All this after a course in ethics in science

This past week was awfully busy, culminating with a musical and two parties last night.

I went with a couple friends to watch Jekyll & Hyde, which was being put on by the UIUC students. The singing and acting were very good, but the lighting and sound was a complete disaster. I've done lights for a show before, and I realize it can be challenging, but there are some mistakes - such as bringing up the house lights in the middle of a song - that really shouldn't happen at all. But yes. The costumes were gorgeous too.

Unfortunately, the show itself was all over the place. The songs were nice, but (I never believed I would ever say this) there were too many of them. The plot happened too slow and then too fast, and just didn't give the kind of character development that I've grown to expect out of a musical. There were nice moments, touching moments, and several disturbing moments, but no coherence.


Unlike the musical, the cookies I made today go together very nicely. Today's project was pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing (17). And yes, they do taste as good as they look. The recipe calls for many of the same ingredients as a pumpkin pie: pumpkin (obviously), nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, evaporated milk... These have less butter in them than most cookies I've made (3/4 C for 7 dozen!), so I like to imagine they might be healthy.

Well, at least I like to imagine that without the icing they're healthy. The icing is pretty basic - browned butter, evaporated milk, LOTS of confectioners' sugar, and vanilla. I've never made anything with browned butter before, so I was worried that I would do something horrifically wrong, but nothing went wrong and the frosting is some of best I've tasted.

For a first cookie of November, I'm satisfied both in terms of taste and seasonal appropriateness. Once we get into December I'll probably do a lot of ginger-heavy cookies, but that's still a few weeks away.