Here's my Hunger Games braid. :-) We saw the movie yesterday. Very faithful to the book although they had to skim too much! Ben and I think they nailed the Capital culture best of all.
I got to come home early today since I'm on call. I hope there's not too much going on this weekend. I like to sleep and knit an awful lot.

Lemon cookies verdict:  Just as soft on days 2 and 3.  I think I have a winner here!

How I love quiet days where the seasons are changing.  It's been a rough week of call for me.  I worked 10 hours Monday (4 of which with a demented patient who repeated called me stupid, disrespectful, incompetent, etc etc).  Then I was called out from 8 pm to 2 am.  Yesterday they made my shift a day call, but called me in at 7 am.  I was home by 4 pm and didn't have to go back after that, luckily.  This weekend I'm on call again, Saturday 6 am to Monday 6 am.  Fingers crossed that it doesn't get too crazy.

But all that's behind me now because I'm home with my family and my craft room and my kitchen!  I have lemon cookies on the counter and lilies and pussy willows from my mom.  There's a yeasty smell in the air from a batch of Charlotte's Famous French Bread rising in my oven.  Friends are coming over tonight to watch Sherlock and enjoy a potluck dinner.  I have 7 skeins of home-spun yarn setting their twists on racks in the sunshine.  I'm blocking a rainbow beanie hat that I made this week for Ben using yarn I spun.  I knit a swatch of yarn to gauge a spring-time,  light weight sweater for Jack.  Jack is napping, perfectly on schedule.  He still takes 2 naps a day, usually 1-2 hours each!  It gives us lots of quiet, adult time to work on projects.  We have plans to see Hunger Games as a date tomorrow afternoon while Jack plays at his friend's house.  Today I need to take him to the library, and maybe to Sunflower for their blackberry sale. 

Happy Spring!

You know my Big Soft Ginger cookies?  The ones I'm famous for?  The ones I make several times a year?  I came up with a new version.  Introducing Big Soft Lemon cookies!


I have never altered a recipe this radically.  It was scary, but a total success!  I love lemon and with today being the first day of Spring, ginger and molasses have no place in this kitchen. 

I basically followed the tried and true recipe with a couple substitutions:
--Lemon zest and lemon oil in place of all the spices
--A combination of corn syrup and honey in place of the molasses

You could do all corn syrup or honey (or even maple syrup) according to the internet.  I left out lemon juice, which is often a part of lemon recipes.  I was afraid the acidity would alter the cookie's texture.  I hate how most lemon cookies are either crunchy or cake-like.  These are true cookies.  Like Ben said, we'll see how they hold up tomorrow.  That's the key strength to the original BSG.  If they are good (and not all eaten!) maybe I can take a better picture of them in natural daylight and submit it to allrecipes.

Big Soft Lemon Cookies

Ingredients (with my typical alterations for high altitude)

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• Scant 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• Grated zest of one lemon
• 1 egg
• ¼ tsp lemon oil
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup/honey combination
• ¼ cup turbinado or demera sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 1 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the lemon zest, egg, and lemon oil.  Add in the water and corn syrup/honey. Gradually stir the flour, salt, and baking powder. Shape dough into walnut sized balls, and roll them in the turbinado/demera sugar. Place the cookies 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet, and flatten slightly.
3. Bake for 11 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Back at home, we had a quiet Sunday.  Church meetings in the morning, then Jack took a long nap while we knit or did homework.  I'm re-watching Firefly on Blu-Ray. 

We had sandwiches and soup for dinner because it's so easy.  Jack is a BIG fan of tomato soup.

I put my photos from Beauty and the Beast on a flickr set after trimming and cropping them. Below are some of my very favorites. (PS Ben's camera rocks! These were all taken from the last row with no flash. Color me impressed.)

Jack was a trooper.  The show went until 9 pm, we didn't leave until 9:30.  He stayed in his grandparents' arms happily, and I'm told was quite enthralled by the show.  I saw him tell them whenever a character was wearing a hat.

(It's a Spaced reference)

Beauty and the Beast is officially over!  My parents came to town just to see the show and I'm so proud they saw it.  I'm also tremendously proud of these kids.  I heard over and over that this was the best show the school had done, and I can at least agree that it's the best of our three.

I took over 350 photos.  I edited and cropped many tonight, but alas it is quite late.  Here's a favorite from the Gaston number (I love our Beast/Prince joining in, incognito in his beard, on the left):

The obligatory directors getting accolades on stage (but we're always touched that they do this):
 The whole cast after the audience petered out:

And the reason I do these shows:
v