Why it pays off being married to a true scientist

this is all that is left this morning......after I ate 5 or so for breakfast, that is

Whereas I would have said something like, "just trust that Fanny Farmer to make a good peanut butter cookie," over the last month someone else in the house got a bee in his bonnet when it came to making a better cookie. And after much research, experimentation, and note taking, (with my willing sampling and evaluation), I believe that it's safe to say that he's finally reached perfection.

Okay, he is reticent to declare perfection after "only four measley attempts," he's demanding to take over this post in order to add a few clarifications before he's willing to make public his new recipe. Take it away Cookie Maker:

Actually it is only three measley attempts to recreate some peanut butter cookies I made last year for Mother's Day. Basically last Mother's Day I made a recipe which was an amalgam of multiple peanut butter cookie recipes. The cookies turned out with a very rich shortbread texture. Since I hadn't really documented the combination I ran three experiments in an attempt to find a peanut butter cookie J would love as much as the first batch.

Experiment 1. Joy of Cooking p. 831. This produced a stand up melt-in your mouth chewy PB cookie.

Experiment 2. Cooks Illustrated's "The New Best Recipe" minus peanuts in the food processor. Basically I was being lazy since I was cooking with 3 little helpers so I skipped the food processor step. This produced a batch which wasn't as "melt in your mouthy" to quote Jennette, but this probably needs to be repeated with the exact recipe for a fair judgement.

Experiment 3. Joy of Cooking p. 831 minus vegetable oil & increased PB to 1 1/3 C. This produced the shortbread texture that Jennette remembered so fondly from Mother's Day 2007. So, here's the recipe I used.

Preheat oven to 350°F (I used convection because I love having all the cookies going simultaneously, I can't bear to cook cookies without it.)

Whisk together thoroughly

2.5 C flour

1.25 t baking powder

0.5 t baking soda

0.25 t salt

Beat on medium speed until well blended and fluffy

1.33 C Peanut butter

12 T (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1/3 C powdered sugar

1C packed light brown sugar

Add and beat until well combined:

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2.5 t vanilla

Stir in the flour mixture. Let the dough stand for 5' to firm. Roll into balls, drop on cookie sheet and use a fork to make the standard PB cookie pattern. Bake 9-12' until brown at the edges (rotate sheet halfway through if you don't have convection). Let the cookies firm before transferring to wire rack to cool. Due to their shortbread texture you need to treat them gently or they will fall apart on you.

Personally I still have at least 2 or 3 more experiments before I can feel comfortable with declaring victory. I would like to repeat Experiment 3, but with 1 1/4 to 1 1/3 C of crunchy peanut butter because I think it will taste better. Then maybe a Cooks Illustrated with the food processor ground peanut dust, and maybe even the more traditional shortening based Fanny Farmer/RS cookbook that most of us grew up with.

So that's where we are so far. We'll keep you posted on any further developments.

Of Socks and Solidarity

When I pulled these socks out of the drawer today I remembered that it is almost 3 years to the weekend since two of my dearest girlfriends from Berkeley (and dearest friends in general) and I had a reunion in New York City. My mother-in-law, ever the gracious and generous hostess, bought us each a pair of these socks to celebrate our weekend together being free from kids and houses, and she named them the Sister Solidarity Socks. We wore them with pride.

Today as I put them on I thought about how now one of these friends is going through an experience so hard and painful that I would wish it on no one. For weeks--no months--now she's faced a road of emotional challenges that has been nothing but uphill and that would level even the strongest of spirits. And as my heart has been daily breaking for her, I am still amazed at her fortitude and endurance. But now she's facing immediate decisions and actions that require her to be stronger and more vigilant and more faithful than she's probably ever been asked to have been before--and to do this by herself. At least she feels like she's by herself. But I want her to know that I wear these socks today, once again, in solidarity because she is not and will never be alone. And I know that it is not just me but that there are many others out there whose thoughts and prayers (both silent and aloud) are also for her.

My meager message for her: Trust. Hope.

And know that you are loved.

