Gingerbread

Started on the gingerbread house to make with my daughter today. But I've never made one from scratch before and thing I didn't know is that the pieces have to sit overnight to harden. So we'll finish it tomorrow.

We were also going to make gingerbread men but I ran out of molasses. Before buying more, had her try a few bites of gingerbread. She ate it but didn't seem too enthused. Think we'll just make some other cookies shaped the same way.

Couple of tips learned along the way with gingerbread: When cutting main pieces, use a pizza cutter instead of a knife. A knife can drag the dough out of shape but the pizza cutter doesn't. The recipe I used said bake at 375. I got some bubbles at that temp, so found 350 for a longer time worked better.

Turned the compost today while my daughter was here. It didn't need it yet but I still like doing fairly geeky things to teach her lessons. The weather was kind of cold and still humid. The compost is producing enough heat that the whole pile was producing steam. She thought it was cool. But she's 8 and I'm a nerd.

Lately, I've been making it a habit of making lists of things I need to do in the immediate future, like tomorrow or this week. Helps me stay organized, prioritize and helps me feel better about what I get done when it's crossed off. I even put some mundane things on the list. For me it somehow makes them more urgent. Helps me, any way.