Gingerbread Cookies

I really do have too much energy for spending my time being idle and doing really boring repetitive tasks. Thus I find stuff to really care about. Yeah, okay, I really care about my kids but it would be really unhealthy to obsess about their development too much. I can just imagine it, "Siiri, I see you drew a sun, again! But you already knew how to draw it! Now try to draw a cat. Practice!" . If I really want to push someone to change and improve themselves for my entertainment, I'd rather it would be me. So I try to learn new things.

I have horrible memory, so at first I tried to do some memory exercises. Pretty soon I realized that it's frustrating to spend my time doing something I'm terrible at. Then I thought I would learn to dance better. I'm not good at it, but it's not nearly as bad as with memory. I took on the challenge to master all the dances on Kinect's "Dance Central 2". That was also going badly enough that I kind of gave up. It's wonderful physical exercise but I'm pretty sure that's one challenge that is not really worth the effort. At least not with my grasp of choreography and my lacking physical memory. Then I thought - I haven't made the perfect gingerbread cookies! 

Gingerbread cookies are not just a sugary treat. They symbolize my favorite holiday!  There's so much tasty food that is only eaten during Christmas. I'm not religious at all anymore and the entire baby Jesus theme is just a nice childhood memory, especially because I barely hear anything about Jesus anymore now that I'm surrounded by spiritualists, pagans, atheists and agnostics. I love Christmas for all the candles and spices, the smell of a spruce tree and the activity of baking and eating fresh gingerbread cookies.  As long as I remember, Christmas has always had those things. Most people don't really think about it but when you have kids, the things you do become their childhood memories. How could Siiri have a childhood memory of family Christmas if we're too lazy to celebrate Christmas. That just won't do! We should make the most of it! I want my kids to have childhood memories of Christmas that are worth remembering. One thing that I always remember about Christmas, is when we were kids, we took a bunch of gingerbread dough and made all kinds of shapes and a lot of cookies. Everything was covered in flour and the entire home smelled like gingerbread spices. We always bought the dough and the quality was different every time. How about if I learn to make our own gingerbread dough, so that it will be good every time. My kids could some day eat store-bought cookies and say, "yeah, it's good, but not as good as the ones mom makes.". It's a silly thing to take pride in but I really want to be able to make something better than can be bought in a store, something uniquely excellent.

I started by researching recipes on Internet. The basic idea is that you melt and caramelize sugar, add water, butter and more sugar, then let cool a bit, add spices, let cool a bit more and then add egg and flour. Easy enough. Except it's such a classic treat that everyone has their own recipe. Another problem is that the recipes have been modernized to contain margarine, "gingerbread spice" and special caramelized sugar syrup. I really wanted an ancient-sounding recipe, like something that grannies might have used decades ago. I picked two recipes that were as different as possible. One of them was a really basic gingerbread dough recipe from an old soviet era cooking book. Those cookies were good but nothing special. The other recipe was interesting, though. I found it in some forum post (that I haven't been able to find again). It said, "This is my great-great-aunt's recipe...". WOW, cool!   A recipe with genuine ancient family background. That's exactly what I'm looking for! Also, the recipe said, "and then add hot coffee". Plus it had twice as many spices and herbs as any other recipe!