I Mop

Remember when I had my old kitchen floor and it was so ugly and I told myself that it didn't make any difference if I mopped it or not because it always looked disgusting no matter what. And then remember how I promised myself that when I got the new and beautiful wood floor that mopping would surely be a priority. Well, not so much. I could use the excuse that since I was taught in the mopping school of on-hands-and-knees-with-razor blade-and-toothbrush, and that using a quick and easy stick mop is worthless, that naturally it would take anyone a long time to get around to it. But, who am I fooling.

Nonetheless, I'm patting myself on the back today because it's clean !

Maybe it's not a red-letter day at your house, but it is at ours. Check back with me in 4 months and I'll let you know if it happened again.

p.s. Also, I mowed the lawn today too. How's that for more back-patting!

Wrap Up: Summer Garden

I've been harvesting the last of the summer veggies we planted in the two small square-foot garden plots we built this year. Overall, it was a semi-success (the corn totally flopped) but better than nothing, for sure. And I've learned a little about what to do better for next year. But this has all reminded me that I've been meaning to do a post on our garden (per my mother's request) since basically June. So, Mom, here it is. See how good I am at getting things crossed off my list!

The bottom line is, we own a house with a yard the size and work equivalent of having two more children....children who don't love you. So, after two years of hacking and cutting and weeding and raking (and raking and raking and raking) accompanied by my incessant complaining to anyone within earshot, (and a husband, who although is a good worker, doesn't get any utils out of yard work), I finally decided that it was time for the yard to start working for me. So, in the summer before this last one, Adam built me this massive composting system in order to make use of the three trillion leaves that come down every fall.

Voila, Compost!!

It's a built from old shipping pallets bought for $1.25 each from a local grocery store (but about $50 in hardware to put all the pieces together and the latch system to have the fronts able to open up for easy rotating. It's a triple-wide so that I can rotate more frequently in order to produce more compost and to get through the massive amounts of leaves and other brown and green waste that the yard generates. The 2x4 along the top allows us to rig up (tent-like) that large green tarp you see in the picture in order to keep the piles dry from our very prolific amounts of East Coast rain.
Here's harvesting some of the first of the spring compost for the new planting beds. Ain't it gorgeous!
I had enough compost in my first batch for two of these 4x4 sq' garden plots, and.....
....enough to dig this 12x2x2' trench for my new blueberry plants, and.....enough to mulch around several small shrubs around the yard, and to top off the barrel planter with my rosemary and some strawberries.

Here are the sq' boxes as the veggies were growing--complete with trellis system for the tomatoes, and a 2' fence to keep out the many, many critters that were very happy with my plantings).

One box had the tomatoes, peppers, carrots, eggplants and herbs (the two pictured above).
The other box had the corn, green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. Turns out that the corn was a complete flop, and some nasty bug completely devoured my entire cucumber vine after only giving me 2 cucs. Darn!

But we've been harvesting the tomatoes, basil, parsley and some lettuce into this month.

Happy Birthday Olivia!

Look who's 5!

I can't believe it, frankly. Really, where did the time go? When she was 2yrs old and you asked her what her name was, she would repeatedly answer, "Big Girl." Over and over we would repeat, "No, O-liiiivvviiiiaaaa." And she would unfailingly reply, "Big Girl." But somehow over the last year she's actually turned into this "big girl" who is both amazingly creative and imaginative, as well as deliberate and analytical. And do I need to mention that she has personality to spare?

We didn't do a full-out birthday celebration with cake, etc. as we're planning a party with friends for later in the month, and since we're going to see Grandma Sha-sha this weekend to celebrate her birthday as well. But I think that she still had a pretty fun day.

She opened up all of her family birthday presents over breakfast, where Max was certain that he had given her every single one of them. I'll let him take the credit for all but the "i'm 5" necklace that my Aunt Debby bought for me the year that I turned five.

Otherwise, the day's highlights were: going for lunch with Dad at his office, along with candy from the vending machine; preschool; playing in the afternoon with her best friend Avery; favorite of "macaroni and tomato juice" for dinner (seriously, it tastes better than it sounds); ice cream and the re-telling of the day that she was born for dessert.

