Holiday Baking

The past few days have been very interesting...and by interesting, I mean stressful. I had two migraines within 3 days, and then on Sunday afternoon, we discovered the Bumpus hounds underneath our house. It took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on, because I could hear a wild dogfight going on somewhere nearby, but there weren't any dogs outside. I started yelling down the hall at Ray because I thought maybe he was watching another documentary on Alaska/The Iditarod at an obscene volume, but he swore up and down he wasn't. And then...I felt a bump from underneath the house and heard a clang as something hit our pipes. The pack of vicious mongrels wasn't on TV, outside my sewing room window, or in The Christmas Story where they belong. They were in the 2 ft space underneath our elevated house attacking something, and whatever that poor creature was, it wasn't going down without a fight God bless it. Ray ended up having to go outside and scream at the top of his lungs while beating the lattice work around the elevated opening with a broom for a full ten minutes, and eventually they ran out the front and he chased them off by screaming and flailing his arms wildly, lol. So that was intense. And then I was upset the rest of the day that some poor creature was dying a slow and painful death under our house. I tried to talk Ray into crawling under the house to check on it, but he was like "uhh...no...if it's still alive, it's not going to be happy to see me."

Life is never dull amongst the Telschow clan, that's for sure.

Also, I was cussed out (and flipped off for a prolonged period of time), by a 70 year old man at a stoplight today. Which, honestly, was more amusing than it was upsetting. I worked as a bank teller every summer in college, and I'm pretty well desensitized to being screamed at by members of the public. It was literally all I could do to keep a straight face the entire time, because I kept thinking, "what if his dentures fly out of his mouth while he's screaming at me?" And once that mental image was in my brain, there was no going back...it was so freaking hard not to laugh in his face, but I had to fight the urge because it probably would have resulted in him ramming my car like Tawanda.

So instead of coming home and sewing my backlogged Christmas presents, or working on the mountain of dirty clothes in our bedroom, I did an indecent amount of baking.

Sugar cookies for my coworkers (and a small plate for Ray *wink*)

and some warm Seven Grain & Seed Bread for us to munch on with salted butter. Yum.

My bread turned out looking more like a quick bread than a yeast bread this time, because my clumsy self bumped the loaf pans and degassed them right before they went in the oven. D'oh! It was still tasty though :)

The bread recipe is Nick Malgieri's Seven Grain & Seed Bread from The Modern Baker, and I don't remember where the sugar cookie one is from...I think maybe it was given to me at one of our wedding showers 6 years ago. I absolutely love the sugar cookies because they hold their shape, but are still chewy. And the flavor is very simple and buttery - almost like shortbread.

Sugar Cookies

• 3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla

In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking powder.

Beat butter and sugar in mixer until fluffy. Add eggs (one at a time) and vanilla extract. Beat until combined. Gradually add flour mixture until a smooth dough forms. Divide dough in half, wrap in Saran, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Flour your work surface and roll out one dough ball at a time. Cut into shapes and decorate with sprinkles if desired. Place on greased cookie sheet and refrigerate for 10 minutes (this keeps the cookies from losing their shape when baked).

Bake in 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned at edges. Let cool on rack.

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Puppies for Sale

 

I had a very interesting morning...(and I wonder why I've been getting more migraines than usual lately, lol!)

So. The hubs and I have been getting up at 5:30 a.m. the past few weeks to exercise before work. Ray let the dogs out in the backyard, and I was in the house getting dressed. And then: total chaos. Both dogs got loose, and took off running (in opposite directions) in the pitch black morning hours. Ray starts yelling for me to help, but I don't even have any pants on.

By the time I get dressed and run outside to round up the hogs, Ray's walking back with each dog by the collar....and Whiskers was FILTHY....and looking 100% pleased with himself. He had run down to the disgusting drainage ditch at the end of the street, and jumped into the stagnant water - full of God knows what. Scratch the morning workout. I told Ray to go on to the gym because I'd have to stay and sort things out, and then I gave Whiskers the silent "business face" and finger point (the one that silently says you can wipe that smile off your face mister and drop the tail wag while you're at it!!!). I put Rimshot in the kennel while I hosed Whiskers (who was still looking mighty pleased with himself) down in the utility sink.

I finish with Whiskers, rub him down with a towel, and unleash him to do the "mad wet dog" run. Once he finally calmed down and quit trying to dry off on our sofa, I let Rimshot out. And that's when all hell broke loose. She takes 5 steps out of the kennel, and throws up the worst thing I could imagine all over the floor. I won't go into detail, but she had eaten something in the backyard that morning that should never be eaten. So I clean up that mess (dry-heaving the entire time), and toss Rimshot back in the kennel, where she proceeds to throw up MORE of the Breakfast-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named in the kennel. Grab Rimshot, throw her in bathroom, scrub out unholy mess in the kennel, grab Rimshot again, toss her back in kennel, latch it and throw away the key.

