Today, I had a morning coffee appointment.
I went for a walk yesterday, and totally procrastinated getting ready for my week. So- the house wasn’t ready to host, I wasn’t ready to host, I don’t have my lunch ingredients yet- and in normal Jen fashion, I decided to wait until this morning to do it all.
No problem!
I looked up a great lemon-ginger-cornmeal cookie recipe, to make cookies for my appointment this morning. I make my living cooking, so I figured going shopping and picking up blueberry Hostess muffins probably wouldn’t be good. Luckily I had all of the ingredients on hand to make these little lemon cookies, so it was no biggie to make them. I only made one adjustment: I subbed in real ginger (which, by the way, gave them some real snap!)
OK, I made a second adjustment. I made the cookies WAY TOO BIG. So they ended up looking like this:
Cookies too big and all smooshed together
All right, full disclosure: they didn’t end up looking like that until I cut them (with a knife, and then when that didn’t work so well, a pizza cutter.) I don’t think I can fool anybody into thinking that cookies come out of the oven with 45 degree angles.
I was equipped with Julia Child’s policy line: never apologize. Put the erratically geometric gems on a pretty platter and nobody will notice.
With one batch out of the oven and cooling already, I had an idea. The cookies were supposed to rest on the tray for 2 minutes after coming out of the oven, just enough cooling to not rip as they are moved from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack. Why not try, in those 2 minutes, to use a cookie cutter and make them into a cute shape?
I got out my stepstool – pulled down my not-very-often-used cookie cutters – sorted through the Christmas tree, Santa, Dog bone, and Easter bunny and found the most nondescript shape I have.
That's right. A Heart.
It worked well, for the ten cookies I was able to perform surgery on (before they cooled too much). Jen’s new rule: A Cover Up is never Bad.
In the subsequent 15 minutes before my appointment, I: quickly put my extra papers in my bookbag, ran the vacuum, stashed my dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and made my table pretty.
Sshhhh... Nobody tell what it took to get to THIS.
After all of that, I opened my computer- and my appointment is postponed until next week.
Anyone for coffee???
[...] Is this really Minneapolis? May 4, 2010 Filed under: © Jen Antila and Jen the Catalyst, 2010. — Jen Antila @ 8:03 am Tags: Diversions, Neighbor Dave Rocks, Things I Like As promised, photos from the walk Neighbor Dave and I enjoyed on Sunday, which was so beautiful it led me to procrastinate terribly (as seen in yesterday’s post.) [...]
You are an all-star Jen! Yes, it is these little mishaps that can make cooking so much fun or trouble. It is a skill to know how to make every and yes, I mean every meal a success. I usually take a big breath, silently scream to myself put on a smile and make it all better somehow.
This reminds me of a time I was hosting a dinner party for 4 when last minute I had three extra gusts arrive. I quickly adjusted my original menu pounded the chicken breast thin wrapped them around my side vegetable of asparagus and magically I served 7 full meals with what I had planned for 4. They never even knew there was an issue. Cooking is a joy!
Rachel Sherwood
Rachel- LOVE IT! The story of the coverup – you had such a great idea to double your plated fun! Sometimes when I am taking these pics, I think of how much I’d love to have you stylin’ them… I imagine your smiling face as I read your comment- thanks for that gift today!
I am happy to share. Maybe someday we could get together to cook and style a bit. You may be interested in my next little series of posts about styling food at home. You don’t have to be a gourmet chef to make meals that look at good as they taste. Check it out http://www.impressionsfoodstyling.blogspot.com
Rachel
[...] — Jen Antila @ 1:43 pm Tags: Catalyst Cooks, Confident Cooking, Recipe, Things I Like The last time I wrote about a morning coffee meeting, I was covering up. Well, I still love to host people for coffee and I still am a procrastinator [...]