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Holy Hell Week
Wow, what an insane week.
Made insane mostly by my own insistence on baking a zillion cookies.
Last week was all the non-cookie items, such as apple butter, toffee, caramel, and hibiscus tea.
This week I made several of the cookie doughs in advance, and every day when I got home from work I'd eat a quick dinner and then bake cookies all night until about 9-10pm. Needless to say I was exhausted, but everything turned out really nice. I hope people will like them.
First I made gingersnaps.
Pros: Easy, roll it into a ball and flatten it and bake for 15 minutes.
Cons: The recipe makes almost 100 cookies, which meant a lot of time.
How'd they turn out: Tasty. I would have liked them crispier, and also spicier, but they're still very good.
Next came chocolate shortbread dipped in white chocolate and peppermint extract. These ended up being my favorite, the texture is so light and cake-like and freaking delicious. I'm so glad I decided to add the chocolate mint coating on one side, it really balances the cookies out as they're not very sweet.
Pros: Easy to make.
Cons: The recipe only makes 12 cookies so I had to quadruple it and even then it was barely enough.
How'd they turn out: Really good! I want to make these again. Stronger peppermint flavor next time.
Near the end of the week I tackled the Santa face cookies. These are ones that my mom used to make with us when we were little, so it's a lot of nostalgia and fond memories every time I make them. Using wheat flour for these was a mistake, they came out dry and dense and reminded me of a bran muffin haha. Oh well, they're still edible. Notes for next time.
Pros: Tasty twist on a basic sugar cookie (lemon zest)
Cons: Takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to decorate
How'd they turn out: Weirdly bran muffin-esque but still tasty.
Last came the cream cheese Christmas wreaths. These are another fond memory for my siblings and I. Mom made these sometimes with a pastry bag, and sometimes with a spritz cookie gun. These were also a cookie that she would sell to a local upscale restaurant at Christmastime, so I have fond memories of doing prep for her, chopping the green candied cherries. And of course these are very delicate cookies, so we loved getting to eat the broken ones ;)
Pros: Very simple dough, addictively tasty cookies!
Cons: Can be very difficult working with cookie dough in a pastry bag
How'd they turn out: Really good, just like I remember them. Someday I need to have the patience to add more decoration becaues the candied cherries and teaberries do add a nice flavor to the rich cream cheese.
As the cookies cooled I packaged them as best I could for shipping, mostly putting them back-to-back and wrapping them tightly in plastic wrap before setting them in cookie tins among decorative shredded paper. I tied each jar of granola with a bow, and put a tag on each can of apple butter, and wrapped them in newspaper. The caramels and toffee went in their own wax paper bags and then into a plastic sandwich bag with a silica packet to help preserve them. All topped off with an ingredients list I printed off. Oh, the tea got its own plastic baggie too.
Packing everything up for shipping was a pain in the ass. FedEx was out of boxes nearly everywhere I went, but eventually I used my little walnut and realized that my best bet would be the FedEx on a college campus. Who DOESN'T send out gifts at Christmas? College kids, that's who. And behold, I went there and the store was empty of people and full of boxes. Score.
But once I had everything ready to go, I realized I hadn't bought nearly enough packing material. This realization came at 9:30pm on Sunday night. I felt pretty exasperated. But you know what? Jameson jumped right up off the couch, and 20 minutes later came home with about five newspapers! My boyfriend saved Christmas!!
I packed each box carefully and slapped a shipping label on each one. The next morning I got up a little earlier than usual to take all eight boxes to a Walgreens for FedEx pick up. It was shockingly easy to drop them off and send the tracking info to each recipient on my list. Walking out of the Walgreens, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. I did it! I made cookies to share with the people I love <3 Not everyone unfortunately, I'm only one person, not a cookie factory. But I did my best, and it was more than I usually do for the holidays.
To be honest, I'm really pleased to have learned so many new techniques. I've never made shortbread before, or caramels good enough to share, or toffee, or my own tea, or apple butter. I learned to bake and temper and caramelize and can food. It was a lot of work, and at times it was frustrating and exhausting, but I'm glad I did it. It was fun, and I learned a lot.
