There is No Good Substitute for Cream of Tartar.

I'm making Snickerdoodles right now. I picked Snickerdoodles because of their great name and cinammon sugar deliciousness. Also, when I pulled out the chocolate chips in possible preparation for choc-chip cookies, they spilled all over the countertop and I ate a good many of them in the clean up process. So, the unusual thing about Snickerdoodles (this may be an attempt to use Snickerdoodles as many times as possible in this post because I love the name so much) is that they use cream of tartar, something every well stocked kitchen should have. Just kidding, its something I never use and always just throw in some other chemical sounding spice (is it a spice?) ingredient/ whichamacallit. Today I tried baking powder, but the friendly ladies on cookinganswers.com (I made that site name up because I'm too lazy to go back and check my sources. So much for my thorough MLA source training all through school) told me there is NO good substitute for cream of tartar, or COT as I like to call it. Anyway, they came out great!* I think what really got me in the Snickerdoodle groove was the gangsta rap playing in the background. There's nothing like DMX and missy elliot to get you mixing flour and butter and sugar really well. I know, it looks like I stole that line right out of a cookbook. The thing is, when you don't have an electric mixer, you really need to get yourself pumped up for the process. Why not country or pop or indie rock? Rappers use food a lot in their lyrics, for instance as Fabolous says in Can't Let You Go, "the entree ain't as good without somethin on the side."** .... How true, as long as we ignore the real meaning of the song. When you're on the kind of sugar high I'm on, its pretty easy to find meaning only on the food deep level. *I like to define 'great' as the following: Unburnt, tasting similar to Snickerdoodles I have tried before, enough for me to eat 6 or 7 and have plenty left over to share, made in less than 1/2 an hour. Obviously the whole "chill for an hour" part got skipped. I mean what do you think I'm doing on my day off, sitting around the house all day watching a top chef marathon and writing things down on my check list that I have already done so that I have something to check? Yes, that is exactly what I'm doing, leaving little time to chill cookie dough. Which would all get eaten in an hour. **I can cite my sources, sometimes. I just don't like to brag about it. Or do it too often. Now I better go write "Eat at least 5 snickerdoodles" on my seriously long check list.

I wanted to give a little background for my second blog post, but "background information" made me feel so like I had a tedious form to fill out that I was avoiding my blog. So I will skip that for now and move right into what I've been thinking about today... riding in the indoor. That's right I replaced the boring background information with soemthing that FANTASTIC. Now I'm not going to say I miss the indoor or make anyone up north really angry by complaining about winters in Florida, but I did have a really good 'Riding in the Indoor' experience when I went home for christmas. When I went home I got to take a nice break from riding for about two days and then it was off to the barn to see Minga and Theo with my mom and sister :) Being back in the indoor reminded me of 1. how I looked on a horse. Being outside every day I hadn't seen myself ride in a while and it was nice being able to not just feel but see how much angle I had in a shoulder in or how my elbows were sneaking out... The hard part for me is balancing seeing myself and wanting it to be perfect and just getting on with the ride. Second, when you jump in an indoor, you HAVE to turn. No jump, land canter 10 or 20 strides and oops I'm on the other side of the field I'll be back soon... in an indoor bam you hit the wall. (No I didn't literally hit the indoor wall; there was a loud crash involving a bedroom door recently but this blog post isn't about that and the bruise was luckily easy to hide...) The thing a large solid wall of wood does to you is make you pick your line and stick to it, and see if your horse is really on your aids, which was a good wake up call as it can be nice and easy at home to wait and make a nice sweeping and inefficient turn. So, did I miss the icy north and its panorama of snowy beauty with barns and indoors nestled cozily into hillsides? Even though I abhor winter and consider any temperature under 60 frigidly cold, I really did miss it. Now, I'm off to bed and excited to watch the super bowl / commercials tomorrow. GO PATS!