Green

Best Saturday morning drink ever.

Courtesy of Joy the Baker.

Happy Weekend from Snowy New Jersey!

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The Gingerbread TARDIS

Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly...my family knows them all well. Another family fav is the Back to the Future trilogy. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that when, sometime last year, my siblings and I were introduced to Doctor Who, we were hooked. Really hooked.

But I'm still on Season 5 with Matt Smith, so NO SPOILERS.

He's good, but I miss David Tennant. :(

Anyway! This Christmas, David, Jenny, and I exchanged many pieces of Doctor Who merchandise. (Much to the confusion of our grandparents. Our aunts are fellow Time Lord fans.) Like this shirt, or this sonic screwdriver flashlight, or (my favorite, from Jenny to me) this TARDIS cookie jar.

There's also the necklace I made for Jenny, out of a cufflink:


Back to the TARDIS though. The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is the Doctor's time machine spaceship. It looks like a British Police Public Call Box from 1963, because its chameleon circuit broke and stuck that way.

In my search for unique, geeky Christmas gifts, I came across this blog post, on constructing a gingerbread TARDIS. The day after I flew home for the holidays, Jenny and I set to work.

We chose to use this gingerbread and frosting recipe.

We cut out carefully measured patterns:


We mixed the dough with Mom's incredible KitchenAid:


We danced:


We consulted the directions without getting flour on the computer:


We used steak knives to cut out building blocks:


See those little leftover square pieces? They were DELICIOUS.


Believe me, the entire family was gingerbread-dough-filled that evening.

The baked pieces weren't quiiiiiite, shall we say, straight? Precise? Their corners weren't exactly, oh, right-angled?


Whatever! We make it work! We do!

We frosted four little Police Public Call Box signs, with baggies, toothpicks, spit, patience, and love:




We made little paper window panes:


Then, assembly began. We used frosting spreaders, spatulas, and fingers to cement the uneven walls to each other and the base. Getting the door to stand ajar was tricky; we finally propped it up from the inside with a cookie cutter until the frosting hardened. It looked rather messy. Adding the corner pieces, roof, signs, and a whole lot more frosting spruced it up to our satisfaction:




Note the wonky door and awesome door poster:


What TARDIS would be complete without a Time Lord?


David added some graffiti:


And then we had a photo shoot:



Our creation was displayed until Christmas Eve, when we wrapped it in plastic and froze it while we were in San Diego. Yesterday, we thawed it and started gnawing on it. It's pretty stale...but good dipped in milk, coffee, or hot chocolate!

Sadly, Gingerbread Doctor met his match in Golden Retriever Maddie. I don't think he'll be regenerating from this one.

A Mountainous Day

The year Twenty-Eleven began this morning rather congestedly and coughy, necessitating an unfortunate shortening of my planned weekend trip to Seattle. Two late parties and an overnight stay had to go. Boo.

However! After a delicious German pancake and sausage breakfast, Amy, Susanna (our visiting AZ friend, whom we met in Morocco in 2009), and I got on a ferry and headed to the Emerald City for the afternoon.

The Olympics were glorious in the sun today!

Amy gave Susanna a tour of the waterfront, while my dear friend Alicia picked me up and drove to B&O Espresso. I had a Mocha Valencia and smoked salmon and goat cheese quiche. We shared creme brulee and great conversation. :) I met Alicia while swing dancing in Seattle my senior year of college. We hadn't seen each other for three years, and that is really unacceptable. She's too fabulous!

Now, we are ferry-riding home, watching the sunset over Mt. Rainier. My cough has gotten worse, but the day in the cold was worth it. Time for some tea.

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Heeellooo 2011!

May your year be as fluffy and warm as her fur and bright and golden as her eye.

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Camels and gorillas and bears, oh my!

Aunt Betty and Unke Roy are the cutest couple in the world. They've been married for almost 60 years, and still perform magic shows for the children's hospital, sing in choirs, and hold annual memberships at SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo. They are the best zoo guides ever.

Aunt Jody, Cousin Nik, Dad, Mom, David, Amy, Jenny, and I met them in Balboa Park at the zoo. Not as mobile as they used to be, but always enthusiastic, Betty and Roy sent us off on the Skyfari air tram across the zoo while they shuttled to meet us at the elephants.

