Sprinkles Are Still Her Specialty

 Yuula pretty much took charge with the cookie baking this year

Sprinkles are still her specialty but she was a huge help with everything that didn't require oven mitts 

Look at her go!

She Knows I Just Eat The Dough

Laura let me cook the oatmeal cookies today. I see it as a sign of concession.

She knows I'm just gonna eat half of it anyway.

Sprankle Mania

Busy Baking Girls

Today Yuula and her mother made a vat of turkey soup, six loaves of zucchini/blueberry bread and a batch of chocolate crinkle cookies. All in a days' work.

Making herself comfortable in the bakery. 

The elusive Starberry.

Cookie Pusses

Time to make the cookies

Let's see how many make it to the oven

This is a hereditary trait

Baking Buddies

Voila!

Mystery Ingredient & Creepy Picnics

Helping Mommy make zucchini bread...

It had a slightly different flavor, I haven't put my finger on it yet.

And her other new obsession is staging picnics. Sometimes they're creepy.

For Me?

We had our first gifting session yesterday with Grandma and Grandpa on a morning that may be as close as we're gonna get to a white Christmas. Yuula passed overall, high excitement levels and general cognition, but she's going to be looking to make much better on pacing come Christmas morning (we ain't got all day dear). But she got some awesome stuff already and we've only just begun. This kid loves Christmas, but she's surrounded by people who give her good reason to.

After that it was back to work, holiday style. Baking cookies and finally hanging the lights outside.

I thought we may not get around to the outdoor lights this year, and after it was all said and done, maybe it would've been better if it didn't.

Not great. Still can't muster up the courage to reach that peak, and after that it's a free for all.

She Manhandled Every Single One

still want a cookie?

When The Mood Strikes, Cookie It

It's Thanksgiving Eve. Is that a thing? All holidays should have observed eves. And birthdays for that matter. Big celebrations require a day (or two) preparation time. I'm going to petition for this idea. Will you be the first to sign? While I'm at it, I think the day after holidays should be a mandatory recovery day as well, that way the holiday celebration can go well on into the night without any concern for the morning after. I got some work to do.

Anyhow, just cleaning up and putting together some around the house for us. Getting ready to host 14 people, simultaneously. Good thing our new heater arrived today and is burning up the place. We put three tables together and managed to find lots of chairs. I didn't know we had so many legit seating. Also threw together some decor and take a little stress off of tomorrow. The plan was also to do a little cooking prep, maybe throw a couple things in the oven that could last the night and just reheat before dinner time tomorrow. That's what I thought Laura was gonna do. Instead I walked into the kitchen to find her baking cookies.

 

Just because. And here's Yuula's first taste of her mother's homemade family cookie. All those you see in the foreground are now also eaten. 

Doughing The Finish Line

Oh it is Christmas time. I know this because today the only thing we received in the mail was Christmas cards. Well, Christmas cards and disc 4 season 5 of Dexter. I'm assuming it'll be a slam-bang finish. May have to wait til after Christmas. But on with Christmas related news, I was left with the task finishing up the cookies today. namely the oatmeal, my favorite.



Laura made a double batch because she figured half of the dough would forgo the baking process and go directly in my belly and she would be right. But I got a lot made. Now the baking is done.



I gave Yuula first taste and despite the expression on her face she didn't have any complaints. Even took another one and laid on the floor to finish it off.



Silly freak.

We're Likin' This Garden Grown

This garden thing is working out better than either of us expected. Even tho our pole bean stand collapsed during Irene we have managed to gather lots of cucumbers and zucchini. Today Laura whipped up three loaves of zucchini blueberry bread.




She left for work before they were finished cooking and left me in charge of simply extracting them from the oven and transferring them to the cooling rack. That's where she went wrong.



Two outta three ain't bad. Still tastes the same. The same being ridiculously delicious.

Cookies: Check

Oh boy! We are just checking things off the list left and right. Today we took care of the cookie portion of the celebration. Laura started off with the cream cheese cookies, because of the difficulty level, moved on to oatmeal, with raisins, Grandma Sheldon's peanut butter delights, and finished off strong with a no bake cocoa-meets-oatmeal masterpiece. Can't wait to eat all 16 sticks of butter.




Yuula made sure to keep an eye on her mother, so that next year she can lend a helping hand. I'm planning on bribing her with extra Christmas gifts if she stashes away a little raw cream cheese dough for me. Is there no shame?

November 1-2-3

the 1st

the 2nd

the 3rd

how's your month so far?

Baking Bug

Laura woke up with some initiative yesterday. She got in the kitchen and went nuts. First she made up some dough...



While it was rising she baked some oatmeal cookies. We don't have any pictures of those because we were busy eating them. After the dough had risen she molded them into some cinnamon twists, Swedish Cinnamon Twists to be exact, and we had our share of those too.




Not too much later we were hungry for more. I had been bugging her about making some chipotle mayonaise, and whadya know it I had bought all the ingredients the day before. So we packed some hot chipotle peppers and a few cups of mayo in for the long-awaited maiden voyage of our Magic Bullet.



Then we broke out some bacon & tomato, cooked up some chicken, and covered both sides of some panella wheat bread with the unassumingly fiery sauce. Sprinkle on a little mozarella, or a lot and throw on the panini grill and you've got two happy Estlers.




It was a good night, til I woke up at 4am with heartburn, but it was so worth it.

A Brisk Brush Of Brust

Like the peridodic rise and fall of the ocean tide, Eric Brust washes up on our shore. This time it was off the coast of Shanghai. We dined.





Continuing his similitude with the ocean tide, Eric leaves us with breathtaking images, this time courtesy of his new Nikon D60 10.2MP digital SLR camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S zoom lens. The tide should be so lucky.











And since we overcompensated while purchasing baking goods to prepare for holiday celebration, we made cookies.











Like the periodic rise and fall of ocean tide, Eric Brust washes up on our shore. Maybe we are the Moon, using our gravitational pull to attract him. Maybe it's our hearts that wax and wane.