happenings

One happy Easter weekend, the idea could strike you that it would be fun to dye Easter eggs using random foods and spices. I say, let the idea pass, and buy yourself a nice $.99 box of dye tablets. It was an interesting experiment, but mostly it was a pain in the butt. And in the end, all you'll have to show for your efforts are a few hard-cooked eggs covered with a clumpy film of spinach.

Instead you should invest your extra feelings of domesticity into making your own girl scout cookies. We made the thin mints, and mmmm. They were tasty.

(recipes here via Chelsea)

it's still just once a year, right?

This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Well, it used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it. You're hypocrites, all of you! You have a problem with what I'm saying, Larry? (from Groundhog Day)

I watch it every year. Yes, every year. And while half of me finds it annoyingly stupid when watched with such frequency, the other half of me still appreciates its charming message about turning your worst day into your best day, by looking beyond yourself. It's tradition, anyhow.

These creepy-but-cute creations

are another February 2nd favorite. We made a lot of them this year. You've got to spread the Groundhog Day love, you know?

(Do you want to make them too? I know you do. They aren't that hard to replicate. But if you want, you can click here to be enlightened with more detail.)

the evolution of a tradition

December 2003: I learn the art of making lussekatter (saffron pastries) from Swedes. It's part of the celebration of Luciadagen, which becomes my favorite Swedish holiday. I think to myself, "Self! Wouldn't it be fun to make this a tradition at home?"


December 2004 and 2005: I spend hours in the kitchen trying to replicate the joyful baking moments of yesteryear. I end up with mediocre imitations of the lussekatter. I'm never quite sure what to do with them once they're baked, because they're um... sort of an acquired taste situation. I discover that saffron is really expensive in this country. Still, I feel all warm and happy inside because, come on, it's Lucia Day.

December 2006: Utter failure. Shay wonders if we accidentally dumped concrete mix into the dough at some point? We keep the buns long enough to photograph them and send pictures to Swedish friends so that they can laugh with us. Then we dump most of them hastily into the trash. The rest we use throughout the year as paperweights, doorstops, and projectile missiles.





December 2007: After years of trial and error, I finally get it right. I revel in the beauty of my lussekatter and am actually brave enough to deliver them to friends, in the true spirit of Lucia.



December 2008: I manage to keep tradition alive with the help of Pillsbury. The cheap imitations taste nothing like lussekatter, but you do get to smother them with sugary icing. Also preparation took me five minutes.

Happy Lucia Day to you! Thanks Pillsbury!

recipe exchange

A good Thanksgiving recipe:

in review

**We lived through a ladybug invasion and emerged victorious. And by "victorious" I mean that all our efforts to stop the invasion were totally futile, and then suddenly one day the bugs were just gone. I never thought of ladybugs as pesky until I spent an entire morning relocating armies of them, only to have Shay find this many (plus a few not pictured - casualties of the war, you know) in our bedroom window later. By all accounts, baffling.

**I convinced Shay to part his hair for Halloween. Coupled with his jacket ($2.25 at Goodwill) which had nice bulky shoulder pads in it? Irresistible.

**I had a bad cold for awhile. It lingered on and on last week, until I was essentially healed by Gilmore Girls. Yes, on Saturday I bundled up on the couch and watched four straight hours of Stars Hollow cheesiness. Then I napped. I woke up feeling significantly better than before. Everyone should be allowed their guilty pleasures. Mine, apparently, just happen to have medicinal powers.

**Holy beautiful Kansas! This fall I have really loved coming home to this neighborhood.

celebrating

It's 2 a.m. and we are finally winding down with some soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. We loved watching Kansas win the national championship game in overtime tonight. I still can't believe they pulled it off, but I'm glad they did. We watched the game from Allen Fieldhouse and my ears are still ringing from the loudness of that place. We went downtown afterward with a group of friends and were pretty entertained by the craziness to be found on Mass street. People were packed into the street for blocks and blocks. A small number of them were even sober. Regardless... it was so fun to be caught up in the energy of something exciting tonight.

Those of us in this family who are students are not overly concerned about waking up tomorrow, since all KU classes have been cancelled in celebration of the win. Those of us who have real jobs, however, and were only pretending to be students for a day, still have to leave the house in about 5 hours. So, rock chalk Jayhawk. This non-student is signing off.

off to see the groundhog?

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday and predicted six more weeks of cold, gray winter. It doesn't seem like much of a reason to celebrate. For the sake of tradition, we celebrated anyway. Are you looking for something to fill the gap between New Year's and Valentine's Day? Then you, too, should observe the day of the weather-predicting rodent with some kind of festivity. I always enjoy it.I have watched the early-90s flick "Groundhog Day" every year on February 2nd since, I don't know, 1995. I mostly have my friend Jen and her family to thank for instilling in me this sense of Groundhog tradition.

This year the festivities of the day included friends, food, games, and of course a screening of the classic movie, in all its stupid hilariousness. Oh, and a new mascot, which was a random find at a little store on Mass street last week. I think he will be given away as a door prize next year, but I couldn't part with him quite yet.

Phil-in-a-cheesecake (got the idea here)

Phil, the celebration mascot

Happy Groundhog day to you! Enjoy those six long weeks of winter, and hope for a better forecast next year!

taste of success

Happy Lucia Day! They are not perfect, but this year's lussekatter look and taste much better than last year's disaster. They are saffron-yellow and soft in the middle and toasty on top, and just looking at them makes me happy.

We also made pepparkakor, thin and crispy gingerbread cookies with a hint of orange flavor... mmmm! After the Lucia buns I wasn't up for converting another recipe from metric units, so I looked for already-Americanized pepparkakor recipes online. One recipe said (this is a direct quote) "roll out the dough to 1/8 inch. Cut into any traditional holiday shape - stars, pigs, hearts, etc." That "pigs" bit was slipped in there so nonchalantly that it took a minute to regiser. Whaaaaa? I laughed, but only until I read the next three recipes and was repeatedly encouraged to bake cookies in "traditional" shapes such as pigs. Swedes, are you reading this? What is that about?!

As you may have guessed, I did not find an abundance of pig-shaped cookie cuters at my local grocery store. So, Shay and I had to improvise. What do you think?