Biscotti

I made it.  My first stab at it and it turned out okay.  The process was not without a potentially disastrous flub.  I was so excited to mix it up in the food processor that I forgot to add the eggs until I'd added the cranberries, orange zest, and toasted almonds which meant I couldn't put it back into the food processor.  So I put it in a bowl and took my bowl to the table where the height is better for working with dough and stirred and folded and  got it all combined.

This recipe makes a small-ish batch, only 24 biscotti, which was perfect for a first attempt.  The house smelled heavenly of orange, cloves, and cinnamon all day.  Mmm.




When I got up the sky was unrelieved gray.  Ugh.  I had some resentment because the weather guy had said it'd be sunny today.  Then about an hour later I looked out to see this.  On the right is the back side of the cloud cover sailing off to the east leaving blue sky in its wake.  It didn't stay bright and sunny all day, more partly cloudy, but the sunshine was wonderful.


I finished knitting the toy bodies of both black-and-white and white-and-black yarns.  I'm not sure which one I'll finish for the gift.  I'll keep working on them both and decide when they're done  Next I pick up stitches for ears, arms, and feet, then embroider the faces on.  Shouldn't take too long.  I have 19 days, well, actually 15 days until the recipient will be here so it'll have to be done by then.



At knitting tonight I made pompoms for the hats I finished the other day.  I like them with the white and solid color and I tied them onto the top of the hats with a bow so I can easily take them off if LC and/or OJ decide they don't want a pompom.

06 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire.

The next few times George saw Dimitri at the snorkelers and birders meetings he was much more aware of the Russian’s behavior.  He was trying to discover if Dimitri had received a similar letter from his own handlers, but Dimitri seemed the same as before.  He tried to be the same man he had been before the detested letter had arrived, but wasn’t sure he was.  He was glad that Max was on the island and gave him an excuse to move around introducing him to the other expatriate men.

George talked to Dimitri as he had before, trying not to seem more guarded but he was not sure how successful he was.  He took Dimitri aside at the snorkelers outing, explained that he didn’t want Max to carry tales to Sonia, and Dimitri seemed to understand.

Sonia was also happy to have a friend that she felt obligated to introduce to everyone; that gave her a reason to be polite to Irina, as George had asked her to be.  She thought Irina would be too suspicious if she suddenly tried to be friends with her.  She would just stop all her critical remarks and treat Irina the same way she treated other women with whom she had little in common.

That seemed to work.

Over the next week or so it seemed to Sonia that Irina was also less defensive and less offensive when faced with the need for speaking with Sonia.

It's taking all of my self-control not to pick up a biscotti every time I go to the kitchen.  I need to find a place to hide them from myself.
--Barbara