Jenyfer Matthews

It’s only the first week of the new year and I’m already thinking that I may have to amend my resolution to make dessert every week. Baking takes time and then there’s all that delicious stuff just sitting around, calling to me. I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’ll probably have to plan to make 1/2 batches of cookies and other things like pies and cakes that only last for a couple of days or one dessert might well bleed into another!

At the moment I have several bags of chocolate chips (2 mint, 1 milk chocolate) in my cupboard so I thought about making chocolate (mint) chocolate chip oatmeal cookies (got that?) but I didn’t have the time so I opted for a tried and true family recipe: toffee bars.

1/2 c butter
1/2 c Crisco *
1 c brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 t vanilla

2 c flour
6 Hershey bars

Cream together butter, sugar, egg yolk, and vanilla, then add flour. Bake for 15 minutes at 350F, top with chocolate. Let cool slightly then cut into squares.

(* the recipe above is as it was handed down. I don’t use Crisco, I just use 1 c of butter instead)

I remember eating toffee bars at my grandmother’s house when we would go to visit. Her bars were always melt-in-your-mouth rich and it was never possible to eat just one. Over time I started to make them as well, but usually only at Christmas time or in situations when I could share them. I still can’t resist them so it’s just as well not to have the temptation!

I would have taken a picture, but the bars I made yesterday were not my finest batch. I’m not sure exactly what happened but the base was crunchier than it should have been. Not enough butter? Baked too long? Then there was the problem with the chocolate. My grandmother used to top hers with 6 Hershey bars, wait for them to melt, and then spread the chocolate around like frosting. I’ve always used chocolate chips instead of Hershey bars and up until a few years ago it worked fine. Yesterday I used milk chocolate chips and they softened with the heat, but refused to spread. Attempting to spread them simply caused them to grab the top of the base and roll around the crumbs. The best I could do was sort of smoosh them down and try to spread them out a bit that way.

I mentioned this problem in another blog post a couple of years ago when a similar thing happened and one reader said that manufacturers treat chocolate chips now so they won’t melt in transit. Thanks a lot. Fat lot of good it does me when I’m baking and I need them to melt. And I don’t even want to think about what it is they are adding to them so they resist melting because that can’t be good for you… Maybe it’s the difference between milk chocolate chips and semi-sweet chips?

My birthday is next week and I’m planning a small get together for which I was mulling over the idea of making truffles – however now I’m wondering if I can find any decent chocolate that I can manage to melt properly, especially without a double-boiler. Stay tuned…

I finally decided to add a couple of “follow my blog” buttons on the sidebar because some people like to keep up with things that way and I thought I’m make it easy for them. Also, I’ve noticed that when my blog appears in the sidebar of people who read my blog on a regular basis, the post is often a week or two behind in spite of the fact that I regularly post 3x a week. I thought maybe that was because they hadn’t visited, but they told me they thought I hadn’t posted. I hoped that installing Google Friend Connect would address that issue.

The Networked Blogs doo-hickey was easy to install, but the Google Friend Connect has not been. It should just be a simple cut and paste of the HTML, but somehow it isn’t. I use Firefox as a browser and when I look at my sidebar, I can’t see the box at all. When I use Internet Explorer I can see the FC graphic. It isn’t simply a matter of browsers though because I use Firefox all the time and I can other people FC graphic. Grrr…

I’m working on sorting it out, but tell me – what browser are you using and can you see it or not? If you click on it, does it work?

Why does flipping the calendar from the last day in December to the first day of January always seem like such a good time to start fresh? One day is essentially no different that the next and yet people all over the world choose to make promises to improve themselves / their lives. We could start a self-improvement project at ANY time, but a new year seems to mean a new chance to get it right.

