My fingers smell like rosemary. Of
course, they're also red at the moment, which means that there's
something strangely weird going on. Or weirdly strange. You pick.
All the dough for my Christmas cookies
has now been made, leading up to the mass orgy of baking I'm planning
for tonight. That, of course, is why my fingers are confused. Last
night I made the dough for two different cookies. The first accounts
for the way they smell; that would be the lemon-rosemary cookies of
which I've become so fond. This year, I decided to use fresh
rosemary, which means that I had to tear off and cut up the leaves
from the stems I bought. I'm glad I did it; the aroma from fresh
rosemary made the dough smell amazing, a taste I hope will transfer
to the cookies. But since I had to hold the rosemary by hand to tear
and cut the oils from the herb transferred onto my fingers, where
more than 12 hours later they still reside.
Of course, I LOVE rosemary, which means
I think my hands smell heavenly. But that's just me.
Here's where the strangely weird (or
weirdly strange) part comes in. My fingers smell like a green herb,
yet look like they were attacked by a red one. The other cookie
dough I made was for the cherry-chocolate explosions, which means
that I had to cut up a jar of maraschino cherries. I don't know how
much food coloring was placed in them, but by the time I finished
cutting up the jar the fingers which I used were a very bright,
almost neon red. They smelled like rosemary, mind you, but looked
like they had gotten involved in an intimate relationship with a
Twizzler.
They were that red.
No matter how many times I washed my
hands (and I washed them a lot while making the dough, because I
practice safe baking) the red coloring would not come out of my
fingers. After taking a shower this morning the red coloring still
didn't come out of my fingers, although it's faded a bit. I'm hoping
it comes out soon; if not, I know that it'll eventually disappear as
the skin cells on my fingers fall off.
Unless, of course, the dye in the
cherries was so strong I gave myself a permanent tattoo cutting them
up. THAT would be the gift that keeps on giving!
So hopefully, the red disappears soon.
The scent of rosemary can stay if it wants, although that's
disappearing at a much greater rate than the color. But who
knows—maybe when I bake the cookies tonight I can get a little of
the smell to rub off on my hands. To play it safe, though, I may use
gloves when making the cherry cookies.
Just in case.
****
This will be the last original blog for
a few days. I'll post the annual Christmas Eve one Monday, and then
be back with something new on Wednesday. Have yourself a great
holiday weekend, a Merry Christmas, and, hopefully, dye-free fingers!
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