Toni Rae's Version of Life: An Attempt to Kure Kabin Fever

I'm fairly certain that my fellow DC Metro residents would agree when I say that we're snowed in.

Aside from one trip to NW Washington to rehearse for Friday's cabaret, I have pretty much stayed in my neighborhood. Eastern Market is an area of Capitol Hill that has many business to which I can walk--or rather, carefully step through snowdrifts and slush--for anything I may need.

But we've been snowed in since FRIDAY. It's WEDNESDAY. And the blizzard just got extended until 10 pm tonight, which probably means that I get to spend tomorrow in the same place I am in now.

Which is the same thing I said yesterday...

So what can a gal do with, well, nothing to do? Blog about making cookies from a mix she won at a baby shower in September, natch...

First, I'd like to thank my dear friend Jessica's aunts and mother for supplying the prize I won at Jessica's baby shower. I don't get to Maine much, so Suzipoo's "Moose Kookies from Maine," were never on my radar screen, sorta like U.P. Pasties aren't on the minds of most everyone else I hang out with these days, or most of the world for that matter.

Too bad, most of the world, too bad...

Please note that these are Moose Kookies, not Cookies. Kute, huh?

The recipe is very easy: add 1/4 of water to the pre-mixed cookie mix, beat with an electric mixer until it forms a dough, hand mix the blue and white sprinkles they supply into the dough. Once that's done, roll out the dough on a floured surface, dip the moose-shaped cookie cutter they supply into flour and then into the dough.

The really cool cooking blogs a/k/a "the real cooking blogs" take you step by step through the process with pics, but I only thought about turning my adventure into a blog as I was mixing the sprinkles into the dough.

Here's the dough, just after I plunged the cookie cutter into it a couple of times:

Please note that these moose have spindly legs, which makes picking them up out of the dough and putting them on the cookie sheet a challenge. After a few tries where one moose was missing his back leg, another with half an ear, I finally got six decently-shaped moose cookies. Here they are pre-and post-oven:

While I waited the twelve minutes it took for the cookies to bake, I took a picture of myself.

Shirt by Target, Headband by Goody, Makeup by Mother Nature--really, people, what snowbound gal with two cats is going to put on makeup before she makes kookies? And yes, I realize that I am brave and stupid for publishing a pic of me sans makeup. But this is how I look, future rich-and-successful husband--deal with it.

I also pondered where all the snow on my patio was going to go when it finally melted. See the hill on the right side of the picture? There's steps under there, somewhere. Thanks, dude who shoveled snow off of the roof of my building--thanks a lot!

Back to the cookies:

I have to say that for a mix, they're quite tasty!

The first one I ate was the one whose head had come off when I slid it off the cookie sheet, which, by the way, I just bought at Hill's Kitchen. If you live around here, support your local businesses and shop there!

The severed head moose kookie went great with a glass of milk. The wine in the background? That's for later...