mycalicocat

Any day that involves cloves and vanilla icing soundsl ike a good day to me.

I'm taking "almost" two weeks off, with a planned half-day at the office to calculate people's bonuses, plus the knowledge that I'll pick a piece of work I enjoy and try to think abotu it creatively. But Joe has just asked how dumplings (chinese version) are made, so I figure he and I should work on that issue for a while too. (Recipes appreciated)
 

The only Chinese dumplings I ever had were round white balls of dough with a pickled plum in the middle. Is that the kind he wants? Personally, I think a Gingerbread house would be a worthy project
 

one would have to mortgage the gingerbread house if they used the no red hat dough.:):)i need to go back to the other topic and add clove chewing gum to the bygone days, although you can occasionally still find it at selected stores. i have fruit cake cookie dough sitting in the fridge to be baked at a later date, hopefully tomorrow night. no time off for me though. spouses are threatening each other with knives for spending $8 each for gingerbread people or else shoplifting the ingredients so the people don't cost $8 each.:):)
 

The boy wants dumplings with spicy meat inside. I'm sure in the classic Chinese version, it's the leftover bits, ground up enought that you can't tell what it is and spiced up alot both to helpit keep and to disguise weak or icky flavor. Our favorite Chinese place offers them steamed or fried, and every takeout order from our house has to have at least two full orders.
 

Okay, continuing the gingerbread saga. I left the dough in the fridge overnight, and then when I got home early from work, I rolled it out between sheets of parchment and put it in the freezer to let it freeze for an hour. I could see at that point that I would have exactly two gingerbread people - a male and female and the rest would be cookies.
When I took it out of the freezer, it wouldn't separate from the parchment (I hate parchment now, almost as much as I hate yahoo websites and Norton antivirus). After much messing around, I scraped the blankety-blank stuff off the parchment (It was defrosted) and used flour and rolled it out again, and at that point, I got the woman cut out. I put her in the oven and she immediately began to spread so that she is this big blobby person Possibly the biggest single cookie in the world. While she was expanding to fill up the cookie tin, I cut out the man, and tore his leg off trying to get the dough out of the cookie cutter, so I had to roll him out, cut him out and put him back in the freezer for a while because the dough had become gooey. Finally, I got him onto a cookie sheet without any amputations and baked him. He's pretty funny looking and way thinner than Mrs. Gingerbread. However, I baked all the scraps just like they were, and those are some GOOD COOKIES.
now all I have to do is fancy these two funny looking cookie people up with icing and see if they look good enough for a food page photo. (I can have two different photos and we can reduce Mrs. G. to 50 percent or something).
And then I have to figure out what to tell the readers about the recipe. I'm thinking that I'll have them add a half cup of flour to the recipe and chll it overnight and then roll it out like any other cookies and use ordinary sized cutters. Nobody will know that these are gigantic cookies.
NO way am I going to mention parchment. Fie on thee, parchment.

I don't know what it is about my life right now. All week long people have been sympathizing with me about my Thanksgiving fire, but I haven't mentioned my backwards eyeglasses or the week it has taken me to make two gbread people, or the fact that I have columnists who send me condensed versions of the Velveteen Rabbit as columns.
 

Further comment. Kristina laughed at the rotundity of my gingerbread woman, and then I tried to lift the gingerbread man up with a spatula and his head broke off, so I ate it. and decided that I would figure out something else for a food feature. Does anybody want the decorating set? It's never even been opened.
 

Barely, I just figured out your comment comment.
Re court, did I ever tell you the story about Judge Blanks and the man who ran out of his courtroom in the ancient Macon County courthouse, ran upstairs with deputies in hot pursuit, and then ran through the door where a segregation balcony had ONCE been, and ran straight out into the air right back in the courtroom and fell and broke his leg, so the county had to pay for his hospital care?
I think maybe he was a gingerbread sort, but AT LEAST he didn't pretend that he had written the Velveteen Rabbit.
 

Beau's mother sent him a one-pound solid chocolate rabbit. And then the next day, I was alone in the house and wanted some REALLY bad. Teeth didn't work, and I couldn't apply enough pressure with a knife. So I put it in a plastic bag and stood on a chair and held it over my head and dropped it, hoping a bit would break off. Well, what broke off was the head, so boy was it going be obvious.

So I got out the best platter in the house, placed it in plain view of the front door, and put the head on it. When Beau came home, he cleared his throat aggressively and asked just what that was.

Without looking up from the typewriter, I calmly answered: " It's John the Rabster."

I think you missed a golden (ginger) opportunity, there, N.R.H.
 

It was all okay once I gave up. Also despite all mishaps, the stuff is really good to eat--milder than gingersnaps and very buttery, so I have broken the man and woman up into large shards to eat. I might use the recipe again, but I think I would just make cookies by dropping them be teaspoonsful and flattening them out with the bottom of a glass. Also think they would be good with walnuts or pecans in them.
I have sent you two chinese dumplings recipes by e-mail
 

i think your story should be just as written. we all need to relieve a little of the holiday stress. it would make everyone out in reader land feel better about their own christmas preparations.:) it's certinly made my day and i'm on the way to the jail. think what it would do for a normal person. your readers are the same people who keep requesting "grandma got run over by a reindeer".:):) you might even win some writing award for truth in journalism. you should include your thanksgiving fire as a bridge.:):)
 

If it's of help to anyone, here is my ginger bread recipe. I've used it to make cookies, gingerbread men and even elaborate gingerbread houses. I don't roll them out between parchment paper; I just lightly flour the dough, board and rolling pin. I bet your's was yummy AND difficult because it was sooo buttery!

Gingerbread Cookies
(for gingerbread men)


1 ½ cups dark molasses
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup cold water
1/3 cup butter (5 ½ T.)
7 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
1 t. allspice
5 t. ginger
1 t. cloves
2 t. cinnamon

Decorations: White frosting and cinnamon candies.

Cream butter. Mix in molasses sugar, and water. Beat in remaining ingredients a little at a time, dispensing with the mixer and using a spoon or your hands as it becomes stiff.

Chill at least 2 hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough ¼” thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet 7-10 minutes.

Cool and decorate by piping on frosting and adding cinnamon candies.
 

Young at Heart -- The proportions in your recipe (particularly re flour and butter) help me understand why mine was so gucky and sticky. The gingerbread baked up nicely in the end but the "people" were all weirdly shaped. Anyway, the next time I do this, I'll use your recipe instead.
Thanks!
Barely,if I write the gbread story right after the fire story I could get a reputation for being a dingbat :) Must protect professional status.
 

it doesn't reek of dingbat to me, but then i sort of march to the beat of a different drummer. i saw it as the survival of every woman in the face of adversity story, sort of a culinary steel magnolias.:)
 

oops, i guess i typed the code instead of my name. see what just one day off does to me.:)
 

That was really very funny, because it popped up on my e-mail and the xxkjji gave the impression that some stranger had dropped in and read all that stuff about gingerbread! I went from my e-mail to calicocat and was about to write, "Welcome, xxkjji, but you have to pick a better name!" and then I saw it was YOU! (I know those letter codes seem stupid, but apparently they keep hackers out or something. Like somebody might steal our ideas and sell them.
 

i could have been from a star wars movie.:)