Also, the “quiet room” is currently closed. That means the only place to wait is in the general assembly room, where they will show movies.

Because the kitchen is blocked off, this means the back door (and the back yard) are accessible to the dog only when we decide he needs to go out. He’s got scheduled bathroom breaks in addition to regular walks because we really don’t want him getting into the cat food (and really not the cat poo).

Occasionally there will be a potty emergency, and the dog usually lets us know that he has to go out by running between the front door and the dining room gate. It used to be that sometimes he would just run to the gate and whimper. This would trick us into thinking that he had to go out right now and once inside the kitchen he would go for the cat food (or litter box) instead. Once we would get him outside he would just stand there in the middle of the yard and looks defeated. We don’t fall for that one quite as often any more.

We don’t fall for that quite as often, so the dog has stepped up his game.

Last night, neither cat ate very much. Cardiff had spent the day at doggie daycare so he was hungrier than usual (playing for 8 hours does that to a guy). He really wanted to get to the cat food. The old “I have to pee” trick failed.

So my dog — my wonderful, smart, evil dog — scooted^* across the living room rug and then went to the gate and whimpered. “Oh shit,” I thought. “This time he really does have to go outside.”

No. No he didn’t. He tried desperately to get cat food on the way through the kitchen to the yard. He stood in the yard for ten minutes (in the rain, with me shouting “poop already!” at him) looking pissed off that it didn’t work. He tried again for the cat food when I brought him back in.

Part of me is looking forward to what trick he tries next time.

—

^* It really was a trick, and he wasn’t actually scooting for legitimate reasons, because as soon as I brought him back in he didn’t do it again. If there were actually something wrong with him, he’d still be doing it.

I also used aluminum “disposable” cookie sheets (I used parchment paper, so these sheets are good for a few more rounds). All this added up to vastly improved cookies. I wonder what would have happened if I used lemon juice in the dough, instead of adding extra milk…

So what else goes with more cookies? Coffee. I bought a new coffee maker this weekend. The Keurig Elite Brewing System. It replaced a Mini Keurig, and was totally worth the money.

Since I’ve been having fun with Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar I thought this was the right time to try out the Blackstrap Ginger cookies. I had everything I needed… except, as it would turn out, canola oil. We had corn oil, though. It was either that or the “bold and robust” olive oil, which is very olive-y. How bad could corn oil be, really? Corn goes into baked things all the time!

You can guess the outcome, can’t you.

Yeah, keep reading anyhow.

I mixed the wet stuff.

It looked awful and smelled weird. That’s because of the blackstrap molasses, though, and not the corn oil.

Next… the dry ingredients. Including the most powerful ginger I have ever smelled. Please note that ginger, nutmeg, clove, and allspice are all things I absolutely love to smell. This part of the cooking was the best part. Anyhow, it turns out I actually own a sifter!

So, sifted and folded, and the dough looked like something pretty wonderful.

Gorgeous, isn’t it? And since this is vegan, there’s nothing wrong with eating the dough. Except that’s rude. I made the cookies first and then scraped the dough from the bowl and ate that. It was amazing. REALLY intense ginger. Like mouth-burningly intense. I was looking forward to them.

Start the sad music now, folks.

The dough that was so amazing and intense turned into attractive cookies.

Attractive cookies that taste more like corn muffins than ginger.

I think I’ll do these again in the very near future. I want to know what they really taste like.

Sadly, my boss’ birthday is tomorrow and I was going to take some of these in for her, as a thank you for the spices. It’ll have to wait, though. These are fine for home, but not for public consumption. I kind of wish I had time to make another batch of the Tahini Lime ones to take to work instead.

Summary:
Ease: Very
Time: 20 minutes.
Taste: Three (out of 5) stars. (See substitutions)
Substitutions: Corn oil for canola oil
Result of substitution: Bad idea. The cookies taste more like corn than anything.

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If you’ll recall, the last batch of cookies were too wet. This was because I used vegan margarine instead of shortening. This time I actually bought Earth Balance Natural Shortening and I think it made a difference.
Again, this started with zesting citrus — a lime, this time.

Then there was the usual “blending the sugar and shortening” step.

It doesn’t look as good as it did when it was margarine, but that’s probably because the margarine was wetter.

Add the coconut milk, tahini, zest, and vanilla….

At this point Kitti announced he’d eat it as-is. I didn’t let him. The dry ingredients had to go in.

The dough is then rolled into little balls, smushed, sprinkled with sesame seeds (the recipe called for black ones. I bought regular ones because I couldn’t find black sesame seeds. I did later, but since I already had the regular kind and I wasn’t sure if these were going to even work out, I didn’t want two kinds of sesame seeds cluttering up the shelf) and then baked.

They still didn’t come out very brown, despite the fact that I now have an oven thermometer (Thanks, Mim!) and the oven was the right temperature. I think maybe my baking sheet is too thick. It’s probably time to dig through the cabinets and see if I have thinner ones (that used to be my Nana’s). If I don’t, I might have to buy some, because the cookies come out looking unbaked.

