Belated Cookies and Explanations

Things That Prevented Me From Doing This Post Last Week and/or This Weekend

Anise Cookies that are the subject of this Belated Post

• Bobby the grocery checkout guy who felt the need to explain why he was bagging my groceries the way he was for 15 minutes. Bobby is 245 years old and has hearing trouble. 
• We bought a new table for the library! This is actually a SUPER HAPPY bullet point. I've been wanting to for a long time, and so has Mum, it has just never been mutually expressed at the right moment. However, walking into the corner for the 23470298th time prompted me to, um, tactfully say that I think we should buy a new one. So we did. ON THE INTERNET, NO LESS. As you can imagine, this took A REALLY LONG TIME, interspersed as it was with borderline hostile discussions of finish and colour, openly hostile discussions of oval vs. rectangular, and accusations on both sides of dictator-like behavior. We got there in the end, but we both had to lie down in darkened rooms afterwards. 
• I would like to note that the table we currently use (upon which I am resting my feet at the current time) is old enough to have hosted a significantly smaller diaper-clad Beetle in her sassy seat when it was in our apartment in Cambridge. Many a bowl of Cheerios has been upset on its surface. 
• The disinfecting of every surface in the house in a fit of stress-induced germaphobic cleaning. This included disinfecting the cats with PETA-approved-skin-enhancing-wipes.
• Begging the cat to get out from under my bed after she headbutted the door open and crawled underneath. Realising eventually that it was not her desire to vacate the premises that was stopping her, it was the fact that she's too fat to do it gracefully and/or quickly. 
• Seeing Divergent on Saturday! 
• I read the first book. I hated it. Therefore, I expected to be ok with the movie, and on the whole, I was. Wasn't great, but wasn't awful. Good costumes, good sets. Extra points for Kate Winslet and her strategically-placed-pregnancy-hiding file folder. Somehow dealt with the fact that the plot makes no sense and every main character suffers from an acute lack of common sense. 
• Also dealt with the hilarious tattoo scene where people who are professedly Dauntless visit what appears to be an upscale Asian Lounge with metallic pouf chairs and are treated to the most pain free, nonsensical, non-Dauntless tattoo application I've ever seen. 
• Explained to Mum that whilst my own tattoo experiences are in no way extreme, a better way of showing a "dauntless spirit" would have been to have had Tris (ps worst. name. ever.) sit down opposite a 6'5'', 300 pound bald man named "Big Steve" whose entire skull is covered with a dragon spitting flames and whose forearms and hands show the bones that lie underneath the skin, get the area in question shaved with a disposable Bic razor, then have the aforementioned Big Steve lean his complete 300 lbs on the area in question, start the gun, say "Ready?" and get to work, all whilst listening to screaming death metal and the ravings of a "friend of the establishment" who comes over halfway through the tattoo eating a chicken wing, leans over to inspect the proceedings, then looks up and shouts over the music (exposing a large quantity of missing teeth) "You know that's gonna look like SH*T in ten years, right?", then get the tattoo wrapped up in bloody Vaseline and Cling Film and take the 6 subway home from Astor Place trying not to touch anyone or anything. 
• I'M JUST SAYING that having the beautiful Maggie Q put a piece of tinfoil on your collarbone and press a button and poof tattoo is not really all that hardcore. 

HOWEVER, DEAR READER. Cookies were made, and they must be shared. 

ANISE COOKIES 

I love Anise. Let's just put that on record. Licorice is one of the things that I am never allowed to buy and/or be trapped in the same room as for long periods of time because I will lose all self control and eat it until I get sick or die, whichever comes first.**

*this list also includes spice drops and marshmallows

*I speak only of BLACK licorice. Red licorice is vile. 

HOWEVER. Baking with Anise provides that nothing-is-more-beautiful licorice smell whilst removing the no-self-control-death-by-licorice danger. So what's not to love?

I actually made these a week earlier, and got Mum approval, before sending them to the LL's. They are one of the million permutations of Beatrice's "Basic Cooky Recipe" (yes that's how she spells Cooky) and only a hop skip and a Finnish housewife jump away from my fav Cardamom Cookies.

ANISE COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups butter, softened (that's 2 1/2 sticks) 
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 heaping tsp anise seeds or ground anise
• 2 beaten eggs

Combine the flour, sugar, and anise in a small bowl and whisk together.

Blend the butter and the beaten eggs well. It will be a very thick, bright yellow mixture. Pour that into the flour mixture and mix everything together. 

Beatrice has a lot of instructions at this point involving words like "1/8 inch thickness" and "crimped pastry wheel" and "cut the entire surface into diamond shapes." If that's your thing, you go right ahead and more power to you. Personally, in a kitchen approaching glacial temperatures, with a cat headbutting your bum, and with the desire to watch something other than Middle East Business report on television, I would advise forming small cookie balls by hand and flattening them with the bottom of a glass on your baking sheet, sprinkling them with a few anise seeds, and throwing them in the oven. 

But that's just Beetle.  

BEETLE NOTES

This method did not, apparently, have any long-lasting detrimental effects to the cookie (cooky) tastiness overall. I would go so far as to say that it is an acceptable alternative, should you, dear reader, ever find yourselves in similar culinary circumstances.

FINAL BEETLE NOTE

To all those people who hate licorice and/or black licorice I will only say in calm and measured tones that you are completely wrong and imbecilic and I weep for you and also send all your black licorice to me at Beetle HQ and I'll take care of it. 

Or actually don't.

No. No definitely don't. Please don't. 

I'll die.