Mission control

My kitchen this morning was like the launch of a space vehicle.  Since our U.S. family arrives on Wednesday, I decided to bake up a batch of cookies for neighbors, vets, consuegras, and other people I like to remember at Christmas with something homemade.

I had decided on chocolate chip cookes, loaded with--of course!--butter.  By the time I had mixed up my multiple batches, I could smell the motor of my industrial-strength mixer as it began to struggle.  I fired up my gas oven and my electric counter-top convection oven, got out every baking sheet and wire rack I own, and spent an hour leaping from counter to ovens to racks at a pace that left me no time even to go to the bathroom.  As the cookies began to come out of the ovens, I thought there wouldn't be enough and that I was going to have to bake biscotti to complete the gifts, but once I started filling the containers, there were just enough cookies to give everyone a really fine dose of butter.

This afternoon, it's Yucatan tamales with mole poblano filling, but those I'll freeze until time to serve them on Christmas Eve.  My mouth is watering as I write this!

Not to get behind, I am also trying to get out the last cooking class assignment for my course--thin-crust pizza with tomato sauce, baked on a baking stone so damned hot it may heat the whole house until tomorrow night and beyond.  This I will have to take a picture of, so I'll post it later.  I am going to serve it with a salad.  Right now I'm also making a carrot soup with one of Julia Child's tricks--cooked rice in the soup that makes it so creamy you only need to add a mere dribble of the real thing at the last minute.  (This is from her book, "The Way to Cook", her last.)

On the running front, I am going to slow to a swift march to see if that helps my fibromyalgic back pain--it's right between the shoulder blades and can even wake me up if I have to turn over! If the jolting of running isn't affecting it, it will be back to the faster pace after a week's pain trial.