Matcha and Cream Cheese: A Cookie Saga

To celebrate what I hope is the imminent arrival of spring (here in Florida at least), and because I didn't have anything to write about this week, I thought I would make some green cookies!  But these are no ordinary cookies.  They contain two of my favorite things: cream cheese and matcha!

I was first introduced to matcha several years ago, before my sister got married and had her adorable baby.  Back then she was still living with us, and the Starbucks here in town was young.  She came home with a green tea Frappuccino and a green tea latte, explaining to me that they had gotten her order wrong so she got the frappuccino free.  Loving sister that she is, she let me have it.  I was never the same again.  Then a few years ago I introduced it to Caroline and it became our go-to Starbucks treat, hot or cold.  We became matcha fanatics, plotting our future (and perhaps one day REAL) trip to Japan around how much matcha we could consume.

For those of you who don't know what matcha is, I'll explain.  Normally, when you drink tea, you're soaking dried tea leaves in water, and the kind of tea depends on what tea leaves are being used and at what part in their lives they're being harvested.  You steep the leaves in the water, and then you remove them.  Matcha is made when the leaves are taken and ground up into a fine green powder.  This powder is dissolved in water (or milk, which I prefer).  So basically, you're actually consuming the leaves.  It tastes very different, a little bitter and planty, and apparently it's an acquired taste because my mom isn't quite fond of it.

This past Christmas my mom gave me a packet of Matcha as one of my gifts, and it's been sitting on my desk haunting me for two months.  You know that thing you don't get often, but you love?  That thing that comes in small amounts because it's expensive, and when it's gone, it's gone?  That's what this matcha is for me.  But I'm finally done with the rationing.  This matcha is being used!

So I went hunting to find a good recipe, and I knew I wanted to make cookies, something simple.  I found a few recipes for matcha cream cheese cookies, but I wasn't in love with everything that was going on in the ingredients, mainly because one of them called for 2 freakin' sticks of butter. TWO.  I love butter, but I don't want to die after eating one cookie.

So then I came up with the idea of finding a good cream cheese cookie recipe and adapting it to include matcha.  The best one I found was on a blog called Kitchen Joy, but she pulled her recipe from another blog, The Girl Creative.  I modified the recipe just a little to accommodate the matcha.  The recipes that included matcha all called for it to be added with the flour, but matcha is really supposed to be dissolved in your wet ingredients before it's used in baking, so I mixed it with the egg and vanilla before I started.

Matcha!  Isn't this the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?

The other thing I modified was the amount of cream cheese.  All the recipes I found called for 3 ounces, which was the most perplexing thing to me.  I asked my mom about it and she said it was probably because they were buying their cream cheese in the little 3 oz. packages.  First, cream cheese is life.  Why would you buy only 3 ounces at a time?  Second, CREAM CHEESE IS LIFE!  WHO SELLS CREAM CHEESE IN 3 OZ. PACKAGES??  In this house we buy cream cheese by the 8 oz. package, and usually several packages at a time.  So, to sum up, I cut 8 ounces in half and put four in the cookies.  The other half will be the life of my English muffins next week.

 

Matcha Cream Cheese Cookies

1 tbsp matcha powder

½ cup butter, room temperature

4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

½ tsp baking powder

1 egg, room temperature

½ tsp vanilla

1 ¾ cups flour

Combine egg, vanilla, and matcha in small bowl. Cream butter and cream cheese in mixer for about 1 minute. Beat in powdered sugar and baking powder. Add matcha mixture and beat until fluffy. Mix in flour. Separate dough into two balls and form into 2 inch logs. Wrap and refrigerate dough for about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 375°. Slice dough into ¼ inch thick slices and place on cookie sheet. Bake about 7 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned.

 

The cookies don't look very green in these pictures, but I promise they are.  I just didn't feel like going around and hunting better lighting to take the pictures.  The recipe I adapted from said it would yield about two dozen, but somehow I got 46 cookies.  I don't know what happened there.  And while I made them as slice and bake cookies, you can make them as drop cookies as well.  They turned out pretty tasty, but next time I might add a little more matcha.  Now if only Caroline were here so I could share them.

