cha no ma-ri the blog http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:23:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Just another WordPress weblog no Monday Cookies: Octopus’s Garden. http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/monday-cookies-octopuss-garden/ http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/monday-cookies-octopuss-garden/#comments Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:54:29 +0000 mischief mari http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/?p=402

I think this must be one of the silliest things I’ve ever done.

Wolf bought a gingerbread house kit over the year-end holidays but we never even opened it. The triangular box sat on a shelf in the kitchen, where occasionally we would notice it and say, “Hey, maybe we should do something with it?” But that was about as much attention as the thing ever got.

Last week – and actually, lately, to be honest – I’ve had little energy to mix dough, roll it out, cut it, bake it and decorate it. The kit gave me a good excuse to try a different approach. That is, it gave me a chance to take something someone else had baked and put my own signature on it. I had a little trouble coming up with some kind of theme to put on the four panels; should it have a St. Patrick’s Day theme? No. Maybe I could paint each panel with some kind of graffiti. But that didn’t feel quite right either.

Our local Trader Joe’s store, where Wolf bought the kit, often plays interesting music like Otis Redding, Nina Simone and sometimes even some Miles Davis. I’ve heard an occasional Expose tune but I’d rather forget that experience. On one shopping excursion I heard the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” and somehow a switch went on in my head. How I made the connection between that song and this gingerbread house – which by the way, still smelled pretty fresh after all that time in the box – I’m not sure. But it felt right.

Wolf suggested shooting the house from all angles so that we could create a little movie. I placed the finished house on a rotating cake stand. He took one shot, I turned  it a couple of inches, and we repeated this until we returned to the front of the house. He somehow strung the sequence together into a Quicktime file. My husband usually does not charge me for his services. But this time he presented me with an invoice: 10 kisses. I gave him 11.

About the gingerbread cookies: they are called German style gingerbread. I’m not sure what that means. The cookies are thick but very light. They had a somewhat spicy aroma, but not a very enticing one. The file for this little slideshow/movie is about 1.1 megabytes, so it might take a few seconds to load (and if you’re still one of those dinosaurs on dial-up, this will take a loooooooooooong time to load).

I’d like to think this silly house gets your week started on a good note. Cheers.

]]> http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/monday-cookies-octopuss-garden/feed/ 9 I think this must be one of the silliest things I’ve ever done. Wolf bought a gingerbread house kit over the year-end holidays but we never even opened it. The triangular box sat on a shelf in the kitchen, where occasionally we would notice it and say, “Hey, maybe we should do something with it?” But that was about as much attention as the thing ever got. Last week – and actually, lately, to be honest – I’ve had little energy to mix dough, roll it out, cut it, bake it and decorate it. The kit gave me a good excuse to try a different approach. That is, it gave me a chance to take something someone else had baked and put my own signature on it. I had a little trouble coming up with some kind of theme to put on the four panels; should it have a St. Patrick’s Day theme? No. Maybe I could paint each panel with some kind of graffiti. But that didn’t feel quite right either. Our local Trader Joe’s store, where Wolf bought the kit, often plays interesting music like Otis Redding, Nina Simone and sometimes even some Miles Davis. I’ve heard an occasional Expose tune but I’d rather forget that experience. On one shopping excursion I heard the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” and somehow a switch went on in my head. How I made the connection between that song and this gingerbread house – which by the way, still smelled pretty fresh after all that time in the box – I’m not sure. But it felt right. Wolf suggested shooting the house from all angles so that we could create a little movie. I placed the finished house on a rotating cake stand. He took one shot, I turned  it a couple of inches, and we repeated this until we returned to the front of the house. He somehow strung the sequence together into a Quicktime file. My husband usually does not charge me for his services. But this time he presented me with an invoice: 10 kisses. I gave him 11. About the gingerbread cookies: they are called German style gingerbread. I’m not sure what that means. The cookies are thick but very light. They had a somewhat spicy aroma, but not a very enticing one. The file for this little slideshow/movie is about 1.1 megabytes, so it might take a few seconds to load (and if you’re still one of those dinosaurs on dial-up, this will take a loooooooooooong time to load). I’d like to think this silly house gets your week started on a good note. Cheers. I think this must be one of the silliest things I’ve ever done. Wolf bought a gingerbread house kit over the year-end holidays but we never even opened it. The triangular box sat on a shelf in the kitchen, where occasionally we would notice it [...]