And now, if you'll indulge me in reminiscing about some of my favorite Olivia moments of the last year:

Each night as part of our bedtime routine, we parents take turns telling made-up stories as we lay in bed with them for the last few minutes of the day. One night Adam was telling a story about a little satellite (his attempt at some science fiction infusion) who was saved by a beautiful little girl. In return, the satellite offered the little girl three wishes. So, Olivia promptly replied that the wishes would be: "a magic wand, a princess bed, and a flower."

Recently we were talking about where the various members of the family (aunts, uncles, etc.) have gone on their missions and I told Olivia that Aunt Jayne had gone to Louisiana. Olivia told me that she would want to go there because it was the most beautiful name for a state.
Olivia was my helper this month when bottling several quarts of tomato juice (more on that another time!). During the juicing process she suddenly announced that she would like to be on TV. "Oh," I replied, "do you want to be an actor?" "No. I would be with Elmo and he could say 'Here is my friend, Olivia, and she is making tomato juice with her mom and her baby sister.' And then they would show us making the tomato juice."


This summer Olivia accomplished a big step in what I would like to call my own goal of "freedom from fear." Let's just say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree when it comes to Olivia being more than a little timid at attempting something that seems physically challenging and risky (i.e. guess who just this summer finally learned how to dive!). We had several weeks of swimming lessons this summer, where she declared to the teacher, "I'll get in the water, but I won't get my hair wet." For several weeks she was good to her word and any attempt at cajoling her otherwise was met with some serious and terrified screaming. But somehow, she found the courage to get over that hurdle, and once she figured out that putting your head under the water didn't mean instant death, she was ready to learn more. And guess who can swim!! Now, jumping into the water from the edge...that's for next summer. But all in good time. Well done Olivia!

Happy Birthday, my Big Girl. We love you!

Back to School

Another school year begun! Actually, Max started school the week before Labor Day, but as you've probably realized, blogging is not exactly at the top of my to-do list, so I've got a lot of catch-up posts in the imaginary queue. But, since today was Olivia's first day of preschool (or "Pre-K" as she calls it), this is as good a day as any to post the back to school pics.

I always completely dread the end of summer, and this year it caught me a little off guard as August had a few, shall we say, emotional collisions, and so I wasn't entirely prepared. In fact, on the first day of school I dressed Max in the same "back to school" outfit that he wore last year The horror! But calm down.....luckily I realized this before I took any photos, and I changed him into a another red striped polo shirt.

Here's Max and the other neighborhood kids waiting at the bus stop.

And here's Olivia as we were leaving for the her first class today. She is in an afternoon class, but she was asking me since 9am if it was time to leave yet. She came home happy and thrilled that she gets to go back tomorrow.

Here's hoping for a happy September!

Max's triathalon

Even though I started this post on the actual day it happened, it's taken me this long to finish getting everything uploaded. Hey, things have been busy!

Anyway, here are the pics from the first little youth triathalon that Max was in this month.

It took place at Lums Pond, a nearby state park. He had to swim 100 yds in the pond, bike for 2.5 miles, and the run .4 miles. Adam's mom came down to our house for the weekend to see it with us (and to give us a night off for our anniversary too--thanks!). The whole thing was pretty great.

And they're off!

Next is the transition area to get on the bike. Here's the point where Adam assessed that Max must have inherited my competitive drive.

First, find the bike.


Next, make sure you take time to adequately dry off.
Then, find shoes and shirt.


Then have a seat to put on shoes. Shirt and helmet...check. Oh, are all the other kids cleared out of the transition area by now? What's their hurry? Ok, on the bike.
Coming in from the bike ride.
Starting the run. Almost to the finish line, and still with a smile.
He made it!!
He did so great and had a lot of fun. Immediately following the race was a fun-run on the .4 mile course. Olivia decided that she'd like to do it, so Adam ran with her (and Max ran it again).Great job to both!