random thoughts – Day 1,736 – (Tuesday) – holiday high gear

All the way up until late this afternoon, I was thinking I didn’t have it in me to bake this year. Usually, I make a couple trays of saltine bark and several different cookie recipes and maybe some chocolate dipped pretzels, but this year, I’ve been feeling all sorts of shades of blah. Just think of a muddy mess of the crappiest colors in a 1970s polyester plaid and that's the general feeling. The massive work shakeup thing of last week eviscerated any nuggets of holiday ambition that may have been trying to fight their way up from beneath the baseline of blech.

At 4:00, while running through schedules between today and Christmas I realized with a sense of dread that Christmas is in one short week. Then I realized that this Wednesday, also known as tomorrow, is the last day that everyone will be in the office until after Christmas. And I was hit with suddenly wanting to dive in and make some holiday sweets like I have done every other year. 

Normally, the holiday baking process spans a couple weeks with recipe review and selection, ingredient procurement, and then several nights of loading things into the oven, pulling them out a few minutes later, rotating cookie sheets, and dipping other things in melted chocolate. Not this year. The timeline had contracted dramatically, and as a result, there would be no time for multiple oven bake cycles and cooling things on racks on the limited counter space.

Haystacks chilling on
a bed of ice packs.

There was a quick inventory of the baking supplies cabinet and the list of treats was drafted based on what was on hand. At 5:00, there was a jaunt to Market Basket for a few items needed. By 5:45, I was in the kitchen melting and stirring and mixing and scraping and production was in high gear. Three and a half hours later, production was done for the night. Semi-sweet chocolate coins with sprinkles. Butterscotch chow mein noodle haystacks. Saltine bark with almond slivers (aka Christmas Crack). A chocolate version of the haystacks with potato sticks. White chocolate coins with crushed peppermint.

Thanks to a gift that arrived earlier in the day, there was an accidental discovery of a good idea. A box from Omaha Steaks required the total reorganization of the freezer and eviction of four ice packs which sat on the counter for lack of a better pace. They became an excellent cooling device for the trays of sweets that needed to chill and set. 

Caramel and crackers in the oven.

Later, when the saltine bark base came out of the oven and was topped with chocolate and almonds, there was another idea. After a decade of making the stuff, it finally dawned on me to use the pizza cutter to cut the stuff. It’s smaller than the knives and worked better in the cookie sheet. Between the ice bed and the pizza cutter, I was feeling like a genius.

The genius feeling faded quickly. While cleaning the pans, I noticed my favorite cookie sheet bore the imprint of the cut lines from the pizza cutter. Then, I found the dried apricots I had just bought with the intention of dipping them in chocolate. Everything was already put away, but it wouldn’t take long to re-engage and crank them out. The kicker was that all the stuff for the office was already packaged in containers and locked in the car to solve the joint problems of it not fitting in the refrigerator and fear of forgetting them at home in the morning. 

The whole time I was busting butt in the kitchen, Kiki was meowing at me from the dining room. Approximately every 20 minutes, she would make a cameo appearance in the kitchen to meow at me face to face and louder. Perhaps she was troubled I was not in my usual spot in the living room and felt the need to point it out. Once I was seated on the couch, she was signaling she wanted head pats. She's adorable.