Small Children, Swimsuits, and Friends

Small Children, or Children in General

I am not a mom.  But I do deal with a toddler three days a week.  If you had asked me how I felt about children in high school you would have gotten a frightening look, including fingers crossed in front of me as if to ward off evil.  Children were completely different beings from adults.  Really, that's true, but not in the way I used to think.  They don't know as much as we do, words included, but they're so darn cute when they're trying to say horsey and it comes out "wosey."  Now I change diapers on a fairly regular basis, and sometimes they are indeed poopy.  Now I serve as a bed for a small child who doesn't seem to be able to take a nap on his own.  Now I'm finally understanding how quickly you learn when you're totally immersed in another language.

Swim Suits, or a Nightmarish Hell of Societal Standards

I am not a skinny girl.  I don't really have curves either.  I have the most horrible time with swimsuits, but I LOVE swimming.  It's a struggle to find a suit that I like, that fits, and that looks good on my body.  Lately I've been scouring the interwebs for a high-waisted bikini, because I like the retro look.  I feel like it would look cute and cover up some things I'm not so happy with.  Apparently they're also coming a bit back into style.  Most of the ones I'm finding are too expensive, too low cut, or too revealing.  I know that sounds like it makes no sense, but you have to understand that some people (not me) seem to like showing as much skin as possible, so designers seem to be adapting older styles to newer tastes.  On one site I went to, for instance, as the waist line went up, so did the amount of butt cleavage.  I just stared and tried to understand why.  I still don't.

The site that's absolutely the bane of my existence is Forever 21.  After I visited their store last year and observed that all of the smaller size suits were skimpy and all the plus sizes were high-waisted and cute, I sent them a strongly worded email.  They must have listened, but only a little, because they now have a variety of high-waisted bikinis in smaller sizes.  The downside?  They're all what they so cunningly call "cheeky."  In other words, "This is a cute retro bikini, but the whole wide world can see your booty."

This leads me to another reason why I have so much trouble.  I can try on a suit and love it.  It fits great!  Until I come to my butt.  I actually have the exact opposite problem that most people have with their butts.  It's small.  So small that I can fill out every part of a suit and end up with a saggy bottom and loose leg holes.  Life could be worse I guess, but saggy swim bottoms aren't really something you can take a sewing machine to (unless you know what you're doing, which I clearly do not).


Friends, or a Lack Thereof

Call me FitzKatti Wheeler, because I am the female version of socially awkward Mr. Darcy.  I'm not the kind of person to just walk up to someone and start chatting, which is probably why I don't have a lot of close friends.  My circle mainly consists of family and people I've known for years.  I do occasionally make a new friend, but it's usually the other party who initiates friendly contact.  I mean, I've known Caroline for almost thirteen years now, but I made a few friends at FSU that I'm still in contact with.

I think part of my issue is that I'm afraid to be myself around people I don't know well.  It's hard for me to get to know someone without it being awkward, and that's what I hate most.  I've been in plenty of situations with acquaintances where they have done or said something that made me really uncomfortable and I just didn't know how to react.  Sometimes I wonder if there are even any people who exist that I can be comfortable with.

Until I find anyone like that I'll just stick with texting Caroline and re-watching Downton Abbey with my mom, and maybe being friendly with people over facebook, where eye contact doesn't exist.

Going Back in Time

So today we went to the Olustee Battle Festival.  I've talked about it before but I'll say a little about it again.  Basically, it commemorates the battle of Olustee, which was the largest Civil War battle in Florida.  It's huge and people come from all over the country to participate in the battle reenactment.  There are tons of vendors selling things and tomorrow there will be a parade.  I love seeing the people dress up, especially the ladies with their giant hoop skirts.

