Cookies, Snow, Sun and Cold

Greetings Humans.  To all of you experiencing Winter Storm Elliot, I hope you are well and warm and not out in the storm.  Early reports of road conditions, and numbers of people stranded were alarming.  We were brushed by it last night, our low was -9F (-22.7C) which is really cold for these parts.  

We made Spritz cookies Tuesday and Wednesday.  Tuesday the cookie gods smiled at us, and the getting of the dough out of the cookie press on to the chilled cookie sheet went really quickly.  Wednesday was not so good.  A failure to read and understand the cookie press manual had us on the wrong volume setting and there was some angst involved.  After the fact we read the manual and all will be well next year.  

This is the press thingy we should use, and this is how it should be oriented.  It needs to look like this.  Please make a note of this.

I love the new stand mixer.  It's not a Kitchenaid, it's a Cuisinart.  Personally I do not understand the cult like status of the Kitchenaid mixer.  You can't stick a rubber spatula in the bowl to push stuff down without stopping the machine and lowering the bowl.  With the Cuisinart you still have to stop the machine, but the top lifts up and back so you can scrape.  In my humble opinion, the best mixer was the Sunbeam, made in the 50's and 60's.  The beaters were offset, the inner beater rotated the bowl, and you had massive clearance to put the spatula in there and push stuff off of the sides.  I had a very old one, until the oil solidified while in storage for ten years, and the cord fell off.  I miss it to this day.  They're still made, but reviews are not good.  Here we have butter and sugar, the stuff of life.

Jim mushes cookie dough into the press.

Are they not lovely?  We bought the mutant looking dyed cherries people use for fruitcake.  They're terrible eaten out of the container.  However, when you stick them on cookies and bake them, they are much better tasting.

The 20th we woke up to more snow and the thick clouds that had been with us since December 3.  No sun, at all, from the 3rd through the 20th.  So there was snow removal and shaking of trees which suffer under the weight of the snow.  This is a terrible picture, I was trying to get a picture of the guy cross country skiing in the neighborhood.  He is absolutely poetry in motion on the skis.  He is the green blob in front of the gate.  Jim is the blue blob shoveling snow by the entry gate on the left. 

On the 21st the sun came out.  It was tremendous.  It also let the cold air in. 

At 4:30 or so, the sun gets low enough to light up the trees to the south of us.

At the top of the photo are the houses up on the bluff behind us.  They have a good view of the city lights.  I also think they're hotter than heck in the summer because they face west.  They're pretty with the snow and all.

It's hard to see, but this boy has lost an antler. 

So, cookies, snow and frigid temperatures.  Not as frigid as other places, but enough for me.

I'm trying not to post too many video links to twitter, because who knows how long it will still be standing.  However, this is Hakeem Jeffries, recently appointed to leadership for the Democratic House members, not pulling any punches.  CLICK HERE to play it.  I love this guy.

China has a Covid problem.  After massive demonstrations about continuing lock downs, the government said fine, get Covid.  And they did.  WAPO did a good piece on what this means to the west.  It's not good.  CLICK HERE to read.

That's it!  That's all I've got.