Archive: June 2008

After my failed attempt at the perfect lemon cookie, Stephanie alerted me to a recipe for key lime cookies that she thought might do well with a substitution of lemon for lime. Intrigued by the shortcake nature of the final product, I printed out the recipe for future reference.

The recipe originally hailed from good old Betty Crocker, and its homespun origins made me feel rather quaint, even as I said a little eulogy for my arteries in light of the whole, staggering cup of butter. With powdered sugar, cornstarch, and flour, the dough came together easily, and it looked quite festive with its flecks of lime zest. Because I cannot leave well enough alone, I sloshed a little margarita mix into the dough. Hey, my lime didn’t yield quite enough zest, and the mix was lime-flavored, so what harm could it do? The rest of the shaping process was new to me, what with the flattening with a sugar-covered drinking glass, but the balls of dough flattened out nicely and without much protest. Because my kitchen was roaring hot, and my hands were too warm to handle such a buttery dough, I chose to drop the cookies rather than roll them out, and I think the crinkly edges impart a certain rustic charm. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time.

After eight minutes in the oven, my cookies emerged with slightly golden crusts, but they were pleasingly pliable when I removed them from the pan. I put together the lime glaze with some degree of trepidation since the glaze was my main downfall with the buttermilk lemon cookies. I added a bit of green food coloring, per Stephanie’s suggestion, and I, uh, may or may not have splashed in some more margarita mix at that point. Ahem. In any case, I was disconcerted because the glaze was really runny, and it wasn’t clear to me it would harden into a solid coating. I tried adding more powdered sugar to thicken it up until I realized that my strategy would render the glaze capable of eating straight through a tooth, so I finally threw caution to the wind and started glazing the cookies, despite my misgivings.

People, I think I should swear off glazes. My light green, zest-flecked glaze ran all over the cookies, instead of adhering to the centered circle I pictured. Okay, if I am really honest, I pictured a glaze that I could use to draw little semicircle lime slices. Why can’t glaze be the same consistency of puff paint? By the second wire rack of cookies, I had finally gotten used to the viscosity, and the last dozen or so appear to show much more restraint than their greedy precursors.

I reluctantly chose an ugly cookie for a taste test, and I was pleasantly surprised! Because the glaze was so thin, the cookie soaked up the sugary shock due to the shortbread texture. The crumb was nice and soft, and even with the sweetness, there was a tang of lime and tequila in the background. These cookies are a cool summer treat, and I’d make them again, but definitely for a crowd. One needs to spread out the effect of all of that butter! I wonder… what about using some rum and mint extract for a mojito cookie? Very interesting, indeed.

If there is one wedding anniversary tradition I enjoy, it is that JG is always on summer break by that time, and I budget my vacation days so that I can take the day off from work. Yay! My boss looked at me oddly when I applied to take off what appeared to be a random Wednesday, but I love having the break for us.

JG and I exchanged presents in the morning when I got back from my second run of the week (reward, please!). I happily opened two word-nerdy books, the new Jack Johnson album, and the soundtracks to Juno and Dan in Real Life. JG received a set of dominoes in a leather-ish case to satisfy my need to accommodate those traditional anniversary gifts, a book about dominoes, and Wii accessories. Thinking about our gifts kind of makes me chuckle because they aren’t traditional or even romantic at all. Who cares? They are right for us.

JG and I spent the morning at Longwood Gardens to see “Nature’s Castles,” an exhibit of three amazing, walk-through tree houses, and the water gardens, because JG has a deep desire to build one of his own someday. The weather was pleasantly hot, and the gardens were not crowded at all. We walked through the Idea Garden, which simply has seasonal plants in bloom and labeled for your convenience, and we tried to brainstorm what to do with our sad, empty flowerbeds. It became clear that, while neither of us has any real experience in planning out a landscape, we both had strong opinions, and we were not very skilled in expressing them. Oh, my. I think redoing those beds might be our next Marital Challenge.