There were a few other stressy things to worry about this week.
One was an interview at work. It's not for a promotion or anything, but kind of a sideways move to allow me to spend time in a different department. The Training department is short-staffed and could use some help, so they wanted a "hybrid", a supervisor (my current job) who could dip into the training department when asked and take over training new captionists so that members of the actual training team can have a day off or leave early or whatnot.
I like to learn new things and I've had fun being a short-term trainer for our new captioning software, so figured why not apply. The interview went well. I found out the very next day that I'd gotten the position! The Training supervisor said she really appreciated some of my answers, which made me feel good. I was given a big ol' binder full of information, which I'll review in coming days.
Now on to Stressor Number Three. Steno class.
Last week I had a little tiff with my steno teacher. She got angry when she found out I hadn't completed work in a particular section of the software we're using. Like, literally angry. In all fairness, she probably did tell me to work on that section, and either I misheard her or misunderstood or forgot. It happens sometimes, especially if I'm tired and don't write down a reminder right away.
Anyway, still, there was no reason to yell or get angry. I spoke with another teacher in the same program who confirmed that I had not missed any work, I have nothing due, and I am not behind. So I spent this week making cookies instead of practicing steno. BUT, I still had steno class on Monday.
I was worried it would be awkward or she'd be angry again. In fact I was so worried about it that I looked into possible transfer schools. Not to be petty, but I am not going to pay thousands of dollars to get talked down to any time I make a mistake (especially one that does not affect my GPA or the school's funding). There's just no reason for it. In general, if I'm given clear instruction, I will do the task or I will communicate if I'm unable to complete the task for any reason. I'm nearly 40 years old for Christsakes, I did my time with belittling angry teachers in high school.
Class was ok. My teacher seemed a lot more calm. Great. I got through the class and was very relieved. I don't have to transfer yet (I will keep my list of schools. Not playing.) Now that the cookies are done I can get back to practicing steno. Imagine that! And no one died! Sheesh.
So by the time Tuesday rolled around I felt exhausted but relieved that all of that was behind me. Time for a new week. The week before Christmas.
I woke up late on Wednesday. I was very tired.
Had a nice breakfast and checked on my little plants. The meyer lemons are basically ready. I'll keep them on the tree because I've read they'll keep there, but probably in the new year we're going to have lemon meringue pie! Here is a collage I made of how the lemons have grown over the course of the year, starting in mid-February and going up through today :)
For some reason my strawberries have started producing again, which is unexpected to me but maybe normal in Florida, idk.
I have a beautiful head of romaine lettuce right now, it's gonna get eaten soon :P
The carrot's top has gotten huge, it's longer than my arm! But the root below doesn't seem that big. I'll let it go through January but at some point it's gotta get pulled.
The jalapeno and cherry tomato are still producing, so I get a few veg every three days or so. It's kinda nice :) I'm probably going to pickle the jalapenos.
After my garden check I did some cleaning. There's probably flour and little sugar crystals in every crevice in our kitchen right now thanks to all the baking. I vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, dusted, and wiped down all the kitches surfaces. And mopped the tile floors. It felt good to get caught up on that. I did laundry, washed our sheets and made the bed, and dropped some cookies off at the neighbors' houses. The rest of my day was pretty chill...I didn't feel like cooking and just kind of wanted to take a break after the madness of last week and the stress of interviewing and fighting my teacher this week. I did a little extra Christmas shopping while Jameson did a virtual work meeting. Near the end of his meeting the doorbell rang. It was a special delivery! An Oculus Quest!!
For those who don't know, the Oculus is a Virtual Reality (VR) gaming system. I'm not much of a gamer, but I have to say VR gaming is a LOT of fun! It's so immersive, and the graphics are so beautiful! I was really impressed. I get motion sick really easily, but because you control where you are looking when playing, it helps a lot. I didn't feel sick at all! Here's Jameson playing Beat Saber, a popular VR game where you slice squares with lightsabers.
And here's me playing the same game. We're playing on a beginner level as we were just learning how to use everything.
