Several people responded to my plea for help yesterday, all with the same basic suggestion: take the sheet pans out halfway through cooking and swap them (also turn them 180 degrees). Today, I made chocolate chip cookies and followed that advice, and both sets of cookies came out with a very similar degree of doneness. Thanks, Jessica, Lucinda, Mike, and Françoise!

We went out for a walk before going to services at Shir Hadash; the vultures were back at our neighbor’s house. I don’t know what they’re looking for, but they seem to have found a home.

We’re about to watch Die Hard for the first time ever; it seems appropriate for tonight.

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you enjoy it! Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Blessed Yule!

I made pretzels this afternoon, following the King Arthur recipe as usual. I always need two baking sheets to hold the entire batch, and the pretzels on the top sheet always cook faster than the ones on the bottom sheet.

Today, the pretzels on the top sheet were completely baked to a nice dark color in 14 minutes. After I took them out, I moved the bottom sheet to the top rack and baked them for three more minutes, but they were still not nearly as dark as the ones that had been on the top rack the whole time, as you can see in the photo below.

Baking friends, any suggestions on ways to get the two batches to cook more evenly? I guess I could bake the two batches serially – if I did that, would I have to wait to boil the second batch, too?

Today was the last Silver Tongued Cats meeting for the year, followed by a get-together at Panera Bread. I left the house a little later than I planned, so I was walking very briskly (and listening to a podcast) when I noticed a woman across the street gesturing to get my attention.

I removed my headphones; she pointed behind me and asked “what are those birds called?”

I hadn’t noticed any birds. I turned around and saw that there was a committee (more than a dozen, in fact) of vultures (thanks for the ID, Google!) on the roof of the house next to me.

Neither of us had seen anything like that in the neighborhood before. We chatted for a couple of minutes and I resumed my power walk to Panera.

An hour later, I was going home. I stopped at the same place; there were still a lot of vultures waiting at the same house.

There were also a lot more ducks in Ross Creek (next to the house) than usual, and they were pretty active.

Diane and I went back to Ross Creek this evening; there were still a lot of ducks there, which is unusual that late in the day.

I didn’t see any vultures this evening, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The Shir Hadash Men’s Club has an annual Latke and Comedy dinner; members are asked to bring six or more latkes, and the club also orders sandwiches. It’s a fun event, even if it’s not diet-safe.

The last time we had the event in person was 2019; I brought Trader Joe’s frozen latkes which I had heated in the oven. They were pretty blah, if I do say so myself.

But that was before the pandemic, before I did much cooking, and before I owned an All-Clad skillet. So I decided to bring Trader Joe’s frozen latkes again, but this time, I’d pan-fry them!

They fit perfectly in my 12-inch skillet.

I followed the directions faithfully, but the latkes lost their integrity when I turned them.

I brought them anyway. They did not win the popularity contest.

I’m hoping to do better next year – advice welcome!

I spend a lot of time working at the laptop on my kitchen desk; it’s where I do most of my email, some of my photo editing, and far too much of my social media. It’s open almost all the time, except on days (like today) when our housecleaner is here – closing the laptop is part of our pre-cleaning cleanup.

Usually, I open the laptop almost as soon as we get back home, but I didn’t do that today. Nor did I open it during lunch preparation. Nor after our post-lunch walk.

Instead, I sat down at the computer in the office to catch up with Quicken; it had been a couple of months, so there was a lot of work to do. Something about being in a different place discouraged me from opening Facebook, Mastodon, my RSS reader, or even my email. I finished all of what I’d planned to do for the whole day in the 90 minutes I had before we started making dinner.

I think I should close the laptop more often.