News You Can Bruise for 2003 December 8

Go see the PDQ Bach concert on Friday. Don't be like me and miss it because you're working for a presidential campaign.

I had a big bag of dried cranberries from the "I didn't get enough Thanksgiving food" post-Thanksgiving food preparation mania, which I think was a big failure which is why I haven't shared my recipes with you. Anyway, a few of these cranberries had gone into a stuffing (which would have been great if I knew how to make stuffing), but I had an enormous number of them left and was at a loss as to how to dispose of them. Then it occured to me to use them instead of raisins in chocolate chip cookies. And they are great; much better, I would say, than raisins. You'll never eat chocolate chip cookies the same way again!

Update: The Crummy.com Test Kitchen You Can Bruise informs me that you eat these cookies the same way you ate cookies previously; they just taste different. My testers also add that you can alter the taste even more by partially rehydrating the cranberries in rum or other medicinal spirits.

The Arkansas state capitol, right near the campaign office, is very stately and resembles the US Capitol building. Except they don't drape Christmas lights all over the US Capitol building. I'd probably be more receptive to the idea if they didn't do it with these tacky pinstripes of lights.

Useless fact: the Arkansas state capitol was used to represent the Capitol building in a made-for-TV movie written by Bob Woodward.