Every year I try to come up with new Breast Cancer Awareness cookie designs as part of my ongoing effort to remind the world that we’re still not in possession of a cure for that ugly disease. As some of you know, I had a breast cancer scare a few years ago that luckily was just that – a scare, nothing more.  My most recent mammogram, taken on September 14th, showed nothing. Yay.

But there are many other women and men who don’t get off that easily. According to BreastCancer.org, “About 39,840 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2010 from breast cancer, though death rates have been decreasing since 1991. These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening, and increased awareness.”

For more information and statistics, please visit the site’s Breast Cancer Statistics page, and browse through the site. It’s not only interesting, it’s outright sobering.

And for information on cancer in general, please visit the American Cancer Society’s website.

If you don’t have insurance or for some inhumane reason your insurance doesn’t cover mammograms, please visit the American Cancer Society, The National Cancer Institute and/or the The National Breast and Cervical Early Detection Program for information on low-cost mammograms.

]]> http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/2010-breast-cancer-awareness-cookies/feed/ 2 http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/monday-cookies-year-of-the-tiger/ http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/monday-cookies-year-of-the-tiger/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:41:44 +0000 mischief mari http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/?p=970

Happy Year of the Tiger

I’m, oh, uh, a wee bit late with this one. But better late than never.

I started this cookie decorating mania eight years ago (!!!) with a cookie to commemorate the Year of the Sheep. Ever since I can remember, my mother has beamed with pride when mentioning the fact that her son, my older brother, was born in the year of the Dragon, and that two of her brothers were dragons, and that she was a perfect match with my late father because he was a Horse and she was a Tiger. For her the Chinese Zodiac is the one to live by, not that monthly stuff that everyone looks to, and it’s also probably the reason she gasped with horror when Wolf and I announced our engagement: he’s a Rooster, I’m a Sheep. Apparently, not an ideal pairing. But here we are, married eight and half years, now with a kid. Born in the year of the Ox. We’re quite a lot, aren’t we?

Normally, I complete my annual Chinese Zodiac animal cookie before celebrations start, but like so much else since giving birth, I’m a bit behind. A bit slower than usual. For a brief moment I contemplated skipping a design for this year, but I just knew that if I did that, I’d find a gazillion excuses to skip it next year and the year after and so on. I made a promise to myself to design all 12 animals, and with this one I mark the eighth, so, four more to go. After which I’ll start another 12-year cycle all over again.

There are many popular myths surrounding the origins of the Chinese Zodiac. I think the most popular version – and the one I was told when I was little – is that Buddha called all animals to join him before he left this world. Only 12 showed up, so to honor those that appeared, he named a lunar year after each in the order it arrived. Mr. Rat was first. He kind of cheated, really. He jumped on the back of Ms. Ox to cross the last river on the journey to Buddha’s, and jumped down in front. Clever little rodent. After Mr. Rat and Ms. Ox (Mimi is an Ox!), Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig joined the party.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

If you’re a tiger, you’re dynamic, competitive, adventurous, confident and the kind of person who gets things done. You’re also candid, sensitive, ambitious, but get bored easily. Tiger people stand up for what they believe in, even when they’re dead wrong. Gee, sounds like my mother. Oh, that’s right. She’s a Tiger.

Tigers are most compatible with Horses and Dogs. But not with Monkeys, Snakes or Boars.

If you’re a Tiger you were born in one of these years:
1902, 1914, 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, and 1998.

Blue-Haired Red Eyeglassed Girl. Photo by Aasulv Wolf Austad.

And you thought Monday Cookies had disappeared? Not a chance. I may not bake and decorate that often but I can’t stay out of the kitchen. I just can’t. When I first saw Linda Davick’s illustration of this blue-haired girl with red eyeglasses, I swooned. I fell in love with her immediately. She was so sweet, so cheerful and so colorful. And there was a whiff of mischief about her. I dreamed, even hoped my own daughter would be like that. It will be a while before my Mimi exhibits a real, unique personality. Right now, at a mere three weeks, she does what most newborns do: cries when she’s hungry, cries when she needs a diaper change, whimpers or cries a little more when she wants to be held. Once those needs are met, she slowly closes her eyes and dozes off into a deep slumber. The life of a newborn. So simple. So basic.

About the cookie: Simple sugar cookie. Royal icing. I discovered that I ran out of black gel color paste (concentrated food coloring) so I mixed electric blue with leaf green to draw the teeth and rings around the eyes. I kind of botched that, though: I used icing that was a bit too runny and instead of making a very sweet, smiling girl, I made her a bit scary, I think.

Linda, thanks for letting me recreate this little girl.

Hello, again. If I don’t look familar to you, I’ll remind you: the name’s Patch. The last time I was here, Mari stuffed me into some multicolor jacket that made me look more like Liberace’s son than the class act cat that I truly am. Well, that was tame compared to what she did to me this time: those glasses. I’m not sure Elton John would wear those. And a shirt and tie? Is it just me or is Mari on crack? In addition to being classy, I’m cool. I mean, look at that hot pink tie. Shudder.

But I must say, Mari did make my lovely sister, whom I affectionately call Lady L. look lovely. Trust me, my claws would be out if she made Lady L. look any less dignified than she deserves. After all, Lady L. puts up with moi, and that’s a lot.

Have a cat’s meow of a week my friends.

It continues to remain super hot here in Southern California. I’m not heat tolerant. Never have been. So why do I live in Southern California, where summer usually starts in June and goes on through the end of October? Sometimes I ask myself how this all happened. Sometimes, on days like this, when the mercury can top 100 degrees inland, I think, “Did I get on the wrong plane twelve years ago?” Since moving to the LA area in ’97, I’ve never acclimated fully to this weird, dry, heavy, constant, white heat. But I can never think of where I should move to escape it. I guess I like being here. Minus these long summers.

Stay cool this week, wherever you are.

I was saddened to hear of Walter Cronkite’s death. Though I never saw live the broadcasts he anchored following the Kennedy assassination, or the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s historic walk on the moon, I eventually studied his work and grew to admire him. He clearly loved being a journalist, and for him the news always came first. By that I mean, I don’t think he appeared on air because he saw it as a way to become famous. He just happened to be in front of the camera, and took his job as a reporter – literally, someone telling the news to the public – very seriously.

Many seasoned journalists say that there was nothing that excited Mr. Cronkite more than reporting on the U.S. Space program, and if you watch any of the footage of him reporting on space flights, he looked more like a kid in a candy store than the man many called “the most trusted man in America.” The New York Times assembled a few snippets (from YouTube) of Cronkite’s most famous broadcasts, and it’s true: when he was doing the commentary on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, he was exuberant. When I first saw those broadcasts years ago as a budding reporter, I thought, “That’s what it’s like to cover a story that excites you to your core.” And I hoped that I would someday have a similar experience. I did. A few times. And it’s a rush. In those moments, I felt like I was walking on the moon.

Monday, July 20th, 2009, marks the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon. And did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy? Perfect reasons to come up with a space-themed design.

Have a moonwalk of a week.

We had some major tree-chopping and trimming done over the weekend. The oleander that runs along the west side of the house had grown out of control – nearly 15 feet tall! – and blocked the living room windows to the point where the room felt like a dungeon. I had the gardeners chop them down to about six and a half, maybe seven feet tall. What a difference! When the sun came in Sunday afternoon, I was almost blinded by the light. It was great.

Initially I was at a loss as to what to design for today; then it hit me. The light coming through the windows was like a starburst. A Margaret Braun starburst.

Before I really felt comfortable decorating cookies, I studied how other masters of cookie and especially cake design practiced their craft. Although I eventually found myself reading mostly books on fine art and graphic design, there was one book that I returned to time and again, Margaret Braun’s gorgeous Cakewalk, which I think is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen. More than a collection of how-to’s on baking and decorating amazing cakes, Cakewalk is about discovering ideas in everyday life and transforming those into beautiful creations that have to be experienced with all of the senses. It is, really, a book that shows how cake decorating is truly high art. If you come across Cakewalk, you won’t be able to put it down.

About the cookie: deep chocolate sugar cookie, hand-piped royal icing design. Gold and silver lustre dust painted on top.

One of my favorite sections of the New York Times is the Science section. Maybe it’s the geek in me, maybe it’s the fact that I nearly flunked science and biology classes in high school and how I want somehow to understand science better, maybe it’s just that I’m weird. I don’t know. But when I read this article about the “Brainy Echidna” last week, I couldn’t help myself.  According to the article, “the long-beaked echidna is a genuine living link between reptiles and birds on one branch, and more familiar placental mammals like ourselves on the next.” In addition, it has a big brain. In humans, the article says, our neocortex – the part of the brain that allows us to reason and remember – accounts for about 30 percent of the brain. In echidnas, it’s about 50 percent. How could that funky-looking animal not end up on one of my cookies?

I started this cookie with a very different design in mind; the body was going to be red and its needles were going to be painted in gold, the color combination a sort of homage to the late Michael Jackson who often wore red, pseudo-military jackets complete with golden epaulets, braids and buttons. But it has been really hot here in southern Cali over the past few days, and when I left the original red base of icing to dry, it became discolored. The fat in the cookie softened and seeped into the icing, and it just looked awful. I forgot that this can happen. I could have covered it up, but decided to scratch the whole thing and start all over.

While I chomped on the scratched cookies, I kept thinking of other ways to make my brainy Echidna stand out and this is what came to mind. Sometimes mistakes are blessings. For me at least, it’s often through mistakes and mishaps that I see where I can start over, and make my original idea even better.

I took this photo, obviously. Wolf had to jump on a plane to Beijing to finish the color correction on the film he shot late last year. If all goes as planned (and in the film industry, it never does) he will finish “GASP” by mid-July and it will hit theaters on August 21st, first in China and then…?

