Category Archives: gay

Dec 22 2010
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christmas, cooking, family, gay, parenting, Uncategorized

Martha Stewart Cornmeal Biscotti with Pistachios and Cranberries

so here’s part of our family mythology.    When we went for the first time to meet Zev at his foster-mom’s house (Grandma Carolyn, who has become a great friend…   a whole other story) I thought we should take cookies.   I had this new martha stewart book and made these.   The kids (there were five of them then) were so excited about home-made cookies and then ended up gnawing on these brick-like little biscuits…   it was pretty funny.   I’ll see if i can find the photo of zev watching Gary eat his and trying to copy him 🙂

probably not the best cookies for kids but we look forward to them every year…   i’ll put up a photo of them when they’re done.   my little sister sent a wonderful box of goodies today and included some shortbread – i’d spent the day making shortbread and we did a taste-test.   hers were better 🙂   oh well…

 

 

Makes about 2 dozen

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 cups yellow cornmeal
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
  • 1 cup dried cranberries
  • 1 cup chopped pistachios

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in center. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt.
  2. Put butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until smooth. Add sugar and mix until pale and fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time, until well combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture all at once; mix until just combined. Add lemon zest, cranberries, and pistachios and mix until combined.
  3. Transfer dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Pat into a log that is roughly 14 by 3 1/2 inches. Bake until firm, lightly browned, and slightly cracked on top, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack, about 15 minutes.
  4. Transfer log to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut on the diagonal into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Arrange slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Bake cookies, rotating sheet halfway through, until they begin to brown at edges, 15 to 18 minutes. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 weeks.

Read more at Marthastewart.com: Cranberry-Pistachio Cornmeal Biscotti – Martha Stewart Recipes

 

Dec 22 2010
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art, family, film, gay, Uncategorized

Shelter / Elf

just watched this movie, Shelter, and really liked it – sweet, gentle, real movie – indie i think.   IMDB is funny: “When his college dreams are sidelined by family obligations, a young man finds comfort in surfing with his best friend’s brother.”  um…   he realizes he’s gay, falls in love, adopts his nephew, gets a scholarship to art school and they all go off to live happily ever after in Los Angeles leaving behind his needy family.    anyway, it’s a beautiful movie.

and we started off the evening by watching Elf – our family tradition…   Zev knows every line of the movie by now.  He “owns” it – just found out that they showed it at school on his last day; i hope he wasn’t speaking up and predicting the lines!

Dec 14 2010
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art, celebration, family, gay, poetry, technology, Uncategorized

preparing for Christmas

so, when i lived on Gabriola island i used to spend endless time decorating the house and yard, baking gingerbread cookies and making ornaments and getting the perfect gifts for people and creating cards for them…   and now there doesn’t seem like time for any of that in our new family life.   funny.   when we were preparing to adopt, gary and i had to make a photo album of typical things that we do together that we might do with our prospective child.   and one of the photos was of us baking cookies – hundreds of them, all different kinds – it was like our very own cookie exchange.   we had so much fun.   and every year i seem to bake less and less of them 🙂   this year we bought pre-made dough in plastic and i was envious in the american grocery store where they can buy it in bulk.

but i put up the lights yesterday while waiting for gary and zev to come home (was locked out of the house so i had some time) and today we shopped a little – my friend kristen freaked me out when she said on Nov 4th that she was finishing up a bit of last-minute christmas shopping!   every year i cannot surprise gary, no matter what.   like, if i got him a unicorn he’d say “oh what did you get me?” and i’d say “it’s bigger than a bread box” and he’d say “is it a unicorn?”  hmph.   zev, unfortunately, has developed this same kind of psychic ability.   so one of the things we’ve been talking about is getting iphones for each other, or at least for him.   so we went off this morning to the iphone store and of course they didn’t have any, but if they did have it would have been 800 bucks blah blah blah (because we’re not that long into our plan).   and then they gave me some tips on how to find an iphone.   so i called around and actually found one, made some excuse for why i needed to go out alone and went to buy one – it was almost 900 by the time i was done but i thought it would be worth it because he’d be so surprised.

so i was chortling away to myself, but also waiting to see what would happen next, that would allow him to somehow find out what was up.   so the phone rings, zev comes rushing downstairs to answer it (i wasn’t going to bother) and hands it over to me and it’s the rival phone company saying we were great customers but why had we switched (18 months ago).   we switched because we wanted iphones.   so then they offer to pay off our cancellation fees with the new phone company, give us iphones and a bunch of other stuff for a little more than half what we’re paying the new company for our iphone 3Gs.    i told them i couldn’t talk about it and they should call back later.

so then i have to go tell gary about it and admit that i’ve already bought him an iphone so i’d have to take that back…   but in the end, we’ll both have new iphone 4s within the next few days.    geeky but fun 🙂

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the other thing i did today was work on a digital drawing about the T. S. Eliot poem, “Journey of the Magi” – one of my favourite poems.   it was quite a bit of fun but didn’t print correctly – the colors when i printed it came out wrong.   i might work on it some more and send it down to staples to have them print it.    here is the latest iteration….

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so sometime this week we need to put up the tree and i need to get some other stuff done.    i am looking forward to all the traditional stuff but mostly to new year’s – to that sense that things might change.   i am not quite sure what change i want, but something seems to be on the horizon…

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