On the way, we stopped at the polar bears, and enjoyed the most amazing display of bear-happiness we've seen in our long relationship with zoos. A young female bear rolled and somersaulted through the water, biting and submerging a foam toy, while her twin brother watched from the shore of the habitat. She swam over every so often to reach up and snap playfully at his face. He snapped back, and then she returned to her toy, alone.







At one point, she dug into an underwater crevice in the rock and pulled out a traffic cone! She stuck her face into it and paddled around, like a Conehead. It didn't impress her brother.

See the cone sticking out of the water?


Finally, she crawled up on the rock behind him and chased him into the water! Woohoo! They wrassled and fought like our golden retrievers used to.





After (I kid not) at least twenty minutes of great bear time, they both exited the pond, exhausted and ready for a nap.

We moved on to the Elephant Odyssey with Aunt Betty and Unke Roy. The elephants have a huge new enclosure! It's beautiful! There's also a new area to watch trainers as they clean and care for the big beasts individually in ginormous holding cells. We saw a dear elephant get her feet cracks rinsed with a hose, and another immerse each front foot into--oh yes--Epsom salt baths for her pedicure.



Jody, Nik, my family, and I caught a few more animals on our own. Highlights include the Peccary (insert classic family story of Cary Grunt and Gregory Peccary from 40 years ago), the camels (I last saw them in a butcher stand in the Fez Medina), and the capybaras (huge guinea pigs!!).




We said goodbye to Betty and Roy at the orangutans, where we heard the story of Janie. This ape loves to fix her hair with the help of mirrors held up by guests. Sadly, Janie didn't feel like primping during our visit.

These are not Janie.


Later, we saw the gorillas. Dad adores gorillas. My whole life, Dad has imitated silverback gorillas by walking on his hands and knees in a rather stately manner. We only saw one gorilla this time, but he was quite dignified indeed.

This is not my father.


Nearing the limits of our desire and will to visit animals and walk all over in cool weather, Mom bought churros for us. Thanks, Mom!

Daddy and his sister, Aunt Jody:


Nik, my awesome cousin, and our awesome snack:



We bid the zoo a fond farewell and drove to Betty and Roy's house for a short visit and to give annual hugs to Dad's cousin Mike and wife Joan. This house is one of my top four nostalgic favorites of all time. Covered in Christmas, Disney, and Zoo paraphernalia collected and saved over their life together, it never gets boring. After a lovely chat and tasty goodies, we hugged them goodbye until the summer. <3

Merry Belated Christmas!

I just got a blogger app for my Droid (in fact, Blogger-droid app). I'm trying it out from a cozy van full of eight beautiful people on the way to the San Diego Zoo! My immediate family, my aunt Jody, and my cousin Nik are meeting my great-uncle Roy and great-aunt Betty. We can't wait to see how it's changed since last time...at least seven years ago?

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Backen auf Deutsch, Part VI: #58 Ingwer-Cupcakes

One of the best (and worst) things about December is all of the delicious baked goodies, which are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I contributed a lot to their ubiquitous-ness this season.

My sweet friend, Erica, whom I met at the 2008 Lindau Meeting in Germany, drove up from Philly one Saturday to eat lunch downtown, knit socks, and bake desserts. We made a batch of my mom's Candy Cane cookies and also chose a spicy ginger cupcake recipe out of 1 Teig, 100 Kuchen.

Which, by the way, is apparently also in English.

So here is our batch of Ingwer-Cupcakes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#58 Ingwer-Cupcakes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ingwer=ginger
Cupcakes=cupcakes



The batter was pretty simple and included a ton of cinnamon and ginger.

Yay Erica!



While the cupcakes baked, we got the candy cane cookies ready:


SO GOOD.



The best part by far was the candied ginger. I am now obsessed with candied ginger. I will take gifts of buckets of candied ginger. Candied ginger.



Finally, we gave them two thumbs up! :D



The cupcakes themselves weren't too sweet, which was complimented perfectly by the very sugary, lightly orange-flavored buttercream frosting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Changes made:
~none!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next time would:
~add nutmeg and candied ginger to the batter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perfect for:
~candied ginger lovers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And because he hasn't been on the blog enough lately, here is Faraday in his box: