Leftovers and cookies

It's 10:42 p.m. here and we are listening to the BYU vs. TCU game. Come on Cougars!

Today was a pretty typical day. We went to work. We came home. We ate leftovers for dinner, which were actually very tasty. I tweaked our baked ziti recipe last night and it was delicious! We also bought some yukon gold potatoes (instead of our classic russet) last weekend, so we threw together some potato fries with seasoning salt and olive oil. Yum. Now I'm busy finishing up some chocolate chip cookies and Jason is reading. We're such skilled multi-taskers.

Tomorrow we get to hear from Representative Jim Matheson. Our briefing is in one of the House buildings, which is cool because I don't spend much time over there. We have class at the Barlow Center afterward and then...I don't really know what we're going to do.

That's about it for us!

Oh, almost forgot. When I got home today, I remembered that Jason wasn't home because he had his Guarani class. Usually he checks the mail, but I decided to grab it in his absence. Imagine my excitement when I found a postcard from Italia! Thank you Roni! I miss you and want to visit you.

Hungry? Me too.

Another good day for the Frosts. Jason says he will write later, so I will detail the most notable ten minutes of my day.

I went to a judiciary hearing today about the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. It was pretty interesting; I now know that I never want to be interrogated by a Senate committee. After the hearing, I walked toward my office, not really paying attention to what was going on around me. I looked forward and discovered that I was walking right behind Senator Franken and his staff who had just left the hearing. Weird.

When I got back, the office was filled with large, athletic men. One of them opened the door for me. Another intern informed me that they were NFL players. Crazy! I'm not sure who any of them were, but they were huge.

Only minutes later, I met the senator! This was definitely the most exciting part of my day. He was very nice. I was actually really lucky to be there; he stopped by the intern desks on his way out of a meeting and there were only two of us in the office. It was very cool to finally meet him.

Well, I feel like I haven't shared very much today, so here is a fantastic recipe for chocolate chip cookies that I stole from The New York Times and promised to email my mom. Here you go, mom!

Cookies Stolen From The New York Times

3 2/3 C minus 2 Tbsp flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 sticks of butter

1/2 C light brown sugar

1 C plus 2 Tbsp sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

A bunch of chocolate chips

Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl, mix butter, brown sugar, and white sugar for five minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla.

Combine dry ingredients with wet ingredients and mix sparingly (only enough to just combine!). Add chocolate chips.

The recipe suggests rolling the dough into a roll and chilling for 24 hours, but I let them chill for an hour or so and they turned out just fine.

Roll chilled dough into pretty large circles (at least golfball sized) and bake six per cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 12-ish minutes (depending on how big you make the dough-balls) or until light golden brown.

These are definitely not the most efficient cookies, but they spread a lot and are very tasty.

Remove from baking sheet and cool on a rack. Best if eaten warm.

Now we're listening to the BYU basketball game and pretending to do our homework. Jason is actually doing homework. What a good student.

Hope everyone is doing well! I miss you!