This is actually an oldie but goodie of mine (circa early 2007). I had just read a report about how frogs in parts of Costa Rica’s rain forest were dying off in alarming numbers, a sign that scientists said was concrete proof of global warming. When amphibians start to disappear in large numbers, it usually means that something in their ecosystem is off, and in this case, scientists connected the rise in temperatures to the death of large populations of Harlequin frogs. Because of their permeable skin, amphibians feel the effects of climate change first, which means the rest of us better watch out.

Okay, so that was the inspiration for my cookie design back then, but not for today’s post. So relax. I’m not going to inundate you with a list of exotic frogs and their bizarre skin diseases.

I put up this old design for two reasons. The first is obvious: I’m still in a bit of a creative funk, so I didn’t come up with a new design for today. Nice having a big portfoio…

The other reason is that I’ll be recreating many of my old designs in the coming weeks. My husband has offered to photograph them for me. He’s too nice to tell me directly that he can’t stand the way I photograph my cookies. But honestly, I would love for him to take some unique shots of my best works. I mean, look at the difference between the shot in this post and the one in my banner. Hello. Part of the reason his shots turn out so much better is that when he shoots digitally, he uses an SLR camera, a Nikon D200. I’m still trying to figure out my little Canon G9 (the frog up there was shot with my old Leica D-Lux).  Like a real pro, he still professes a deep love for film over digital, but that’s material for another post altogether. Anyway, he knows how to use his equipment, in addition to framing and lighting his subjects. So I’m happy that he’s going to help me put some more zing and oomf into my portfolio.

Hope you had a nice father’s day yesterday. And here’s to a good week.

Several people emailed me after Thursday’s post, asking, “Where’s Wolf’s cake?”

Well…I had all sorts of plans. I wanted to make a massive cone-shaped cake with colorful, whimsical and mischievous designs all over it. But I had a deadline to meet. Not just in this economy but in my unpredictable line of work, paid work has to take precedence over everything. Then I realized that I would need certain equipment, including a croquenbouche mold – do you have any idea how expensive those things are? – and a few other utensils that I couldn’t acquire locally. My plans for an insanely ridiculous and ultimately unforgettable cake were squashed.

I found another cake, this time an airy, orange genoise cake that I had bookmarked a while back. It was simple, didn’t require icing, just powdered sugar, whipped cream and fresh fruit on top. Somehow, it didn’t come out right. Wolf liked it, I didn’t, and I just didn’t feel like photographing it. Honestly, I think if you had seen it, you, too, would have wondered if I had suddenly caught some hand-crippling (and also brain wrecking) disease last week. It just wasn’t worth remembering.

With my creative juices still not flowing as much as I’d like, I decided to skip coming up with a new cookie design. I did, however, want to make a Nectarine and Blueberry pie that I saw at Paz’s blog (which she, in turn, found at Sweet Paul’s blog). Here in southern Cali we get all sorts of fruits and vegetables year-round, and I was pretty certain I’d find both good nectarines and ripe blueberries at the local farmers market. I did. Score! I was feeling pretty good about this.

It has been over a year since I made a pie. The last one was an orange flavored pie which was reportedly the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite. I can picture him taking a few bites, and for just a few moments, managing to put the tensions that surrounded him aside. That, to me, is what a good pie can do. More than cake, more than cookies, more than home-made ice cream, pie makes you live in the moment. Fresh fruit baked in a thick, flaky crust that comes out of the oven just right. One bite and mmm, mmm, mmm. Fuggeddaboudit.

There’s a trick you should know about baking pies: the crust on the edges can burn easily, so about halfway through the baking process, pull it out of the oven, and wrap a strip of foil around the edges, and let it finish baking that way. You won’t regret it.

And you won’t regret making this one, either. I used nectarines that were just about to ripen because I like ‘em tart. The sweetness of the blueberries balanced everything out. This recipe yields too much dough, so you’ll have enough for…a second pie. Go for it!

Nectarine and blueberry pie (from Sweet Paul)

Pastry:
4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 3/4 cups unsalted cold butter, in cubes
1 tablespoon white vinegar (this makes the crust very flaky; personally I think it’s optional)
1 large egg
1/2 cup iced water
Combine flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl.
Add butter and use your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
Mix vinegar, egg and water in a bowl. Add one tablespoon at a time until dough holds together. Don’t add too much!
Press the dough gently together, wrap in plastic and chill for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. (Paul’s recipe says 450; I found this too hot).
Take it out the dough, and roll it flat.
Fill a 9 inch pie plate with it.
Cut of excess dough. Flute edges with your index and thumb.

Filling:
5 yellow nectarines, pitted and sliced (I needed only 4, but the ones I used were large). Don’t use white nectarines when baking. They become very mushy.
1/2 cup blueberries (I needed only 1/4 cup; I think add as much as you want)
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk

Place the nectarines and blueberries in a bowl and toss with flour. Place it in the pie shell. Pour over the lemon juice and sprinkle with sugar. Line the edge of the pie with the small dough circles. Beat egg and milk and brush the dough with it. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until golden. Cool and serve.