For all my talk about not liking to make resolutions, I’m no different. Lately I’ve been seized by a powerful impulse to clean – the top of the fridge, the baseboards, the shower tiles, painting walls. Things that I’ve been overlooking easily all year seem to be glaring at me now, demanding to be dealt with. Most of the chores I’ve been compelled to deal with lately are little things that take ten minutes at most, at least individually. I’d like to think that I could at least try to keep up with those sorts of things a bit better in the coming year.

I might even keep a tablet where I can make a daily list. I do better when I have a list where I can tick things off, one by one, because I forget until I see something – and usually at that point I’m in the middle of something else. A list might do the trick.

But what about resolutions? I’d like to improve my time management. You’d think that as much time as I have at my disposal I could be just a bit more productive. There are currently 11 hours a week that I spend at tennis lessons. Often I end up watching the children or chatting to other parents, but just as often there is no one around. Since I have a netbook, I’d like to flip my schedule a bit and work on writing in the morning, when I have quiet and can concentrate and do email / Facebook / and blogging in the evening during tennis lessons. Sounds reasonable – we’ll see if it works.

As per usual, I’d like to eat better and exercise. I’ve been saying that for years with no real change – it’s probably a bit too broad and nebulous a goal. As soon as I resolve to “eat better” I started craving fried chicken and cheese burgers. Maybe this year I need to simply try to eat more fresh fruit in the course of a day. An apple with lunch isn’t so big a goal. As for exercise, this year, in addition to continuing my yoga classes twice a week, I think I’ll try to take a ten minute spin around the block after I put the children on their school bus in the morning. That’s not too much to ask, right?

The best success I’ve ever had with a resolution was with trying a new recipe every month and I’d like to continue with that. Along the same lines, here is the one goal I have that I think has the best chance of success this year: making a nice dessert once a week, preferably something with a new recipe. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or fancy, just tasty. Once a week might be a challenge, but I’m sure my children won’t have any problem with keeping me on target with this particular goal.

Pay no attention to the fact that “eating better” and “making nice desserts” could be considered conflicting goals!

What about you? Any goals?

I did some of my shopping in the US last summer, some of my shopping in Germany earlier in the month, and the rest of my shopping in Egypt. On the one hand, shopping over a longer span of time is less stressful during the holiday season. On the other hand, if you shop too far ahead of time or while you are traveling, you can’t take things back if they don’t work out.

Everything I bought was well received. My husband especially liked the clothes I bought for him in Germany and I was greatly relieved that everything I selected fit properly. The problem? One of the t-shirts I bought as a layering piece for a sweater sprung a hole in the shoulder seam the first time I washed it, before he ever wore it! I can probably fix it, but I shouldn’t have to start mending things immediately. I was even more disgusted when I noticed that a new pair of socks I bought him had a hole in the toe after one outing. They were not inexpensive socks! Now I have to darn the toe of them if he’s ever going to wear them again. Not exactly what I had in mind to do this week, especially as these were meant to replace other older socks…Grrrr…

I also bought him a digital alarm clock in Germany. That at least works fine – sort of. The box said it was “radio controlled” which I assumed meant that it had some sort of central, official time keeping feature. I wasn’t sure that it would work that way in Egypt, but surely you can just manually set the clock, right? Hmmm…maybe.

The clock is a nice one, but it a bit more complicated that it really needs to be. I bought this particular model because it was one of the few that actually had a power cord. My husband read the instructions and set the time zone – what do you know, there is radio control in Egypt. The problem is that the control tower doesn’t know what time it is here! I can’t blame them really – there was an awful lot of confusion for the inhabitants back in Aug / Sept when the government kept switching the time back and forth to suit their Ramadan schedule. However, it isn’t so amusing when the clock insists that it is actually an hour later than it really is and in turn wakes you up an hour earlier than you intended! He reset it once after a “false alarm” and it happened again the next morning. I hate gadgets that think they are smarter than you are. Now he has to figure out what time zone would be compatible with our current time just to fool the clock into showing what our local time actually is! Grrrr…

My own gifts were much more successful – at least nothing has yet fallen apart! Who can go wrong with earrings and books? My daughter bought me a pair of small “gold” hoops, channel set with little zirconia – earrings that she chose and bought herself at her school Christmas fair. She was a bit nervous when she gave them to me because they weren’t “fancy” enough. They are in fact lovely and I cherish them more because they were obviously so heartfelt. That is what the holiday should be about.