After that Jameson downloaded The Room VR for us! You might remember that while we were on tour with the circus, Jameson and I loved to play The Room on our iPads together. If you don't know what it is, look it up...it's an awesome escape room/puzzle game with beautiful graphics and hours of complicated puzzles to figure out. I am thrilled to get to play this game in VR! We only played a little to get used to the controls, but it was SO AWESOME to be IN THE ACTUAL PUZZLE ROOM rather than just swiping on an iPad. I love it!
When we were done playing we ordered gyros for dinner and watched some more Fargo, then I practiced steno while Jameson gamed and watched a Golden Girls parody made by one of his theatre friends.
Thursday I woke up at the usual time, had breakfast, and did some meal prep for the week before going to the dealership for maintenance on my car. It was thankfully less expensive that I expected, so maybe I'll treat myself to an actual haircut before the new year.
It took me a while to get home because of traffic, and because I stopped at several places to look for stocking stuffers. No luck, but I'll try again throughout the week. At home I started putting together dinner while Jameson attended his company Christmas party via Zoom...of course you couldn't really talk to people like you want to, but there were still some nice events and a raffle for some good prizes. He didn't win anything but that's ok! Still fun.
Dinner was shepherd's pie (technically cottage pie, as I used ground beef) with the beef marinated in broth, herbs, and spices before being topped with a little cheese and some garlicky mashed potatoes. Simple but good and filling.
After dinner Jameson played some VR Room while I typed this up and prepped for work tomorrow.
I wrapped some of his presents and put them under the tree. And I accidentally opened a present from my sister, can't talk about it yet because she may have gotten the same thing for my other siblings.
I'm hoping this next week will be pretty chill. I have a new role at work but hopefully that will be more fun than stressful. And now that the cookies are sent the only thing I have to worry about is sending out virtual gifts on Christmas day, and filling Jameson's stocking. Oh, and figuring out Christmas breakfast and dinner! I want to make cinnamon buns (have never made any type of bread from scratch) and for dinner, there's this pepper-encrusted roast that Jameson usually makes that is fantastic.
Mostly looking forward to having less to stress about *knocks on wood*
Made insane mostly by my own insistence on baking a zillion cookies.
Last week was all the non-cookie items, such as apple butter, toffee, caramel, and hibiscus tea.
This week I made several of the cookie doughs in advance, and every day when I got home from work I'd eat a quick dinner and then bake cookies all night until about 9-10pm. Needless to say I was exhausted, but everything turned out really nice. I hope people will like them.
First I made gingersnaps.
Pros: Easy, roll it into a ball and flatten it and bake for 15 minutes.
Cons: The recipe makes almost 100 cookies, which meant a lot of time.
How'd they turn out: Tasty. I would have liked them crispier, and also spicier, but they're still very good.
Next came chocolate shortbread dipped in white chocolate and peppermint extract. These ended up being my favorite, the texture is so light and cake-like and freaking delicious. I'm so glad I decided to add the chocolate mint coating on one side, it really balances the cookies out as they're not very sweet.
Pros: Easy to make.
Cons: The recipe only makes 12 cookies so I had to quadruple it and even then it was barely enough.
How'd they turn out: Really good! I want to make these again. Stronger peppermint flavor next time.
Near the end of the week I tackled the Santa face cookies. These are ones that my mom used to make with us when we were little, so it's a lot of nostalgia and fond memories every time I make them. Using wheat flour for these was a mistake, they came out dry and dense and reminded me of a bran muffin haha. Oh well, they're still edible. Notes for next time.
Pros: Tasty twist on a basic sugar cookie (lemon zest)
Cons: Takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to decorate
How'd they turn out: Weirdly bran muffin-esque but still tasty.
Last came the cream cheese Christmas wreaths. These are another fond memory for my siblings and I. Mom made these sometimes with a pastry bag, and sometimes with a spritz cookie gun. These were also a cookie that she would sell to a local upscale restaurant at Christmastime, so I have fond memories of doing prep for her, chopping the green candied cherries. And of course these are very delicate cookies, so we loved getting to eat the broken ones ;)
Pros: Very simple dough, addictively tasty cookies!
