What Am I Reading, Anyway?

[lydamorehouse]

What am I reading these days, anyway? A lot of manga still. This week, I read My Hero Academia / Boku no Hero Academia volume 10, “All For One” / “Ōru Fō Wan,” Blood-C 1 by Kotone Ranmaru, and four and a half volumes of Nana by Ai Yazawa.  I was sort of 'meh' on the first two series, but I'm really enjoying Nana so far, which is good since I think the library has all 21 volumes.  In fact, I was thinking about taking off a little early to go get Mason by way of Roseville Library, so I may just return what I've read and pick up as many as they have in a row.

Nana is about two twenty-something women, both of whom are named Nana. Both are originally from small towns and they meet each other on the train to Tokyo, one wintery night.  Nana Komatsu is frivolous and the sort of giggly girl who pretty much falls for every man she meets.  Nana Osaki is a hardcore punk rocker, hoping to make it big. It's slice-of-life with a heavy dose of romance/sexy times. I have this huge weakness--particularly lately--for slice-of-life stories where there's just not a WHOLE lot at stake, beyond people just trying to live good lives.  So, I'm not entirely surprised that Nana is the one working for me out of the three series I read this week.

Otherwise, I continue holiday baking. Today, I made spritz:



Here's a close up of ones I was surprised to discover have six-pointed star.  Perhaps for Hanukkah?


The funniest part of all this baking is that we're really not expecting anyone for the holidays.  Shawn just really, really likes having a lot of cookies around.

Who doesn't?

How about you? Reading anything good this week?

Comments

[abracanabra]

Hey, I have a spritz cookie maker that I've never used! Thanks for the reminder! Do you have a particular recipe you'd recommend?

[lydamorehouse]

Frank's recipe is a little different from mine. Mine is the Pillsbury's "Butter Rich Spritz" (ca. 1960s).

Shift together: 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 tsp salt.
Cream... 1 cup butter. Gradually add 1 1/4 sifted confectioners sugar. Cream well.
Blend in... 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, 1/2 tsp. almond extract, and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
Add gradually... dry ingredients.
Mix thoroughly.... Add food coloring (as desired). Press through the cookie press onto un-greased baking sheets.
Bake... 6 to 8 minutes.

Lyda's additional notes: our oven runs hot and so we go shorter on these, 6 minutes. Also, I always end up adding at least another cup of flour to make the dough workable. For me, I like the dough to be the consistency of PlayDoh. That might be part of why I don't have as much trouble as other people were reporting on Facebook, trying to get the cookie press to work.

[offcntr]

Have been struggling through Michael Twitty's The Cooking Gene, a non-fiction about the history of Southern cooking and how it interacts with the history of slavery, by a black, gay, Jewish author who also does historical interpretation cooking. Not an easy read, though I think an important one; there's just a lot to unpack.

Finished it yesterday while firing a kiln, so rewarded myself by blowing through the entirety of T. Kingfisher's Clockwork Boys, which went way faster than I expected, and now I have to wait until spring for the sequel.

Also, spritz cookies? The best! I just use the recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook:

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tsp almond extract

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in remaining ingredients. (You can divide up the dough and color some with food coloring at this point.)

Place dough in cookie press and squeeze out onto ungreased cookie sheet. Decorate with colored sugar if desired. Bake 6 to 9 minutes, until set but not brown. (I actual like 'em ever-so-slightly golden, on the edges.) Immediately remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies.