A few happy thoughts

[rymenhild]

With the help of prosewitch's recipe, I made blueberry-walnut biscotti last night. They aren't as pretty as prosewitch's versions, but they taste good. (Prose, how do you keep the dough from sticking to your hands when you shape it into logs? Also, how do you keep the cookies from going crumbly when you cut them?)

Also last night, I discovered, quite by accident, a piece of evidence in a Middle English Arthurian romance that suggests I'm right about an argument I've been making for years.

I am grading my midterms at about five times the speed I graded the last set of essays. This is very, very good.

Anyway, all's well here.

Comments

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

Sticky dough is, sadly, inevitable. And I always let the biscotti cool 10 minutes before cutting it. There's usually a bit of crumbling, but not terribly widespread.

And ooh, blueberry walnut sounds yummy! :)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The dried blueberries and walnuts did seem to work well together. Also, I added some of my roommate's orange flower water and some Bailey's Irish Cream, just because I could. It turned out to be a really good combination.

The problem with waiting ten minutes is, well, who has the patience to wait that long for cookies? I don't, yet. I'll have to work on that.

[ashen_key]

Also last night, I discovered, quite by accident, a piece of evidence in a Middle English Arthurian romance that suggests I'm right about an argument I've been making for years.

*eyes*

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you on AIM. Explaining it here would be putting my own research argument up on the Web without my name and without a filter; this would be bad.

[ashen_key]

*nods* ah, I see.

[tovaks.livejournal.com]

What argument? What evidence! Do tell, do tell! (Taking "Love in the Middle Ages" with Lansing this semester. Great material. Horrible presentation. So I'm really hankering for GOOD Arthurian Romance discourse!)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

It's not really about the Arthurian sectors of the text. It has to do with the identities of some of the villains in the Alliterative Morte Arthure... I can't really be any less vague on an unfiltered post on this journal, I'm afraid.

[taylweaver.livejournal.com]

Have you tried wetting your hands before handling the dough? I guess it gets the dough a bit wet, but it also makes things a bit less sticky - at least with my mom's mandel-bread.

By the way, with the mandel-bread, my mom always makes sure to make slice marks in it before she cooks it. Then she cuts along the slice marks as soon as it comes out of the oven. For that recipe, this apparently makes it less crumbly than waiting for it to cool.

Don't know if the same holds for biscotti.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The slice marks sound like a good idea. I'll try them next time.

[emidala.livejournal.com]

I have a very tiny favor to ask of you: could you point me to a good introduction to medieval history? after doing all this late antique stuff for my roman history generals I've come to the inevitable conclusion that I ought to know what happens next. my knowledge of the world ends with constantine and only picks up again with rousseau. what can I read to get a broad and very general image of what happens in between?

♥