Both recipes contained orange zest (orange part of the orange peel) but I know from experience that adding orange zest sometimes it leaves visible small pieces of orange peel in the pastry. My goal was to make perfect cookies so I wanted to avoid that. Then I had an idea - I will dry the peels and then quickly grind them to dust with a mortar and pestle. So I took the orange and peeled it with a potato peeler. Superb thickness, without any of the bitter white part. Then I let it dry overnight. The next morning I got up and inspected it - the long orange peels had turned into long pieces of orange rubber.  I tried to grind one piece. After two minutes of grinding it was still the same piece of rubber. Sugar will surely help! A added some sugar and used the mortar and pestle for another couple of minutes and inspected it - now it looked like an orange piece of rubber half-hidden in powdered sugar.  "No, that doesn't look right!". I searched it on the Internet and found out I was supposed to dry the peels  for 3-4 days. I didn't have 3-4 days!  Okay, but I could just apply a bit of heat. So I put it in the oven at 120 C and the oven fan turned on. About 30 minutes later I was walking around the kitchen being happy with my idea to try the oven until I smelled something strange - cooked orange peels! Gaaah! I rushed to the oven and took them out. They were completely dry and crispy but half of it now looked slightly brown. Well, at least it was dry. So I tried to grind it: in stead of orange dust, it turned into orange sand, leaving visible small pieces of orange peel in the cookies.  Epilogue: The next time I just used a fine grater on fresh oranges and ended up with fine wet powder perfect for the cookies!

Okay, so I'll give you the recipe as well. I'll add the spice names in Estonian because even I don't know the translation of some of them. 1 dl is 100 ml. 100 ml liquid weighs roughly 100g. The first time there wasn't enough water or I added too much flour. The result was a very crumbly dough which couldn't be used until I added water and flour just before we made the cookies. The second time I made it, I added water to the dough before I let it sit in the refrigerator. The second time I also used twice the amount allspice and caramelized the sugar even darker. It looks and smells even better than the first time. 

PS! We actually baked the gingerbread cookies with several friends  and we had four different kinds of dough, including two (Eesti Pagar and Vertigo) that had got the best rating in two separate articles comparing gingerbread doughs sold in Estonia. This dough was most people's favorite that night.
PPS! Vertigo's dough was very good. Eesti Pagar's dough was bland and the cookies turned into wood the next day.

Gingerbread Cookies

2 dl sugar (for caramelizing)

1.5 dl hot coffee

3 dl sugar (originally 2.5-3 dl)

250 g butter

Spices:

---0.5 tsp clove (nelk)

---1 tsp cinnamon (kaneel)

---1 orange zest or 1 lemon zest (riivitud koor)

---0.5 tsp cardamom (kardemon)

---0.5 tsp powdered ginger (jahvatatud ingver)

---a bit of nutmeg  (muskaatpähkel)

---5-6 allspice berries, ground (jahvatatud vürtspipra tera)

1 egg

800-900 g flour (I used pastry flour 405)

3-4 tsp baking powder

Pour 2 dl sugar into a thick-bottomed pot and caramelize. This is the tricky part. I had best result when I used two spoons and when the sugar started to melt, I kept the sides of the pot and the spoons clean of the melted sugar, otherwise it will turn hard in only a moment. When sugar is sufficiently brown, remove the pot from heat and then add hot coffee. Be careful. Mix constantly and beware the steam. Then mix (on very low heat) until sugar is dissolved. Sounds easier than it is. I kept adding small amounts of water because it took so long. Remove from heat and add butter. Add sugar and butter and mix and melt it all together. Let the mixture cool. When it's half-way cooled, add spices. When it's completely cooled, mix in the egg and flour, with baking powder mixed into the flour. Add water if the dough is too crumbly. Refrigerate for a couple of days before using the dough. 

Glass of Water

If I ask you, "is the glass half full or half empty, you will probably say "it's half full" because that's the learned answer. Everyone knows that it's wrong to point out the negative. How about we give it another try. Quick, think of the answer before you continue reading, "Describe winter!". Remember the first words that popped into your head. Did you think of soft beautiful snow or the cold moist wind? Do you see winter as a wonderful season with lots of holidays or a wonderful opportunity to slip on ice and get hurt. For me, the first word I thought of, was "cold, blizzard, being indoors cuddled up in a warm blanket". This includes the problem with winter and a solution to the problem.

I'm a very negative person and I can't change it. I didn't really notice it until I was already in the university. I met so many new people and I talked about old and new topics and I realized that people actually have such different personalities. It seems like an obvious thing, but during school years I was too busy trying to conform to the majority mindset to really understand my own personality. Some people are always positive, no matter what the topic is. It's almost like they live in a different world where the reality is fundamentally different.

