Treats for appetites of every size
The Green Harbor Labor Day Races were the highlight of my summers growing up. Every year, we spent the long weekend at the beach with my mom’s whole family, competing in (and winning) swimming, running, and three-legged races, egg tosses, and the local parade. We had cookouts, went looking for crabs, walked on the jetty, and generally did everything you would think we would do in a quintessential New England beach town.
There were two possible starting sentences to this post and I couldn’t decide between them. Every so often my inner Gemini gets the best of me. They also lead to very different musings, so rather than choose one I’m including both. You should probably read the post twice, too. Then you’ll get the full effect.
In college, my absolute favorite on campus job was managing the Calhoun Buttery. This mostly entailed making various different vehicles for hot sauce (buffalo chicken wraps, quesadillas, nachos…) for anyone that found themselves in the basement of our dorm between 10pm and 1am on weeknights, playing lots of 90s throwback music and TSwift, and getting paid to hang out with my friends.
It’s officially Christmas cookie season. That means, for the next couple of weeks (probably through New Year’s) it will be all Christmas cookies all the time. This year, I’m going the slightly nontraditional route with my tins, including some new recipes and experiments, but if you’re looking for some classics, here’s last year’s selection: Gingerbread Men Dream Cookies Butter Cookies Anyways, this week’s recipe was definitely an experiment. I had seen it on Pinterest and thought they looked amazing. Also, I needed to make something that would keep for a week since I’ll be making the rest of my cookies in …
This weekend, a friend from college and I were going to go apple picking. Then we were going to make awesome apple-filled desserts. Then it rained. So, instead, we “picked” apples from A&P, as well as some other goodies, and decided to try a recipe she had found on Baker’s Royale for pumpkin magic bars. Now, I’m all about magic bars. I’ve posted them before here, and the addition of pumpkin was brilliant in my opinion. However, baking is always an adventure, and there are definitely some modifications I would make to this one if I were to try it …
This weekend, I didn’t have to bake at all. I had three lovely sous chefs to do all the work. I just diced some strawberries and they did the rest. Here they are, hard at work:
As I write this post, I am sitting on the patio of our condo, surrounded by beautiful views of Plymouth Bay. I’m watching a sailboat as it comes out from behind the jetty. I don’t think my parents are going to be able to get rid of me at the end of this summer.
Spring break was supposed to start Friday. It was supposed to be a half day, and then I would have all of this coming week off. However, apparently when you have seven snow days, those week-long-break perks of being a teacher can disappear. So instead, I have two more days between me and an extended long weekend with my parents. Rather than wallow in these extra two days, I used my last weekend before Lent is over to bake for one more person at my school, that happens to be a celiac (can’t eat gluten).
Continuing on my theme of doing something extra for Lent, this week I baked lemon squares at the request of an art teacher at school. I bring things into the staff room pretty regularly, but usually it’s just leftovers of things I make for others. This time, the lemon squares are specifically for my fellow teachers. And it’s finally spring, so yellow, citrusy treats finally feel appropriate.
I decided to be selfish this weekend. Usually, I love to bake things for other people. I bring treats into work and they disappear before 2nd period. I bring treats to my classes and my students remember that I can be cool on occasion. I bring treats to friends and make more friends. But this week I decided to make something only I would get to eat: granola bars.