They taste good, though. Better than I expected. They’re not exactly a sweet cookie — it’s more like a peanut butter cookie, only more sesame and less peanut-y. I don’t taste the lime at all.

Summary:
Ease: Very
Time: 45 minutes (including zesting the lime and cleaning up as I baked)
Taste: Better than expected. Four (out of 5) stars.
Substitutions: white sesame seeds for black.
Result of substitution: None noted. Maybe just aesthetics.

I substituted coconut milk for almond milk because I really don’t like the taste of almond at all. I didn’t know how much the taste would come through after all the ingredients were in, but I didn’t want to risk it.

I started with zesting a lemon and an orange.

Then I did the “blend the shortening and sugar until fluffy” thing. Once that was fluffy, the vanilla and coconut milk went in.

Added the flour, corn meal, corn starch, baking powder and salt….

And then it was time to make the dough into little balls, dip them in sugar, and bake them! Except this is where they went a little weird. I don’t know if the coconut milk was “wetter” than almond milk would have been, if the shortening got too soft, or things got mixed too much, but the dough was way too sticky. It stuck to my fingers, it stuck to the sugar dish, it stuck to my fingers again when I tried to get them on the cookie sheet… basically, they were a mess. Even adding extra flour didn’t seem to help. So I just went on with it…

And I baked them.

There was still dough left because my oven isn’t really big enough for more than one cookie sheet at a time, so the rest of the dough sat there for about 12 minutes while the cookies baked. Apparently the dough needed to “rest” a little, because NOW it was much better. It wasn’t sticky and it did what it was supposed to.

Twelve minutes later.. much more attractive cookies. Not as brown as I thought they’d get… and puffier than expected. I’m not sure what I did “wrong”, but they taste perfectly good. The corn meal gives them an interesting taste and texture that keeps them from being really boring.

I’m absolutely going to make these again. I’ll try to remember to let the dough rest before I start making the actual cookies, and I’ll see if I can figure out why they rose so much — maybe the flour? Something about the way I mixed the dough? Seriously, I make coffee cake that comes out huge, and pancakes that inflate, so I might be doing something that just fluffs up baked goods.

Anyhow, for a first attempt, I think I did pretty good.

Summary:
Ease: Very
Time: About an hour
Taste: Better than expected. Four (out of 5) stars.
Substitutions: Margarine in place of shortening.
Result of substitution: More cakelike, puffier. Wetter dough. Trying to get the dough to stiffen up added to the time.

• Great screen. Great color. Great sensitivity. Very fingerprint resistant
• Fast connection. If your WiFi is fast, at least. Although even with the spotty WiFi in my house the Kindle seems to hold the connection better than the notebook.
• It’s an Amazon Kindle, so you get all the books that Amazon has available in Kindle format
• It will display PDFs
• It will run most Android apps
• Third-party apps are supported
• All the Sandman issues are available for it
• It plays music
• It streams movies and TV from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix.

Con

• It’s heavy. Well, heavier than a regular Kindle.
• There’s no left-handed page advance in books
• The power button is in a bad place for reading books. Too easy to bump it and put the Kindle to sleep while you’re reading. At least you can work around this by turning the Kindle so the button is at the top.
• There’s no built-in way to keep the WiFi from dropping when you’re “inactive” — like streaming music from some services. Some apps have included a “don’t sleep” feature that won’t shut down the Kindle if you’re watching a movie or listening to an audiobook, but (for example) Spotify doesn’t have that. After two minutes the Kindle puts itself to sleep and the WiFi connection is dropped. There’s probably a hack for this, or a way around it if you’ve rooted the Kindle, but if you’re not inclined to do that, it’s a definite drawback. So if anyone out there reading this knows of an app (Amazon or 3rd party) that will keep the WiFi on and/or stop the Kindle from going to sleep, please let me know! I’ve tried PowerWiFi and it doesn’t help.

My shoulder still hurts. I did eventually go to the Prompt Care place and got some extra strength pain killers. They don’t actually kill the pain, but they do bring it down from an 8 or 9 to a 5 or 6. I can sleep at night now and I’m not attempting to gnaw my arm off after a day at work. These are all things in the Win column (and how sad is it that a pain rating of 6 is a good thing?).

My doctor appointment is a week from today. I’ve already told Mim that if they try to push me off or tell me they want to do tests and x-rays before giving me a cortisone injection that she should get bail money ready for me. I might not have been kidding. I still have one good arm, after all.

Anyhow, back to the suffering for arts and crafts. I have made zero progress on the quilt I’m working on (I have 11 out of 1600 hexagons knit). I have most of the foot of the first of a pair of socks for Mim knit. I have barely made a dent in the Clapotis that would have been Mim’s birthday present (Mim is really getting shortchanged here, isn’t she? Go buy her something to help fill the void). It just hurt too much to knit for more than a few minutes at a time and that was frustrating so I just wasn’t doing it at all. So tonight I broke out the knitting tonight for the first time in weeks.

It still hurts. This is going to take a while. But dammit, I missed working on things.

I am not yet ready to try the violin again, though. That will absolutely have to wait until after the doctor appointment.