In the afternoon, we lazed around the house before going out to dinner, where I had a delicious mojito with my Thai seafood paella, and JG opted for a lobster in a brandy curry. Since I had to work the next day, we made an early-ish dinner reservation, and we were in and out of the place before the sun went down. Ha! We really are “oldlyweds,” as Janet coined.

On the way home from dinner, I pondered a conversation from that morning with my sister, who had called to wish us a happy anniversary.

Sister: Do you feel wiser?

RA: Wiser?

Sister: You know, because you’re older. It’s been three years!

RA: (pauses) Well, I don’t feel wiser than, say, yesterday. But I feel wiser than I did three years ago.

Sister: (snorts) Yeah, I’d hope so.

Should I feel significantly wiser after three years of marriage? I still feel like a fledging married person, what with all of the miscues and small irritants of daily life. However, I do perceive that JG and I are getting settled and more comfortable with how being married works between the two of us. If anything, this third anniversary feels permanent to me, as if we’re not pretending any more. Is simply spending the day together enough to celebrate a marriage?

Yes, it is.

Since Saturday, JG and I have been running a two-dog household. No, no, we didn’t adopt another dog, we’re just borrowing one! Our friends are away at the beach this week, so we’re watching their chubby, six-year-old cairn terrier, Quincy.

I used to be afraid of Quincy. When we went to our friends’ house, he’d run up to the door when we arrived, scratching and making a ruckus until he was physically removed and we could enter without a scuffle. But when I got a phone call from his panicked owner about how her sitters had canceled on her at the last minute, I conferred briefly with JG, who was going to be home anyway, and we agreed to take in Quincy, no problem!

Well. Last Saturday was a day for acclimation. While JG was mowing the lawn, Quincy gave me a scare by jumping up onto the half wall, the one that perches precariously over the stairwell, which may as well have been a yawning abyss. I was holding Ted at the time so as to minimize any conflict, but I didn’t want to scare Quincy into taking a flying leap. Then, Quincy began to slip on papers we had lying on the ledge, and I started to have a heart attack. Fortunately, he managed to find his way back to an armchair (where I believe his ascent began), and we did not have to make a trip to the veterinarian emergency room, wherever that is. As if I wasn’t scared enough, his owners had barely pulled away from our house fifteen minutes earlier. Way to go, team! I made quick work of moving the furniture away from that wall, and we have been plummet-free ever since.

Besides avoiding killing Quincy, my greatest accomplishment this week has been mastering the two-dog walk. At first, JG and I took Ted and Quincy out at the same time, with each of us with a dog, but they were so distracted by each other that they yanked us all over the place. Halfway through the walk, I suggested that I try to walk both dogs at once, like the “pack walk” that Cesar Millan demonstrates on The Dog Whisperer. Quincy pulls really hard on his leash if he sees or hears something exciting, so I put him on a short leash and corrected him every time he jerked at me, which was roughly every three steps. After a few minutes, though, he figured out what we wanted, and he and Ted walked on either side of me with little incident. However, each time I take out the dogs, Quincy has to re-learn the routine to a certain extent, but it has taken him less time as we’ve gone along. He has some excess poundage due to his lack of proper exercise and what seems to us to be an inflated feeding schedule, so I imagine that his compliance toward the end of walks is somewhat because of exhaustion, but I’ll take it. For his part, Ted has been a perfect walker this week, as if to show this upstart newcomer how it’s really done.

Nonetheless, having Quincy in the house has been amusing, at the very least. Although he is not a silent dog, he rarely barks, unless a truck has the gall to pass our house. Instead, he uses these guttural throat noises to express his displeasure, and I’ll be darned, but he sounds exactly like Chewbacca! Quincy has a strange way of sitting straight up on his haunches, not his hind legs, and he is as stable as on his four paws. Ted is good on his hind legs, but Quincy could be propped up like that indefinitely, or at least until he gives up hope that I will actually feed him a Goldfish cracker. Then there is the “yoga pose” Quincy assumes when the mood strikes, and he stays there for minutes at a time. I guess dogs’ backs need stretching, too.

