Linky-Dinky-Doo

The New York Public Library's Instagram Account has some really neat stuff on it, including reference desk questions from before the days of the internet.

"Please give me the name of a book that dramatizes bedbugs?"

The Internetest safety video on the Internet

Reports from a Medieval War

I wish I had the skills and tools to make this for my cat (and for me).

Justice League Unlimited: The Lost Episode. I don't remember if I've posted this link before. If I have, it's still fun enough to share again.

Stupid Google Tricks. A couple there worth remembering.

"What does it mean when you dream you're being chased by an elephant?"

I am not opposed to people using marijuana, and this article definitely suggests we should be studying the medical potential of pot more. I want to say I would never use the stuff, but if I were in a situation like Xeni's? Maybe. Just... maybe. I don't know.

I want more Battlebots. Apparently, the new series will be airing starting June 21st, 9 p.m. on ABC. Get out the popcorn!

I was unaware that The Wiz almost had a comic book adaptation by Mark Evanier. Huh.

I can't really listen to the song without cringing, but Rolling Stone had a great retrospective on the making of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Cliff Mass corrects the media on the notion that we're having a super-drought. Of particular interest is the fact that precipitation is normal, it just didn't collect as snow.

Source. T-Shirt.

Bleeding Cool noted not long ago that DC's latest campaign is really ripe for photoshopping. Ouch. You know, at first I was disappointed there was no Aquaman ad, now I'm just relieved.

Do Not Disturb.

Stress doesn't make rewards any better.

GunFail, which collects news stories of people who really shouldn't have had access to guns, is on Pinterest, Facebook, and Tumblr. The guy who collects these stories noted on Daily Kos that his Pinterest page was disabled for awhile, but he doesn't know why.

DuoLingo now has Norwegian.

Well, time to start learning the language that matches my name.

Linkdump

I've only read 23 of Amazon.com's 100 Young Adult Books to Read in a Lifetime, although some of the others are on my endless "to-read" list. I also haven't read many of these Captivating Short Stories Everyone Should Read, although The Yellow Wallpaper haunts me to this day.

This cartoon isn't fair to comic book fans. Hey, I found a guy!

Read Tony Lee's Pitch for a Doctor Who/Deep Space 9 Crossover and dream about what might have been.

Cliff Mass has more on the strange weather we're having here in the Pacific Northwest.

Boing Boing has a great story on how to buy secret cookies from cloistered nuns.

The Eisner Awards were announced a month or so ago... I still haven't really gone through it, but glancing through I see a few I've read, including Astro City, Beasts of Burden, Shanower's Little Nemo, I Was The Cat, Tiny Titans and Meteor Men, all of which are definitely worth reading.

While it was announced some time ago, I'm still gleeing over the idea of a new Cordelia book.

I kind of want this car shade.

More Baking Adventures!

The Golden Age cookies were run past my panel of experts (the boys next door) who declared them to be "yummy" and "good" and "will you make more?" So I think that recipe will stay in my book. But, as I'd given away much of those cookies, I needed to make more cookies to keep hubby-Eric and I happy (we generally each have cookies with lunch). So I pulled out the recipe for peanut butter cookies and gave it a go.

I used the Classic Peanut Butter Cookies recipe over at Baking Bites, and after I got my first pan in the oven I remembered how my mom used to make these and resorted to that method instead. The dough was the same, but the fork trick is to roll the cookie in sugar before dropping on the pan and then the fork won't stick. The water will work, but I think I prefer the sugar-rolled cookies by a smidgen.

So, here's the recipe in case the link is down. I plan to run these cookies by my tasting committee one of these days, but maybe I'll keep the first batch for just us.

Classic Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, slightly softened*
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)*

Preheat oven to 350F. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars.
Beat in egg.
Add vanilla and peanut butter and beat well.
Add in dry ingredients and beat on low speed until combined.

Roll rounded spoonfuls of dough in sugar and mark grids on the top of the cookie with a fork. (Alternately, put ball of dough on pan and mark with a fork dipped in either sugar or water to keep it from sticking to the dough.)

Bake for 11-12 minutes, until just beginning to brown on the edges.
Cool on wire rack. Makes between three and four dozen depending on the size of your dough balls (snerk, my batch made 45 cookies exactly).

*The cookie will be brittle/crumbly if you use processed (regular) peanut butter, so add an extra tablespoon of butter unless you are using a natural peanut butter.

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And, just in case you didn't want to transcribe the cookie recipe from my Golden Age Cookies post:

Golden Age Cookies

1/2 cup butter, or other shortening
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 Curtiss 5c Baby Ruth Bars, cut in small pieces

Cream butter and sugar until smooth.
Beat in egg.
Stir in other ingredients.
Chill and drop by half teaspoonful on greased cookie sheet.
Bake in a moderately hot oven (375 F) for 10-12 minutes.
Makes 75 cookies.

Golden Age Cookies

While looking at a Golden Age All-American Comic, I noticed this ad, and found that I wanted to try out my new baking prowess with a very old recipe printed in a comic book.

So when we went shopping, I picked up a jumbo Baby Ruth bar and some more sugar, and yesterday I mixed up a batch of these things. Because the ad recipe says to chill the dough, I left it overnight and baked up the cookies today.

The results were... mixed. The cookies themselves were wonderful sugar cookies that I managed to get to an almost perfect crispness. The Baby Ruth pieces weren't quite enough, though. I should have gotten two regular bars like the husband suggested instead of a single jumbo. Maybe next time, if I do a next time.

Anyway, here's a few of the best examples of the result.


The not as best examples included lots of cookies where the candy bits caramelized and made messy blobs of candy. Some of them even ended up with holes in the cookies where the caramel blobbed out. The cookies themselves tasted fine, but I didn't get a lot of chocolate.

Misc for the Day

What's Laura up to? Not a lot. I finished the 2000 piece puzzle that my sister gave me:

I can't tell you exactly how long it took, but I worked on it quite awhile. I only had one spot in the house to do it, since my puzzle board was too small to handle it, so it was in the way. Almost as soon as I finished it I had to pack it up again. I either need to get a much larger puzzle board or stick with smaller puzzles.

I've been trying a lot of recipes, lately. Mostly baking at the moment. I've got a killer fudge brownie recipe that I make and Eric and I use as the base for our desserts for a couple of weeks after. I also tried a brown sugar chocolate chip cookie that didn't quite work out correctly, though I chowed down through my "mistakes" quickly and gained a pound or so while I was at it. Most recently I made Cheesecake Cookies (recipe here) and they turned out ok:


Not pretty to look at, but they taste good. I've been using this recipe analysis tool to figure out the calories of the stuff I'm making. That way I can keep up with my calorie count while I'm baking all this stuff that's bad for me.