Grace, I do not know why you cannot see the pictures. I did not change anything so my guess is either that Flickr was temporarily down, or that your filtering software is somehow blocking them.

Is there anyone else who cannot see the pictures I post?

I spent most of the day today baking. I've made four batches of cookies so far. (I decided that I'm going to do a cookie plate for a potluck I'm going to Monday night, as well as for the FFFF* that my department does during exam week.)

(*FFFF = Five days of Feasting on Finger Foods. It's sort of a traditional exam-week thing, people bring in snacks and put them in the break room. Everyone has their "thing." One person does those pinwheel things with tortillas, and another person makes sausage balls. I usually do cookies.)

So far, I've made cranberry-white chocolate-oatmeal cookies, and Swedish Almond Fingers (which is one of my favorites and one I make every year). I also made two new recipes, one for a toffee-type cookie with a caramel material that's melted into vanilla wafer crumbs and topped with chocolate and nuts. And I made something called Caramel Turtle Bars (those last two recipes were from the Cuisine magazine Christmas cookies special issue that I bought). I sampled the toffee bars and they're pretty good, and the turtle bars smelled fantastic while they were baking (and seriously: anything with oatmeal and brown sugar and dark chocolate and "sticky milk**" and caramels in it has GOT to be good). I've not cut the turtle bars yet because it says to let them cool completely.

There are some other good recipes in that book; I am taking it with me when I go to visit my folks (just over a week now). There's a cookie shaped like cinnamon rolls that I want to try, just not right now.

(**"Sticky milk" is sweetened condensed milk. I call it that because a British friend of mine refers to it as "sticky milk" and I like that term better than sweetened condensed. I have about 2 ounces of it left, though. I don't have any other ideas of what to do, except that my British friend did remark that East Indian friends of hers used it in their chai tea in place of sugar and regular milk, so I will probably try that. I probably won't use up the full 2 ounces though, unless I drink a lot of chai in the coming week....)

I also want to make a batch of chocolate chunk cookies - I sprang for the "Chocolatier" brand chocolate (chips and chunks). I think there is a difference in the quality judging from the chips I've used. I have a Martha Stewart recipe that is for a "baker's dozen" of 4" diameter cookies but I think I am going to make them smaller than that; I am not into the whole mega-cookie thing. I'd rather have smaller cookies becuase then I can sample more than one kind at a sitting. But I'm going to do those tomorrow; I'm kind of baked out for today.

I also bought the makings for a peanut-butter-skillet-fudge I found in a candy book I have; I think I'm going to wait until tomorrow to make that too.

I love to bake when I have an "audience" for it; I usually can't use up a batch of cookies just by myself but I am sure that between the church-ladies and the perpetually-hungry people in my department, anything I choose to bring will be eaten.