Day 568

One of the nice things about not drinking in response to a really lousy day is that you don't end up carrying the lousy into another day.  When I got up this morning - half hour later than usual - I was able to just put aside all of yesterday's nonsense and move into cookie-baking mode.

I did lemon bars, pecan tassies (miniature pecan pies made in a mini-muffin tin; it's a Southern US recipe and I have no idea why they are "tassies.") and sugar cookies then decided I'd had enough and had a nice lie-down then a walk in town with my audiobook. It started snowing during my walk so I put the car in the garage when I got home. That's relevant because I'd planned to make fudge tonight then realized the fudge needed butter, of which I had none having used it all on the earlier baking. Didn't feel like going back out in the snow so I put the fudge on hold.

One thing I notice though: even with using freshly-squeezed lemon juice which has sat around marinating with the lemon zest for a while the lemon bars just aren't really all that lemon-y. This is a bonus to Youngest, who doesn't much like lemon, but it is an annoyance to me because the recipe doesn't call for lemon extract but clearly that's what is needed.  Doesn't call for yellow food coloring either but that would be how to get them looking all pretty. The sugar cookie recipe has an excellent texture (uses oil and powdered sugar in addition to butter and granulated sugar) but even with vanilla extract it doesn't have the same intense Sugar! Cookie! flavor of the kind you buy in a tube in the dairy aisle.  It's both interesting and somewhat annoying that all the artificial flavors and colors have changed our collective palates.

Tomorrow will be the grocery shopping as usual, of course. Have the menus planned and the list already written. Need to remember to stall and head out a little later so they have a real cashier line open.

And so it goes.