My family goes to a cookie swap every year, so I’m on the hunt for fun and different Christmas cookies that pack a visual punch. It’s quite a point of pride if your cookies are all gone sooner than anyone else’s. In the words of Barney Stinson: “Challenge ACCEPTED.”
Don’t these meringues look so tasty?
Gretchen Rubin put a really gorgeous interview up on The Happiness Project with Tina Roth Eisenberg. Tina is a designer and blogger on SwissMiss, which is a cool compendium of sleek new products, furniture, and websites. Tina quotes Goethe in the interview, and for some reason it particularly struck me today:
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Spend out.”) Or a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?
I have this Goethe quote I find myself going back to:“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”[I love that passage too, and in fact, quoted it in The Happiness Project.]
I try to remind myself that I am the decisive element. I try hard not to be a complainer but a problem solver. If I don’t like something in my life, or think something is missing, I try to create it, actively go after it.
It’s good to remind myself that while I can’t control a lot of what happens in life, and even can’t control my feelings about it, I do control my response to the situation and that can make all the difference.
Read the interview HERE
Tina’s blog is pretty cool too. SwissMiss
From the New York Times, an array of twelve new warming cocktails for the holiday season. Fun to read through their ideas to get some new ones.
New York Times
The Milk Punch might be my favorite, with the milk frozen into cubes? Love it! Perfect for White Russian night – aka Big Lebowski night – also.
IS THIS FOR REAL?
Alcoholic whipped cream is apparently a thing now.
I MUST try it.
From the Huffington Post:
It goes by the name Whipahol, “Whipped Lightning” or Get Whipped and comes in seemingly innocuous flavors, like white chocolate raspberry and cinnamon. But a can of alcoholic whipped cream — that’s right, alcoholic whipped cream — has the alcohol content of three beers and it’s causing concern on college campuses. But are students keen on the idea of getting drunk off of a dairy product?
Click here to watch the news report on it.
I’ve gotten the nicest comments from people – I didn’t really know anyone was reading the blog regularly, and it feels so great to know you’re all enjoying it enough to miss it!
I somehow lost my mojo over the last few months, with a cross-country move, taking the bar exam, another cross-country move – and now living in an apartment with a tiny kitchen. It is seriously this size, guys:
This is from an ugly kitchen contest: http://getpublished.news-leader.com/UglyKitchen/Gallery.php?ImageID=49
If you’ve never lived in New York, you probably think I’m exaggerating. I am not.
I don’t think I’ve cooked anything happily in…a long time. I can’t remember when. So I’ve felt completely lame about posting when I haven’t been doing anything myself.
However, my wonderful and persistent best friend has been (nicely) bugging me to start writing here again, and I remembered when talking with her that this was never meant to be a “cooking blog”. I’ve never claimed to be the world’s best or most knowledgeable – or even vaguely knowledgeable! – cook. It’s meant to be about entertaining people you love, and good food and cocktails and pretty tables all go into that, and that is why they’re on this blog. So even if I’m not cooking much these days, we can still talk about all that other lovely stuff.
This is especially true as we go into the holidays, which I wholeheartedly and energetically adore. Having an entire section of the year in which everyone is remembering to love and be grateful for each other is an absolutely extraordinary thing. Plus, there’s seeing family, choosing gifts for people they love, having parties, dressing up, and Christmas music! I’ll be back home in Wyoming in a few weeks, and already have one dinner planned and a champagne tasting New Year’s party to throw, so those will be a few really fun things to tell you all about.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/eggs-in-baskets-recipe/index.html
I saw these Baked Eggs on the Food Network today and they look SO. GOOD. Let me break it down for you:
Are we on the same page now? I MUST make these.
What a great dish to serve for a brunch! You can make them ahead, pull them out of the oven at the right time, and serve easily while you get to sit down with your guests. Put out a bunch of accoutrements so your guests can ladle on whatever they like: bacon bits, sour cream, salsa, extra cheeses of different kinds, green onion, ketchup, olives and olive tapenade. So fun and so YUM.
