Speaking of Narnia snow, everybody needs to read Anne Ursu's BREADCRUMBS immediately. Before the pain of winter fades. It's one of the darkest, loneliest, most fascinating children's books I've read in a long time. Anyone who loves 5th graders, superhero baseball, or Hans Christian Andersen should really, really read this book. I listened to the audiobook and that, too, is exceptional. Go read it. I'll wait.
In other news, I'm looking for a name for my almost-ready-to-launch library-stuff blog. It should include echoes of public access, children's services, solid strangeness, and delight. The Brecht Forum has already taken peoplesuniversity.tumblr.com, in case you were wondering.
The Luxury Oatmeal Cookies are a fairly classic oatmeal cookie recipe in the cookie-jar tradition, made with granola and chocolate instead of rolled oats. The Baking Bible includes a recipe for granola, but I had almost a cup of granola leftover and needing to be used up, so I used that. I am not sure exactly what was in it, as it was a gift from my cheesemonger friend Pam, who has a tendency to show up at the door with things like hand-dried Maine trompettes. I had slightly less granola than I needed for the quarter recipe I was making, so I subbed in the remainder with regular rolled oats. I included the raisins but omitted the chocolate, as I don't hold with chocolate in oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal in chocolate chip cookies, is, inexplicably, a plus. Something about the different ratios makes it so.
These were good cookies, clumpy and hearty in texture.