I’ll try to remember that next time that clock wakes me up at 4AM…and I’m darning new socks!

Christmas was a success in spite of my own foibles.

I had wrapped all of the boxed items earlier in the week, so all that remained to prepare on Christmas Eve was to put the last remaining items in gift bags and stuff the stockings. There were actually a few smaller items I would have liked to wrap, but I couldn’t find any of the tape.

The children were ready to go to bed from about noon on, if it meant they could hurry along the day, and they were busy planning what exactly they were going to leave for Santa. The gingerbread houses they’d made at our club didn’t survive beyond a few days of their creation but there were still a few straggly cookies left from the day they’d decorated them at our club. I felt a little bad about not having done any baking so after making us a nice dinner, I took the children to a bakery down the street to buy some sugar cookies. They didn’t mind staying up a little later to run that errand!

When we got home, the children made up cards and a plate of snacks for Santa and his reindeer before rushing off to bed.

In spite of the bakery box in the kitchen, the children put out the cookies they made at our club, along with a carrot for the reindeer. The cards they made were adorable, especially the fact that they signed their full names – just to be sure he would know exactly who they were from! The Santa with the sax? A goofy present from their tennis coach which pays annoyingly high pitched carols in digital beeping.

After the children went to bed and I was fairly sure they were asleep, I prepared the gift bags and brought all the presents downstairs to the tree. Then I started looking for the stocking stuffers. I found one bag with candy…but where was the other bag with the candy canes? I could remember having stashed it, but could not remember where! In the process of looking for the stocking stuffers, I found another bag I had hidden which contained some traditional Christmas cookies I brought back from Germany. If I had found that sooner, I wouldn’t have had to make the bakery run! Also found during the stocking stuffer search was a toy I bought for my son back in October when I was shopping for his birthday. Oops. I felt a bit like a squirrel, finding all these treasures I had hidden and then promptly forgotten about. I only wished I had found the toy earlier in the week because it would have really helped during my mad last minute shopping trip. Since using it now would only throw off the present count, it remains stashed for another occasion…

I did eventually find everything I intended for the stockings and finally fell into bed at a fairly reasonable time. (Is 1AM reasonable??)

The next morning I discovered where all the tape had gone: My son had wrapped up several rolls, along with most of the pencils in the house and a used lip balm for his father! Good thing I did a little back-up shopping for Dad!

The children seemed to enjoy the holiday in spite of my absentmindedness and lack of baking. According to them it was the best Christmas ever. That’s all I wanted for them. As happy as I am to be done with the season, I am already thinking ahead to next year and planning how to schedule baking, what we will eat, what decorations I need to gather… I have a whole year to get my act together but maybe this time I’ll keep a notebook telling me what I’ve bought and where I’ve hidden it!

I’ve gotten up early the last few mornings to wrap presents before the children wake up because I can’t seem to outlast them at night anymore!

I used to enjoy wrapping presents. I remember asking my mom to let me wrap her presents for her, which she was only too happy to let me do. It was fun to choose complementary paper and bows. It was something of an artistic process for me, creating a beautiful package, though I was never very good at tying pretty bows – I relied more on stick-on bows or curly ribbon or a combination of both.

So why is it that wrapping presents now is such a chore? One problem is perhaps the lack of inspiring wrapping paper. My mother had a huge selection as she bought a few new rolls every year. Nice quality wrapping paper is hard to get in Cairo and the few nice rolls I bought from a friend (who imported it from England) is fast dwindling. It doesn’t help that my son, in his early Christmas enthusiasm, got into my supply and used way more than was necessary to wrap his sister’s present and cut it badly besides. Sigh.