Ted and Quincy got along reasonably well, I suppose. Quincy, although dopey, is quite the instigator. He would steal a toy of Ted’s and then take refuge with JG or me, leaving Ted very consternated, indeed. The two dogs ran around the house, chasing after a tennis ball or each other, and JG assured me that their play was normal, even though Quincy’s indignant Chewbacca sounds were evidence to the contrary. It was odd to have two leashes on the coat hooks, two crates in the basement, and two dishes of food on the floor, but the sound of eight paws rattling across the kitchen was rather cheerful. I suspect that it will be strangely quiet once Quincy’s owners come to pick him up in two days.

JG and I have discussed the possibility of getting another dog at some point in the future. I feel like we’ve got a better handle on training dogs, and I like the idea of Ted getting worn out by someone other than us. After this week of logistics and heightened alert, I think we are pretty set on keeping Ted as an only dog-child, and I bet he’s okay with that.

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I’ve come to the very last question, and it only took me almost five months and ten posts of answers! I commend the persistence out there. Today is our third wedding anniversary (woo!), so I thought Val’s inquiry would be an appropriate fill-in while I am taking the day off from work to be out and about, celebrating. With no further ado:

Val asked:

How did JG propose?

When I was writing for a blog network last year, I wrote a post about how JG and I got engaged, and the following is a slightly edited version, which bears a striking resemblance to our first date.

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As proposals go, I’m rather picky. I dislike public proposals hypothetically, but I loathe the thought personally. If I had anything to say about it, there would be no ballfields, blimps, or bullhorns present if the memory was going to be free of dread. Also, I tend to glaze over during proposal stories that involve some sort of recitation of Shakespeare or poetry. I love literature, but that is not the point of the proposal. Save it for the open mic, Buddy, and get to the point.

I communicated my preferences as clearly as I could after it became clear to JG that he would probably have to think about the delivery of The Question. He thought my proposal pet peeves were amusing, however, and felt the need to taunt me every time we were at a sporting event or saw a plane fly overhead. “What if I proposed to you right now, on the scoreboard?” he’d ask at football games. “What if that plane is a skywriter and it spelled out a proposal from me?”

I’d roll my eyes and mutter that if he knew me at all, none of those absurd things would happen. And they didn’t, thank heaven.

At the end of the summer spent apart, JG and I moved back in for our last year of college. After getting situated in our respective rooms, JG suggested that we go for a walk. It would be a nice way to enjoy a relatively empty campus.

We set out on our usual loop and I had an inexplicable feeling that something big was going to happen. I did my best to breathe deeply and act normally, but my mind was racing.

Oh, my gosh, what if JG is proposing tonight? He’s been grumbling about how he hasn’t found a ring yet, but what if that’s a front? He’s being awfully quiet right now… But maybe nothing is going on. It won’t be good if I get all excited and then nothing happens. I can’t be disappointed if this is just a normal walk, but it would be so cool to get engaged tonight! It’s so pretty out and hardly anyone is around, yet. No, I can’t get excited. That’s not fair to him or me. I can’t fool myself into thinking that every walk or time alone means a proposal. Besides, JG might not even have a ring, right? Okay, I need to be fine with the fact that we are not getting engaged tonight. And that’s okay. No need to be let down. It’s okay.

Presently, we sat down at a bench that we thought of as ours. It looked to me as though JG took something out of his cargo pocket, but in response to my inquisitive face, he said, “Oh, just a mosquito.”

Okay, calm yourself down.

Then we were quiet. “I love you,” JG said.

“I love you, too!”

Silence, again. What is going on?

“I love you,” he repeated.

“I still love you…” I said, slowly.

All at once, he was down on one knee! He held an open ring box and said, “I love you – will you marry me?”

Then I laughed.

Not at him! Just in general! I laugh when I’m nervous or happy and this was both! I laughed, and then I quickly said, “Yes!”

JG put the ring on my finger and we both grinned from ear to ear. That “yes” didn’t make up for the laughing, though. I have never heard the end of it.

Previously: Lent, hypothetical actions, superpower, television, favorites, hypothetical money, decisions, babies, hypothetical stuff

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