So how was your morning? Hopefully better than mine.

Is it Thursday yet?

P.S. I listed a few more fun goodies in the Etsy shop and updated the crappy photos from "Migraine Bat Cave Day", so feel free to continue helping me unload some of my fabric hoard :). Coupon code still PLAIDSCOTTIE10.

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Let me make it up to you with a good story...

So…the bad news. Due to a combination of factors (a massive amount of family birthday presents to make, forgetfulness, water damage and tree limbs to clean up after a 3-day Tropical Storm, a Star Trek: Next Generation marathon *sheepish grin*)…I don’t have the next portion of the DWR Quilt Along ready for you today. I will, however, have it up sometime next week *scouts honor* and we will finish the Quilt Along on time Friday the 23rd *double scouts honor* (no take-backs)

The good news is that I have a funny story for you, in the hopes that you’ll be slightly less pissed at me, lol. The event in question actually happened 2, maybe 3 weeks ago. I can’t really remember, because the date doesn’t really have anything to do with the story, plus I have so many random things on my mind at any given time (I wonder if Ray will tolerate me putting Sir Whiskers in a monocle and plaid vest for our Christmas card this year? What kind of rating did Red Riding Hood get on IMDb?…because frankly, I liked it even though it’s a little bit “teen emo”. Do I really need to eat another pack of Fun Size M&M’s?…I don’t really see what’s so “fun” about a pack of only 15 M&M’s anyway…) that I can’t be bothered with details like dates. I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this story, but my husband isn’t around to censor me right now, so I’m running wild and free (which is rather a dangerous thing…because I kind of need to have a human filter most of the time, lol). Sorry – I’m rambling. It’s hard to be serious whenever I think about “the event”, haha!


So a couple weeks ago, I needed to run over to Hancock Fabrics during my lunch break to pick up a zipper for a bag I was making. I didn’t have anything else to do, and I hate sitting in the break room at work where people try to make polite small talk about the weather or the Saints (I hate small talk…especially polite small talk), so I decided to kill some time while I was in there and browse through the fabric. You know how those low shelves are that hold all the fabric bolts in Joann’s or Hancocks, right? They hold two sections of stacked bolts and come up about mid-torso, and you can kinda see the head & shoulders of people browsing in the rows around you. So I was in one row with a little old gray-haired lady in a motorized scooter, and there was a 30-something guy a few feet away in the row facing me. So I’m browsing around, texting, and generally not paying attention to anything, when the little old lady scoots around the corner into the row with the 30-year old guy. All of the sudden she starts YELLING at the top of her lungs “Oh my Gawd! Somebody call the police! Ahhh!!” and the dude takes off amid her cries of “grab that man!!!”, and scoots out the door. He then hops in his truck and zooms away before anyone gets remotely close enough to the door to write down his plate. I’m still standing in the back of the store, mid-text, thinking “WTH just happened???” Weh-hellll kids…turns out that man had his naughty bits out and was pleasuring himself into a Coke bottle while feeling up the quilting fabric…and, God bless her, that sweet old quilter caught an eye-level glimpse of it from her scooter as soon as she rounded the corner. I’m just thankful she wasn’t scarred for life, because as I was leaving and everyone was standing in the front phoning the police, I heard her laughing with one of the workers and saying “what kinda person gets their kicks from doing that in a quilting store?” I’m also really glad it wasn’t me that discovered him, because I would have had to take a ½ day at work and go home - there’s just no way you can focus on emails and insurance marketing after seeing something like that.


What did I do next? Well naturally, I decided it was best to leave the zipper behind, and proceeded to walk out and call everyone I knew, hoping it wouldn’t be one of those times when no one picked up their phone. I think my head might have exploded if I hadn’t been able to immediately share that hilariousness with someone. My hubby was the first person I called, and after about 5 minutes of me trying to spit out the story through fits of maniacal laughter, I finally gave him the whole story and he was rolling. Our convo went a little something like this:


Ray: “Well, think about where you were”


Me: “Wha???? What do you mean think about where I was? It’s a fabric store, not HBO. I was at Hancoc---….oh! OH!!! EWW! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!”


Ray: “Yeah….guess he was taking the name a little too literally”


So there you have it kids. No place is safe from random perverts any more, not even chain quilt stores.

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