They say there are no seasons in L.A... (See my earlier post Fall in December for more on this.) Well, it's spring. The orange tree in our back yard is showing off blossoms and fruit at the same time, and nights are filled with the heavy, sweet fragrance of citrus trees. The other day I found some snowdrops in our front yard. Bright green and robust they have popped up out of nowhere, made their way through a thick layer of mulch. One of the previous house owners must have planted them years ago.
Today as I was making chocolate chip cookies it came to me: these baked treats which any US American child grows up with don't exist in Austria. There isn't a German term for them. Schokoladenstückkekse? The word doesn't exist. German recipes for chocolate chip cookies call them just that, by their American name. The funny thing is Austria is famous for its pastries. I have some wonderful recipes for Christmas cookies: Vanillekipferl, Kokosbusserl, Ischler T ö rtchen, Lebkuchen, Spitzbuben, Nussstangerl... They are all delicious but not one is as easy to make as a chocolate chip cookie. My recipe for chocolate chip cookies is from the Los Angeles Times. I found it in the printed edition many years ago. Unfortunately I cannot locate the online version of the article but here is the scanned original: I make the cookies much smaller than the LAT chefs do, using about one and a half tablespoons of dough per cookie and baking them ten minutes at most. As yo...
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I love the smell of citrus trees in bloom; one of my favorite smells.
This post and the one from the fall (so beautiful) tell me that those who say there are no seasons in L.A. (or Dallas, for that matter) are not paying attention.