About Gingerbread

Yesterday afternoon and into the night, I baked gingerbread for my Star Destroyer. It took a lot longer than I anticipated because A) we have no Kitchenaid, so I was using a hand mixer to mix the dough -- not an easy task when the recipe calls for 6 cups of flour and half as much brown and white sugar -- and B) the kitchen was too warm, so even after chilling in the fridge for an hour or two, the dough was too sticky to get off the rolling surface after being rolled out and cut. I finally just rolled it out directly on the cookie sheets, which worked much better.

Anyway, after dinner, as I toiled in the kitchen, Cinnamon put on About Schmidt. It was a good movie to "watch" without being able to see the screen all of the time, since most of the film's action took place in the dialogue. It was nice to see Jack Nicholson not playing himself for a change -- the only hint of Jack in Warren Schmidt peaked through early on, in his body language while on the phone with his daughter after his retirement party. And while everybody made a bit to-do of Kathy Bates' nude scene at the time About Schmidt came out, I really don't know why; it was brief, uneventful and not all that shocking. An overweight woman took her clothes off, big whoop. Nothing I haven't seen before in a figure drawing class.

The gingerbread turned out really well. I undercooked a couple sections, so I had to throw them back in the oven for a little while, but I ended up with enough extra dough to make some cookies for us. Tonight I assemble the beast -- expect photos on Fridaay (I don't want to show them before the party on Thursday).

(The rest of the weekend was a blast, too. But I'm not ready to talk about it, other than to say my body aches from dancing Saturday night {which, for those who were present, tells you how out of shape I am.})

Posted by Andrew Huff at December 15, 2003 02:44 PM