I like to think of myself as an energetic and ambitious person but when I have a discussion with someone, I tend to energetically say the most negative things possible. It's horrible! Even when I say something positive, it is often really something negative in disguise. "I love this cereal, it doesn't get as soggy as most of them!", "It's so warm outside ... that all the snow has turned into mud", "This is one of my favorite shirts, too bad I don't have anything to wear it with.". I've tried to stop myself but I can't. Even when I'm in a really positive mood, I'll just have better control over what I say out loud.

It's a weakness and a strength but mostly it's just really annoying. I even annoy myself with it. Can't imagine how others put up with it. It actually makes me less able to go along with new ideas. I notice the potential problems way sooner than the potential gains. Initially I'm usually very pessimistic and trying really hard to hide it and keep an open mind. After a while I have finished thinking about the problems and the possible solutions and I'll realize that it actually is a good idea. Or I'll be stuck on a small problem and I need someone else to point out that the potential gains are still worth it. This sort of negativity doesn't even make me unique or special in any way either, as about 50% of people are really like that.

In the first year of university when I realized that all people are different, I became obsessed with personality theories. And yes, it seems I am always obsessed about something - food, nutrition, extreme embroidery, personalities, reading, drawing, hair, kids, etc. Most of my obsessions pass after a while and leave something behind. Being obsessed with personality theories was one of the biggest obsessions in my life, perhaps even worse than nutrition. Actually I was planning to be a psychologist when I graduated high school but the competition was too tough. Among other things I learned from my obsession that one of the personality dichotomies of Grigoriy Reinin divides people into two groups:  positivists and negativists (that's how they were translated to English).  Roughly half of all people are the "glass is half empty" kind of people whether they like it or not. Well, I don't like it. I think it would be better to think about all the positive stuff first but the best that I can do is to try and hide it better.

I should also mention that being a negativist is not the same as being a pessimist. I notice the negative stuff so I can ensure that I avoid them on my journey to a positive future. Like when I bake a cake, I'm convinced that it will turn out delicious (otherwise I wouldn't waste my time) but while I'm baking it, I'm constantly thinking about the possible ways I could ruin it so that I can avoid them. It's a kind of skepticism which can be very useful but unfortunately can't be turned off.

If half of all people are really skeptical like that then perhaps some of you recognized yourself in this post. Perhaps this personality trait isn't so obvious in my general writing style but that's because I usually write about things after I have already formed an opinion about. My first thought might be negative but when I finish my contemplation, my opinion is rather balanced between positive and negative.

Also, being a negativist doesn't make me any less self-absorbed as we can see from this totally egocentric blog post.

PS! Kids are doing great. Liisa holds her head really well and already tries to crawl. I haven't told her that she won't be able to do that until she's 5-6 months old. Siiri has reached her terrible twos and she gets really demanding in the middle of the night. I'm still planning on writing a longer post about that in the near future so I'll leave it at that.

Daily Torture

Pain tolerance is difficult to quantify. I usually see myself as having rather high pain tolerance, but it really depends on what kind of pain we're talking about. I've experienced several kinds of pain in my life and childbirth wasn't even the worst of it. I think I handled those very well, so perhaps my pain tolerance is quite high, except when it comes to using mouth wash, I am really truly sensitive. I'm like a little baby. Or perhaps I'm making some bold assumptions. I'm assuming people don't usually get tears when they use a mouth wash. Is that normal? Mouth wash stings like crazy. Maybe it's just one of my traits - I'm also VERY sensitive to spicy food. Often when eating spicy food, I feel like my mouth is on fire, tears are running down my cheeks, I'm desperately holding ice water in my mouth and reaching for a handkerchief, someone else eating the same food just shrugs and says, "it's a bit spicey, but not THAT hot" .

Speaking of tooth-related torture, I think dental floss is just brutal. I get shivers down my spine when I think of cutting my gum with a piece of string. Like really! That's horror movie level of horrible. That could be a scene in the Saw movie series and it wouldn't be out of place. Still, I can't argue, it is effective in dental hygiene. I just wish it wasn't so horrible. I started flossing a month ago so I'm still getting used to it and I hurt myself really often. Some of you might think, "you didn't floss before?! OH MY GOD!!! Nasty.". And the rest of, I guess majority, would think, "people actually floss? ". In Estonia people don't normally floss. Perhaps dental floss wasn't available during soviet times. I know some women who started flossing in their twenties but it certainly isn't widespread in Estonia. Even in USA, where people have been taught to floss since they were children, only 10-40%* of people floss daily (*as I read from Wikipedia). 

Oh god, why am I thinking of teeth so much?! Oh yeah, I have a dental appointment tomorrow.

About a month ago I went to a dentist's just to get my teeth checked. The dentist wasn't happy at all. She described how I need about €2000 worth of tooth care. No, my teeth aren't horrible and she didn't even find any cavities. That's the cost of having crowns fitted on the teeth on my favored side. Maybe that's a good idea, maybe not, maybe it's just a sales tactic. I'm going to a different dentist tomorrow to get a second opinion. Actually I'm not going to a different doctor because the number scared me. I'm going to a different doctor because that place looked creepy. I'm not too fond of going to a dentist but the modern dentists offices, full of sterile gadgets and expensive high-tech equipment, are kind of soothing. That place wasn't. Imagine an old soviet apartment building. On the first floor, one of the apartments has been built into a dentist's office. The chair looks like it might squeak but it doesn't. The soviet era reception desk is equipped with a simple laptop. The laptop isn't connected to the Internet (!!!). The drill looks about 10 years old. The dentist ensured me that only the drill tips really matter but the drill did look questionable. The cupboard full of cotton and other such things didn't even have a door. It would have been okay if it was meant that way, but it looked like the door fell off at some point and they didn't have money to fix it. But the prices were somewhat cheaper and the doctor seemed very skilled so initially I thought I would ignore the problems. But then I started paying for the check-up and found out they only take cash! "You don't take card? Uhm, really? No card?". I barely had any cash with me but fortunately spare change at the bottom of the bag made up for what I was lacking in my wallet. I even considered it before I left home and we agreed with Erkki that there is no way they won't accept card. Even some second-hand stores can afford to enable card payments. Even the small corner stores that only sell stale bread and booze accept card. I am not going to carry hundreds of euros in my wallet for each of those dentist's appointments just because the dentist's office is stuck in the soviet time. If I fix my teeth in a place like that and something, anything, goes wrong, I would just ask myself, "Well, what did you expect?". So tomorrow I'm going to Maxilla, which is the most modern, but also the most expensive dentist in Tartu. For a while I felt really guilty about it - I'm going to pay a lot more to have the exact same procedures just so I can pay with a card. But then I realized that I wouldn't even buy a cell phone in a place that looked that iffy.

I still wonder how important it really is to floss daily. Is it like a "must" rule or more like a suggestion. As a mother, I try to take this sort of universal advice seriously. At first I tried to treat all of them very seriously because some of them really do make sense but when you start paying attention, you'll realize how surrounded we are by rules.  Never leave a baby alone in the tub. Always wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Always wear your seat belt. Bathe children every day. Wash your teeth after every meal, or at least twice a day, 3 minutes. Floss every day. Test your smoke detector every week. Dust every week. Change bed sheets every week, or every two weeks. Eat fish twice a week. Do not eat more than half an egg on average per day. I could fill a page or two with rules that everyone "must" follow, or else! While some of them really are important, no exceptions allowed, this flossing thing seems like more of a suggestion. But I guess it's good for the gums so I keep on torturing myself. And after flossing mouth wash actually is a good idea, so torture is followed by more torture. ...And people think masochism is most widely spread among emo self-cutters.