Cons: Can be very difficult working with cookie dough in a pastry bag
How'd they turn out: Really good, just like I remember them. Someday I need to have the patience to add more decoration becaues the candied cherries and teaberries do add a nice flavor to the rich cream cheese.
As the cookies cooled I packaged them as best I could for shipping, mostly putting them back-to-back and wrapping them tightly in plastic wrap before setting them in cookie tins among decorative shredded paper. I tied each jar of granola with a bow, and put a tag on each can of apple butter, and wrapped them in newspaper. The caramels and toffee went in their own wax paper bags and then into a plastic sandwich bag with a silica packet to help preserve them. All topped off with an ingredients list I printed off. Oh, the tea got its own plastic baggie too.
Packing everything up for shipping was a pain in the ass. FedEx was out of boxes nearly everywhere I went, but eventually I used my little walnut and realized that my best bet would be the FedEx on a college campus. Who DOESN'T send out gifts at Christmas? College kids, that's who. And behold, I went there and the store was empty of people and full of boxes. Score.
But once I had everything ready to go, I realized I hadn't bought nearly enough packing material. This realization came at 9:30pm on Sunday night. I felt pretty exasperated. But you know what? Jameson jumped right up off the couch, and 20 minutes later came home with about five newspapers! My boyfriend saved Christmas!!
I packed each box carefully and slapped a shipping label on each one. The next morning I got up a little earlier than usual to take all eight boxes to a Walgreens for FedEx pick up. It was shockingly easy to drop them off and send the tracking info to each recipient on my list. Walking out of the Walgreens, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. I did it! I made cookies to share with the people I love <3 Not everyone unfortunately, I'm only one person, not a cookie factory. But I did my best, and it was more than I usually do for the holidays.
To be honest, I'm really pleased to have learned so many new techniques. I've never made shortbread before, or caramels good enough to share, or toffee, or my own tea, or apple butter. I learned to bake and temper and caramelize and can food. It was a lot of work, and at times it was frustrating and exhausting, but I'm glad I did it. It was fun, and I learned a lot.
There were a few other stressy things to worry about this week.
One was an interview at work. It's not for a promotion or anything, but kind of a sideways move to allow me to spend time in a different department. The Training department is short-staffed and could use some help, so they wanted a "hybrid", a supervisor (my current job) who could dip into the training department when asked and take over training new captionists so that members of the actual training team can have a day off or leave early or whatnot.
I like to learn new things and I've had fun being a short-term trainer for our new captioning software, so figured why not apply. The interview went well. I found out the very next day that I'd gotten the position! The Training supervisor said she really appreciated some of my answers, which made me feel good. I was given a big ol' binder full of information, which I'll review in coming days.
Now on to Stressor Number Three. Steno class.
Last week I had a little tiff with my steno teacher. She got angry when she found out I hadn't completed work in a particular section of the software we're using. Like, literally angry. In all fairness, she probably did tell me to work on that section, and either I misheard her or misunderstood or forgot. It happens sometimes, especially if I'm tired and don't write down a reminder right away.
Anyway, still, there was no reason to yell or get angry. I spoke with another teacher in the same program who confirmed that I had not missed any work, I have nothing due, and I am not behind. So I spent this week making cookies instead of practicing steno. BUT, I still had steno class on Monday.
I was worried it would be awkward or she'd be angry again. In fact I was so worried about it that I looked into possible transfer schools. Not to be petty, but I am not going to pay thousands of dollars to get talked down to any time I make a mistake (especially one that does not affect my GPA or the school's funding). There's just no reason for it. In general, if I'm given clear instruction, I will do the task or I will communicate if I'm unable to complete the task for any reason. I'm nearly 40 years old for Christsakes, I did my time with belittling angry teachers in high school.
Class was ok. My teacher seemed a lot more calm. Great. I got through the class and was very relieved. I don't have to transfer yet (I will keep my list of schools. Not playing.) Now that the cookies are done I can get back to practicing steno. Imagine that! And no one died! Sheesh.
So by the time Tuesday rolled around I felt exhausted but relieved that all of that was behind me. Time for a new week. The week before Christmas.
I woke up late on Wednesday. I was very tired.
