Biscuits

I made these yummy espresso biscuits Christmas Eve. We served them with vanilla bean ice cream. Instead of using ground espresso beans (which I did not have) I scored some decaf instant coffee from my neighbor, JGR, and that seemed to do the trick. Thanks again Martha.

Ingredients
Makes 16

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tablespoon finely ground espresso beans
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.with two racks spaced evenly apart. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together flour, cocoa, and espresso beans; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla until creamy, 3 to 4 minutes. Gradually beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture, scraping down sides of bowl twice.

Roll 2 1/2 tablespoons of dough between the palms of your hand to form a ball. Place on prepared baking sheet; repeat with remaining batter, spacing cookies 2 inches apart. Using a dinner fork, press tines into dough, and gently press into biscuit shape. Bake biscuits just until firm to the touch, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Happy Christmas!




I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas day with your family and friends. I am so grateful for our Savior, his life, his example and his love. I hope we can all be more like Him in this coming year, more loving, forgiving and selfless. Happy Christmas!

2:22

The mosquitoes munching on my arm and some gnarly gas woke me up. It is 2:22 am and I want to be a-sleeping.

Movie Night

Last night we went to the premier of The Kite Runner with Anna and Zane (thanks for the tickets guys!). I have yet to read the book, but Anna and Zane thought the movie stayed pretty true to the story. We really enjoyed the film. The soundtrack was beautiful, and the scenery was really amazing. We figured the film was not shot in Afghanistan, where the story takes place. It turns out they shot all the scenes of "Afghanistan" in Kashgar, China. I was reading a little more about the the young actors in the movie and the controversy surrounding the book and the making of the film. Read more here.

You Will Need This

Via swissmiss, a "cheat sheet" for that someone you are buying for. You can download and print these files for boys and girls from her blog. Btw, love, love, love, her blog.

Chinese Finger/Foot Trap

All ye of an ample calf will appreciate this tale. My mom was a really good sport about clothes shopping with me and my sister when we were in high school and sometimes we could convince her to take us to the Haight-Ashbury to shop {thanks mom for rifling through all those dirty racks of clothes and helping us find cute things}. After going in and out of thrift and vintage shops we stopped at this really nice shoe store, where I saw these outrageous boots that I just had to try on. If I recall they were blue snakeskin with some yellow, an updated cowboy boot style with a zipper. So I put the thing on, with a bit of effort to get the zipper up over my ample calf, and decide they were far too expensive {I knew that from the get go, and so did the shoe sales person}. So when the time to take the lovely boot off came I was having trouble getting the zipper to go back down my ample calf. Long story short, someone had to go in the back to fetch the needle nose pliers and release me from the trap I had unwittingly stuck my foot in. I recall being really embarrassed and my foot was all sweaty, but I concluded that this must happen frequently enough for the store to have a set of pliers on hand, and that made me feel a little better. Anyhow, this is not something new, but I remember vividly when J.Crew started making their boots with extended calf sizes. Thanks J.Crew.

Death to Blueprint

Maybe you have not heard yet, but they are killing Blueprint, at least as a magazine you can subscribe to and receive on a bimonthly basis. Sigh. I am SO sad. I really love this magazine. At least their blog Bluelines will still be up and running. Waaah!



{PS Did you see how they totally copied my umbrella post. That's right ladies and gentlemen, finger firmly on the pulse}

Umbrella, ella, ella

I would not mind someone stuffing this in my stocking.

{Via J.crew}

GMAT

Mike is taking the GMAT this Thursday. I am already really proud of him. He has been getting up early to study before work and he has been really boring in the evenings because he has been studying after work too. Good luck Mike, I know you will do well!

Today I Finished...

the Honolulu Marathon! Anna and I have been training for months and it feels so good to have accomplished our goal. We spent the night in Honolulu on Saturday and woke up at 3 am to take the bus to the start of the race. Look how happy we were this morning, completely oblivious to the aches and pains that were ahead of us.







It was pouring rain before the race started, and since we had not thought to get ponchos we used garbage bags to cover ourselves. I managed to keep my feet dry while we waited for the race to begin, and the rain to stop {which it did, for about 30 minutes}. Almost immediately after we crossed the start line it began to rain SO HARD! Our feet were soaked in seconds. So for the entire race our shoes were water logged. By the end of the marathon I had enormous blisters on the soles of my feet, and it looked like my feet had been pickled, gross.





We came home, took a nap and now I am hobbling around the house, happy that I don't have to run tomorrow.



Thanks Mike and Zane for being so supportive throughout our training, thanks for sacrificing your Saturday mornings to bring us water for our long runs, and thanks for sleeping on the floor last night and giving me and Anna the bed. Thanks Anna for being my running partner, and sticking with me for such a long time. Good job!

Short Story

I have never been really burned by an eBay seller, but I have had some minor upsets and disappointments. Then again you can't really be burned if you are not willing to spend too much money on eBay. Today I was listening to the pod cast, KQED: The Writers' Block, and one of the segments was by Kenneth Walton, author of Fake: Forgery, Lies, and eBay. If you have an extra 20 minutes listen to how this guy made a money ripping people off on eBay, by selling, "art, fine and otherwise" . After listening to the segment my interest was peaked and I found out more about his story here.