But there is a not so bright side.  When the festival comes along, it's as if  the social advancements of the last 150 years didn't happen.  There is an atmosphere that I don't like about it.  If you wear Union blue you're a Yankee, and you're the enemy.  Even in the little brochure our local paper came out with, the Union forces are referred to as the enemy.  It makes me a little sad, and I don't completely understand this mentality.  But enough of that.  Let's get to the better parts.

Sadly, Caroline couldn't get time off from work to come to Lake City, but I decided to dress up anyways.  This is actually a big deal, because I've never been a Lolita by myself, and certainly not in Lake City.  I went with my mom in the afternoon because it was the warmest part of the day, but we still froze out butts off.

In my Sassy Civil War Heroines post I talked about my top picks for my outfit inspiration.  In the end I chose Sarah Emma Edmonds.  Here's a tidbit about her from that post:

She was originally from Canada, but she ran away from home to get out of an arranged marriage her abusive father was forcing her into.  She came to the United States and settled in Michigan, but when the Civil War broke out she disguised herself as a man, called herself Franklin Flint Thompson, and enlisted in the Union army.  While in the military Sarah first served as a male field nurse, then later became a spy.  She was a master of disguise, able to become any character she wanted, black or white, male or female.  Her career came to an end when she contracted Malaria.  She didn't want to be discovered as a woman so she left the military and went to a private hospital.  She planned on returning but her alter ego was seen as a deserter, so she remained Sarah and became a female nurse.  She later wrote about her exploits in her book Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, and her story has been retold in several works of fiction, such as Ann Rinaldi's Girl in Blue.

Sarah Emma Edmonds as Franklin Thompson

 
Here's my outfit:



 

 


 
The shirt and vest are thrifted and the skirt and belt are items I've had for a while. The socks are from Wet Seal and the boots are from Sears.  My cheap Union hat came from ebay.  I'm also wearing my new petticoat that my mom sewed for me.  The vest originally had clear buttons but I sewed on some more theme appropriate ones that my mom happened to have in her collection.

The festival is downtown, where Caroline and I had our last meet-up.  There's a lake and lots of ducks.  They all thought I had bread, so I took pictures of their disappointed faces, and backsides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
There were a lot of people and a lot of vendors.  I didn't really want to take pictures of everybody's stuff so I took some wide shots instead.

 

 
I got another picture of the dress at Rowand's because the light was a little better today.  One of the ladies who works there told us that it's less than $200, which is far less than I thought it would be, especially with all that lace!

 
One of the Civil War memorials.

 
There's always a stage for some local entertainment, including local school choirs and bands.  When I took this picture a girl was singing a Taylor Swift song and I wanted to shoot myself.  Later on we could hear someone singing a Frozen song.  I'll say no more.

 

 
This memorial was for the Apalachee Trail.

 

 
There are very few trees left in the downtown park.  They cut a lot of them down a few years ago for no reason at all.  Thankfully this beautiful Magnolia is still standing.

I had a really great time, and actually got some comments.  I also know that I got a lot of stares, which I tried to ignore, and one man asked about my "Yankee" hat.  Overall it was a great day, but I wish Caroline had been there to make it even more fun.  Big thanks to my mom who took all the pictures of me.



 



A Little Bit of Mori Life

Though sometimes I don't really appreciate it, I'm pretty blessed to live where I do.  I've never liked big cities and tons of people, which obviously made my time in Tallahassee all the worst, but apart from those two years I've lived in a relatively small town with tons of country.  I guess it means that I've kind of always been a Mori girl at heart.  Our property is even quite woodsy since we live outside of town.

Since it was supposed to be pretty cold I thought I might get some hay for my bunny, which for me means going to what we call the back forty and pulling up some dry grass.  Then, everything seemed so pretty, so I thought I would take some pictures!

Sky Masterson kept striking poses.

 

My dad planted these pine trees when they were tiny!

One of my favorite things about our yard is this pair of trees, a pine and an oak together.

 

In the summer there are usually blackberries here.

We used to have a tree fort here.  That tree was so perfect.

From the back of the property you can barely see the house or the shed.

A mushroom for Caroline!

Next week will be a little more exciting.  Olustee Festival and Lolita!