Had a nice breakfast and checked on my little plants. The meyer lemons are basically ready. I'll keep them on the tree because I've read they'll keep there, but probably in the new year we're going to have lemon meringue pie! Here is a collage I made of how the lemons have grown over the course of the year, starting in mid-February and going up through today :)
For some reason my strawberries have started producing again, which is unexpected to me but maybe normal in Florida, idk.
I have a beautiful head of romaine lettuce right now, it's gonna get eaten soon :P
The carrot's top has gotten huge, it's longer than my arm! But the root below doesn't seem that big. I'll let it go through January but at some point it's gotta get pulled.
The jalapeno and cherry tomato are still producing, so I get a few veg every three days or so. It's kinda nice :) I'm probably going to pickle the jalapenos.
After my garden check I did some cleaning. There's probably flour and little sugar crystals in every crevice in our kitchen right now thanks to all the baking. I vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, dusted, and wiped down all the kitches surfaces. And mopped the tile floors. It felt good to get caught up on that. I did laundry, washed our sheets and made the bed, and dropped some cookies off at the neighbors' houses. The rest of my day was pretty chill...I didn't feel like cooking and just kind of wanted to take a break after the madness of last week and the stress of interviewing and fighting my teacher this week. I did a little extra Christmas shopping while Jameson did a virtual work meeting. Near the end of his meeting the doorbell rang. It was a special delivery! An Oculus Quest!!
For those who don't know, the Oculus is a Virtual Reality (VR) gaming system. I'm not much of a gamer, but I have to say VR gaming is a LOT of fun! It's so immersive, and the graphics are so beautiful! I was really impressed. I get motion sick really easily, but because you control where you are looking when playing, it helps a lot. I didn't feel sick at all! Here's Jameson playing Beat Saber, a popular VR game where you slice squares with lightsabers.
https://instagram.com/p/CI37ZG4jPJQ
And here's me playing the same game. We're playing on a beginner level as we were just learning how to use everything.
https://instagram.com/p/CI4KUX-gVzA
After that Jameson downloaded The Room VR for us! You might remember that while we were on tour with the circus, Jameson and I loved to play The Room on our iPads together. If you don't know what it is, look it up...it's an awesome escape room/puzzle game with beautiful graphics and hours of complicated puzzles to figure out. I am thrilled to get to play this game in VR! We only played a little to get used to the controls, but it was SO AWESOME to be IN THE ACTUAL PUZZLE ROOM rather than just swiping on an iPad. I love it!
When we were done playing we ordered gyros for dinner and watched some more Fargo, then I practiced steno while Jameson gamed and watched a Golden Girls parody made by one of his theatre friends.
Thursday I woke up at the usual time, had breakfast, and did some meal prep for the week before going to the dealership for maintenance on my car. It was thankfully less expensive that I expected, so maybe I'll treat myself to an actual haircut before the new year.
It took me a while to get home because of traffic, and because I stopped at several places to look for stocking stuffers. No luck, but I'll try again throughout the week. At home I started putting together dinner while Jameson attended his company Christmas party via Zoom...of course you couldn't really talk to people like you want to, but there were still some nice events and a raffle for some good prizes. He didn't win anything but that's ok! Still fun.
Dinner was shepherd's pie (technically cottage pie, as I used ground beef) with the beef marinated in broth, herbs, and spices before being topped with a little cheese and some garlicky mashed potatoes. Simple but good and filling.
After dinner Jameson played some VR Room while I typed this up and prepped for work tomorrow.
I wrapped some of his presents and put them under the tree. And I accidentally opened a present from my sister, can't talk about it yet because she may have gotten the same thing for my other siblings.
I'm hoping this next week will be pretty chill. I have a new role at work but hopefully that will be more fun than stressful. And now that the cookies are sent the only thing I have to worry about is sending out virtual gifts on Christmas day, and filling Jameson's stocking. Oh, and figuring out Christmas breakfast and dinner! I want to make cinnamon buns (have never made any type of bread from scratch) and for dinner, there's this pepper-encrusted roast that Jameson usually makes that is fantastic.
Mostly looking forward to having less to stress about *knocks on wood*