded of of my spouse's executive dysfunction and the equally good routine where I don't have to face it, I choose no grid. I choose no grid, Jean. I want that sink cleaned so quickly I don't even had to wonder who the heck is so thoughtless. It's just easier to save the frustration for something more important.
  11. This is timely for me. We've been in a tug-o-war over this issue since we got our 70/30 sink a few years ago. DH loves it. Loves the look of it. Likes to set cast iron pans on it. I refuse to pick the disgusting thing up and scrub it daily with a brush so the bottom of the sink is now disgusting. If he would scrub the sink daily or every other day, I wouldn't care if it was there or not. This is our 3rd or 4th go-round on this issue. In the past I eventually got fed up waiting for him to clean it, bleached everything to oblivion, and hid the rack under the sink for big cleaning episodes. It stays hidden until dh comes across it some day and forgets the emotional impact of the last time we went through this process. Seriously, we talked about this 2 weeks ago. He still put the rack back in and the sink is disgusting.
  12. I'm still knitting the stripey cardigan from the February thread. I'm probably 3/4 done and it's eating up a lot of worsted-chunky scraps. I'm to the point where I have to find substitutes for half of the original yarn, hopefully without buying any new yarn. It's a lot of triple and quadruple yarns for some colors. I've also been working on the Nasrin pullover by Isabell Kraemer, but it's in the long, boring section so I take it out when I need something portable. The Granger cardigan is NOT portable and the puppy likes to root through the basket and chew balls and then I'm rewinding everything every time I change colors. I really need to finish that seed stitch bathrobe before the weather warms up.
  13. Midwest: German Puffs...They have a lot of egg yolks, butter, and milk. Olie-Koecken (Dutch doughnuts)...This usually contains fruit and spices mixed into the dough. Paczki...Polish doughnuts. Most likely if your puffs are often eaten with jam on top. They pop up around Easter in the upper Midwest. Beignets are made from pate a choux, so you actively cook the flour when making the dough (like a roux) before frying.
  14. Finished The Spare Man and The Black Count. The Spare Man was space opera detective fiction which integrated disability. It was okay. I like the set up better then the playout. The Black Count is about Alexander Dumas' (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers) father who was the son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave. It was very interesting, and I learned a lot about the ups and downs of the French Revolution. I did wish for a bit more background on Napoleon entering the scene or the Haitian Revolution afterward, but it was very detailed so I understand why the author didn't include it. New stuff: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I've heard a lot about her and I'm completing a winter book bingo from my library and need a choice for Africa. An immigrant to the US from Nigeria decides to return home for various reasons. I'm really enjoying it so far. The hair braiding scene is so sharp. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby VanPelt. Dh is listening to this on audio. The octopus sections are cute although of mixed reality. Nicely detailed widow character. There is one guy who bugs me. You just want to pinch your nose and sigh when it's his chapter...but people do dumb stuff. My son keeps asking if I'm finishing the Hyperion cantos, so I'm working on an audio version of Endymion. And various non-fiction when the mood hits; Grow a Little Fruit Tree, A Bark Covered House, The 14th Century a Distant Mirror.
  15. I finished all of my not-long-term books from my last post as well as: Ballad for Sophie, a French graphic novel about the intertwined lives of two musicians during and after WWII. An Immense World by Ed Young, which is a total biology geek out about the intricate world of animal perception. Some Lois McMaster Bujold Penric and Desdemona series. (They're all novellas, so they're pretty quick on audio.) Now I'm working on: The Spare Man, sort of a Thin Man murder mystery in space, mentioned by someone last month. The Black Count, non-fiction about Alexander Dumas' father who was half-Haitian, half-French and was a general under Napoleon. Lots of historical view of slavery in the French Caribbean colonies and running into the French Revolution. And So Long, See You Tomorrow which is litfic and part of my shelf clearing effort.
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