Merry Christmas, Be Glad I Didn't Try Something Tricky

I just escaped the kitchen.  I had such fun, playing with the butter and sugar, the red food coloring and the rolling pin.  This is a lot easier than I thought, I told myself as I rolled out near-perfect rectangles.   Then I put the red rectangle on top of the white one, rolled it up jelly-roll style and . . . and that's where it all went wrong.

This was also my week for making treats for visiting teachees.  They should be glad I did not attempt something so tricky as the above cookies.  No, prudence prevailed (and time was short) so instead, they got:

Honeycomb Goodies 

Also, my reading life suffers.   A novel set in early America sits ignored on my nightstand.  I seem to be too busy pointing and clicking on Amazon and a few other sites that I won't mention, lest the wrong people see and get their surprise spoiled.

Not that the author made it easy.  He promised a story set in America, but sixty pages in, the two main characters have not yet gotten on their boats in Paris or Liverpool or wherever and crossed the Atlantic.

We shall see if this author redeems himself. 

Merry Christmas to you, and when all the excitement ends, the long and boring month of January awaits us all.  But why be sad?  Stock up on books and ignore the wind, the ice, the dismal gray skies. 

The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With . . .

I need your pity and your patience.

Actually, no, I don't need the pity.  But the patience, yes.  I have embarked on the Russian novelists, namely Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.  It's going to be weeks before I can say, "I've finished this great book and I actually know what I'm talking about when I bandy the name Tolstoy about."  But, just as the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, a book of 800 pages begins with 1 page.

And what a page it was.  A household in disarray, a guilty conscience.  I thought the great Russian novels were supposed to be boring and difficult.  But, except for the character names, which are a mouthful, I'm enjoying the ride--all the ice-skating, the oyster-eating, the blushing and the insulting going on with the Oblonskys and the Shcherbatskys and the rest of the gang.  

Since I won't have anything to talk about in the near future besides Karenina, are you interested in books I have read in the past?  I've done a few posts like that recently and my vague impression is that reader interest plummets when I do it. 

So speak up.  Cast your vote.

Meanwhile, we all have to eat, so I'll keep the recipes coming.  

We needed a quick dessert today.

My dessert story starts on Thursday, when I went to the music store.  Very dangerous place for a woman like me.  I told myself I was only going to ask about one book.  Once that was done, my next lie-to-myself was I'm just going to look through these bins and see if anything interesting catches my eye.  Before I knew it, a spirit of greed gripped my soul and I was surrounded by a half-dozen books, wanting all of them.   I didn't lose all my self-control, but then, anybody can say that when they want the whole cake but only eat three fat pieces.

Anyway, I own some new music books.

And I couldn't play through them because I had to leave town the next day.    They kept playing through my head while I was gone.  Not that I wasn't having a good time.  But while walking through some tres chic neighborhoods and eating at a cute breakfast place with my husband and changing clothes in the temple, I couldn't quit thinking about the Bach and the "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" and the Christmas tunes and the . . . .   Ay-yi!   The noise in my head!

Back at home, I lusted for them all the more.  Every time I walked by, I would take a peek, maybe pet the pages lovingly.  But we needed groceries.  And the laundry?  Situation Critical there. 

Finally, around nine o'clock I was free.  I took one book to the church to play through it on the organ.  I stayed until nearly midnight.

It's nothing unusual for me to skid through church short on sleep.  Usually, I stay up too late Saturday nights making Sunday desserts.  But today, I was short on sleep and dessertless to boot.

So,  Crispy Pretzel Bars to the rescue!

See?  Quick dish.  Shouldn't steal too much time from your Sunday nap.

Long Time 'Til You Kiss a Girl

At Benjamin Nugent's 13th birthday party, he invited all the friends with whom he had bonded over sci-fi, Dungeons & Dragons, and computers. They sang the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme as the cake appeared, and told each other nerdy jokes.

What must his parents have thought? Perhaps they were simply glad that he had friends. But still . . .

"Do you tell him to ditch his friends because as long as he's one of them, he may not kiss a girl for a very long time? Or do you tell him to stick with them? Do you let him figure it out on his own even though you feel pretty certain he understands neither the nature of the dilemma nor what is at stake?"

Nugent, now a recovering nerd (if such a thing is possible), combs through literature and looks up a few of his old buddies to form a once-and-for-all definition of what a nerd is. In American Nerd: A Story of My People, he finds them in books as disparate as Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice. He hangs out at their weekend events, where they gather to discuss frames-per-second in their favorite sci-fi flick, or where they dress up in tights and chain mail and play out the heroic fantasies in their heads.

Even the Mormons show up when one of his skinny grade-school friend's mother finds the missionaries. Thank you, former-hippie mom, for making us all look like nutters.

After reading Nugent, you will definitely be able to spot a nerd. But then, you probably already can.

Frequent cow patties.

As for your recipe, maybe we should pay tribute to what nerds eat. But here at Bye-Bye Nesquik, it is beneath our standards to instruct you to order pizza, or to stuff yourself with Coke and Doritos. If you're going to eat the junky stuff, at least put some effort into it. The recipe below shouldn't overtax you:

Cocoa Munch Mix