I do have pretty ribbon and tags, thanks to a friend in America who shipped them to me via a friend of hers at the US Embassy, but I’m still not much good at tying bows. Did you know that you could split wider flat ribbon and curl it with scissors? Maybe you already did, but I just learned that trick and used it to my advantage this morning.

I could of course just use gift bags; however, while convenient, bags are just not as tactile or fun. Children like to rip paper. Also, bags are hard to pile under the tree. A tree with only bags standing in groups under it just looks…odd.

I ran out of boxes to wrap just about the same time I ran out of patience and tape. I still have a few more things to wrap but those items will go in bags…

I LOVE this song. I will never hear Roxanne by The Police again and not think of Rudolph.

I am not sure what I was thinking, but I finally did my present inventory over the weekend and found that I was woefully unprepared for the big day! I fooled myself into thinking I was ahead of the game by having bought each child their WOW gift and a few of the harder to get items in the US this summer. That might have still worked out okay, except that three different sets of relatives prefer to deposit money in our bank account and let me do the shopping, which is safer than mailing things. It’s not as if this is a new system so I am not sure why I blanked on that aspect of things so completely this year.

Then I “lost” a week in Germany. I did get my husband’s presents while I was away, and a couple of things for my daughter, but did not find anything that inspiring for my son. As luck would have it, the children were invited on a play date yesterday afternoon so after dropping them off, I headed straight to the mall!

It’s always a toss of the dice here in Cairo as to whether you’ll find anything worth having or whether the items you want will be in the size you are looking for, but usually if you are willing to pay enough you can find something to buy.

This is the only time of year I will just close my eyes and pay whatever shops are asking to get the job done. Really, what choice do I have? $60 for a sweatshirt? Okay. $50 for a child’s sport watch? Done – next. The beauty of this system is that 1) I’m mostly spending money from the family so it doesn’t “hurt” my thrifty bone so much and 2) since I spend all year saying “NO” to the children, they usually don’t realize that I am the one who has actually purchased all these previously denied items!

At least this time I am truly finished! Now, to find a quiet hour (or two!) to wrap things up!

Ironically, I am posting about my first day in Germany last, more than a whole week later and after my return to Egypt. Huh – how did that happen?

The first full day I was in Germany, my friend had to work so her sister very kindly offered to show me around a bit. We had a fabulous lunch at the Fruh, a local brauhaus, in city center and then took a walk across the bridge over the Rhine River to a tall tower with a scenic view.

The bridge is for trains with a pedestrian sidewalk separated from the rails by a metal fence. I was walking along chatting when spots of color caught my attention from the corner of my eye. At first I thought it was bits of paper.

(click image to enlarge)

Then I took a closer look:

Yes, it is what it looks like – hundreds (and hundreds) of bicycle locks.

Bicycles are a popular mode of transportation here, and apparently it is a fairly recent trend to express your love for your significant other by placing a bike lock on the bridge. Some are even engraved.

In terms of ways that people publicly display their affections, I love this one. It’s clever and it really brightens up what is a very dull, gray structure. This project has even gained what I assume is public / state support as the words “Love is a Four Letter Word” have been stenciled and painted on the sidewalk.

It was a snowy day so the view from the tower wasn’t as impressive as it might have been in other weather – but I didn’t have to climb the tower to see it so that was a plus.

I deliberately planned my trip for December so I could see the Christmas markets so I knew I was taking my changes with the weather. I am however already scheming when I can visit again in warmer, clearer weather. My friend told me if I come back enough times, at various different times of year, I was bound to get a blue sky eventually! Works for me

I stole the post title from an email my German friend sent me, which she in turn stole from a horror movie. It seemed appropriate as my last two trips via Amsterdam have not been uneventful.

