Christmas Treats

One of the dangers of the holidays is the all of the tempting treats that lead to weight gain. My holiday, like most, was full of many temptations.

This year Jessica joined my family and I for Christmas this year. She was sweet enough to make some delicious peppermint bark.


She made a short bread-like cookie dough base, then covered it with chocolate, crushed up peppermint, and drizzled with white chocolate. Perhaps Jess will share the recipe on her blog.

They were a bit dangerously delicious.

Another tantalizing treat came in the form of anise cookies. Every year my family gets fresh Italian cookies from a local Italian bakery, Wholley Cannoli. They are so soft and decadent. One issue I had this year was my recent nut allergy! I had never noticed that the cookies often contained walnuts and almonds in them. They were sneaky little nuts too! I split a few cookies with Jess only to discover nuts hiding inside. It was quite the dilemma.

My sister also shocked the family by baking several treats (she is generally not the 'domestic

one.) She made some funfetti cupcakes, and peanut butter cookies, which I again had to skip, but they looked awfully pretty!

Treats were not only for the human population, my kitty Aliyah has a serious substance abuse problem with cat nip. For christmas I gave her a "boogy mat" that gets filled with cat nip, and she sure found that to be a treat!

Snugs also tried to make a "treat" out of Ghreylin, but that was prevented, thankfully.

Semester 1 Internship Down!

This past Tuesday was the last day of my internship for this semester. I had been interning at Caritas Carney in Dorchester, working in outpatient counseling.

Overall, it was a great experience. I had previously done most of the work I done at my internship through school or other jobs, but practice makes perfect. Also, my preceptor was AMAZING. She is just one of the nicest women, and was constantly full of great advise. Since I was about the same age as her kids she seemed to form kind of a maternal bond and kept giving me words of encouragement and advice for the future.

Since I was leaving, I wrote her a Thank You card and decided to make some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies!


I basically used this recipe from allrecipe.com (check out the link):

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• y f1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

I did not add the walnuts, and used less chocolate chips. I also used a about 1/2 white unbleached flour, and half whole wheat pastry flour.

I usually never measure ingredients, and I generally barely follow recipes. but since these were a present, I followed more carefully to ensure they came out good.


I packed up about 20 cookies for my preceptor and kept a few for Dan and myself (have to taste test them!)

Despite decreasing the chocolate chips - they were still a little too chocolatey. I generally love chocolate, but these were just a bit too squishy.

Also, they were a little bland for a pumpkin pastry product. If I were to make them again I would add more cinnamon and some pumpkin pie spice. They were very soft and tasty. THey also weren't very pumpkiny tasting despite having a whole can of pumpkin (they were very orange, but I think the excess chocolate drowned out the pumpkin) so these would be a good option if you were just trying to sneak in a vegetable but were not persay that interested in a pumpkiny taste. I personally love pumpkin, so in my opinion I would want to taste it a little more.

Sookie as usual was being very helpful in the process. She had a fun time trying to play with one cookie as a hockey puck, so I tried to catch her in action. The first time she got her head in the way :

And then she decided to look up just as the flash was going off.

I need to work on my photography skills, and she clearly needs to work on her modeling.