I flew from Cairo to Amsterdam and then took a city-hopper flight to Cologne. I decided to stop for my waffle cookie supply going because 1) I had time and 2) I wanted to put it in my checked back on the return flight. As it happens, it was a good thing I did.

I nearly missed my flight going to Cologne because of a long line at a snack counter. I think I was behind some sort of class trip. By the time I got back to my gate, they were preparing to start calling names and making threats on the terminal speakers. I was one of 5 who straggled up last minute, but I felt better that I had my snack and I wasn’t alone. It would have been embarrassing to get on the plane dead last because of a sandwich!

Coming back, my flight from Cologne was delayed by an hour because the plane coming from Amsterdam was delayed due to ice. Since I only had a little over an hour gap to make my connection, my only hope was that my Cairo flight would also be delayed by ice. It is the first time I’ve ever actively *wished* for a delay!

The pilot announced that anyone with a flight scheduled for 8:50 should expect to miss it. My Cairo flight was scheduled for 8:55pm, boarding to start at 7:50pm. The flight attendant I asked about my chances suggested that I run. We landed at 8:30pm. I made it into the terminal (by bus) and through passport control by 8:40pm. Then I grabbed a cart for my bags and ran from C hall across the entire airport to F hall – I even ran on the moving walkways!

I arrived at my gate breathless but in time. I am grateful that the airport staff took pity and kept the gate open longer than usual for me and a handful of others that galloped up last minute. More amazingly, my bag made it as well.

Settling in back to the routine is another story. Germany is only an hour different than Egypt, but there is always a price to be paid for going away. My price is apparently laundry…

My last day in Cologne my friend and host was ill – fever, stomach upset, headache. It was a cold, gray, drippy Sunday so it wasn’t exactly the most inviting day to go sightseeing – which I why I was all the more appreciative when her boyfriend offered to take me around in her stead. We went to lunch in a neighborhood pub and then we hopped on a train and went to the Chocolate Museum.

The museum is located on the Rhine River and in addition to the chocolate molds and historical advertising items included, you could also watch the chocolate being made – and even sample some.

It is probably a very good thing that they don’t just let people help themselves at the chocolate fountain!

(click any image to enlarge)

If I worked here, I would be their most conscientious employee ever and do frequent quality control tests!

This batch passed the test, but it pays to be vigilant!

There were machines mixing up chocolate and pouring it out to make candies – and people working with and packaging the chocolate. Okay sure, it might not be the most mentally stimulating job and it probably is a bit irritating to constantly be on display, but there are certainly worse jobs. Just think of the chocolate. The smell alone was enough to make me swoon.

Maybe it is me, but this Santa looks rather fierce!

Why don’t you see more chocolate pigs around? It seems strangely appropriate! (At least in my case!) There were also molds for bishops, elephants, and camels. It makes sense – why limit themselves to Santas and bunnies? Makes me wonder if you can buy a chocolate Pope at the Vatican gift shop.

Notice the size of the chocolate elephant compared to the woman walking behind the shelf – even assuming it is hollow, that elephant is the size of a small dog!

In my absence over the weekend, my son’s soccer team won their league’s tournament so it only seemed appropriate that we should celebrate that somehow.

My daughter’s team did not do so well, but I got her a chocolate soccer ball too. She made a goal doing a header off a corner kick so it wasn’t for lack of effort or skill on her part. We’ll just call hers a consolation prize. I got my husband some truffles cause I’m just nice that way!

The different Christmas markets around the cities have different themes and merchandise, which makes sense since many of them are located fairly close together. There was a market right next to the museum which featured a Middle Ages-theme – which my friends referred to as a “Middle Aged” market. I knew what they meant but it made me giggle – and them too once I explained it. I was picturing the stalls selling canes and reading glasses on chains. Instead they had armor and swords. Needless to say I didn’t buy anything but a glass of gluewein before we headed home for the day! It was just as well because with all the Christmas goodies I bought, I never would have fit a battle axe in my bag…