Then I started seeing other dresses on Ravelry. Oh, man, there’s some sexy stuff out there. I have a serious knitty-boner for this black dress by Gudrun Johnson. (Here’s the Rav link, if you want to lose hours.) Ravelry seems to be groaning with knitters who have made this dress and are deliriously happy with the results. Ludicrously happy. And rightly so: they’re beautiful.

Then I found Sparkle! (Rav link and sorry about the exclamation mark, it’s part of the pattern name), a resurrected Vogue Knitting pattern. I can’t explain my crush on this dress but I LOVE IT. It resembles nothing I own and I can’t imagine picking it off the rack in a shop without anything but a derisive sneer. But it completely arrests me and I want to make it. I think I would probably make it plain. At first.

So the next thing I know I’ve spent an hour comparing reviews, doing maths to calculate yardage, weighing up prices and filling online shopping baskets only to abandon them in online aisles for the online staff to put back on the online shelves (I’m not proud). I haven’t bought yarn in a really long time: a few years ago I took a bit of a look at my stash and thought “yeah, that’s enough to be getting along with”. So I forgot how seductive and slippery online shopping is. One minute you have a clear goal and a budget: the next, you’re dancing on the shredded pieces of your shopping list and singing your credit card number to the tune of “High on the Hill Lived a Lonely Goat Herd”. I got to the checkout and had a “HOW much?” moment, and walked away.

I sat in the yarn cupboard for a while. It started as a “Yeah, this yarn’s okay for now. Maybe when I’ve worked through it I can buy some more yarn…” visit, a sort of gloomy reminder of all my current yarny commitments. Grump grump grump, no new yarn for me. Then I got into the cupboard and it was like meeting old friends. And remembering all the other things I want to knit. YEAH!

I can knit EVERYthing! AHAHAHAHHA! Coffee Tunic! Sexy Vesty! Kilt Hose! Hats! More skirts! Oooh dear. It’s been a while, but I know the Startitis boogie when I feel my heels shuffling. If I didn’t move quick, I’d come to my senses surrounded by half-finished terrible ideas and that would just be annoying. So I grabbed the nearest yarny chum and needles, and cast on the sexy Coffee Tunic in black. That took the edge off. Digging out a couple of socks that are soooo close to being done it’s silly helped, too.

I don’t need to order dress yarn. I don’t need to knit another dress. I am excited about my socks and the Black Coffee tunic. But butter my butt and call me a biscuit if I’m itching to make more dresses.

1. Referring to food as naughty, sinful, etc. This isn’t the Dark Ages: I think we can stop tying values of good and evil to the freaking bread basket. These value judgements are not useful. Fer Christ’s sake — no, scratch that: for the sake of compassion, decency and, oh, hey, let’s go crazy, maturity, let’s chuck the whole “naughty” thing, okay? It’s twee, stupid, and gets me into a big angry foam. What’s that? Why? Well, I’ll tell you.

1. Guilt and eating. We can do with less of that. Unless you’ve been living at the bottom of a compost heap for the past thirty-odd years, you might have heard that there’s a few people out there with food hangups. Even if you dodge full-blown anorexia, orthorexia or bulimia, it’s possible to be pretty disordered about food, following unhealthy patterns of bingeing, self-loathing, self-reproach and jumbled thinking that leaves you frizzy with anxiety about the avocado on your sandwich. “I nearly ate a Milky Bar earlier today, but instead I went to my dubstep-treadmill class, so I’m a better person.” Food shouldn’t be about how valuable you are as a person, unless you’re Lucrezia Borgia. It’s hard enough to chill out in the middle of a crazy-busy working day without somebody looking pointedly at your goddamn morning tea and hinting that you’re a bad, less-than-worthy person because you happen to want a Tim-Freaking-Tam.
2. Identifying something as a sin means another agent is in the position of forgiving. If your eating is a sin, it’s because some external agent has identified it as such. So some external force also has to forgive you. No. No way, José. It is not up to another external agent to tell me whether my eating is right or wrong, morally acceptable or morally condemnable. I don’t require another person to accept what I’m eating. I eat it because I want to eat it and this shouldn’t be an issue. Driving your car to work is, arguably, a greater moral concern than eating a carton of caramels every day, but nobody calls that sinful, indulgent or naughty.
3. Branding particular foods gives people the social sanction to negatively judge you. If you see someone eating a wedge of cake, suddenly you’ve got the right to assume that action is an illuminating example of their weakness and overall poorer social worth as a person because cake is naughty or wicked. Stop that, it isn’t nice. What a rotten way to talk about people.
4. Equating pleasure with sin is weird. Unless you’re a seventeenth-century European Puritan, you’ve probably figured out that pleasure and living ethically are not mutually exclusive. Love playing soccer? Reading a good book? Jet-skiing? Playing with your kids? Why are those pleasures not wicked, sinful, indulgent? And if the foods that are wicked and sinful are so good — and let’s face it, you’re unlikely to ever see a recipe for a Truly Sinful Dressing-Free Cabbage Slaw, are you? — what are the morally acceptable foods? Is it bran? Vitamin supplements altogether removed from food sources?

This is a feminist issue — not exclusively, but significantly. Look at it this way: what kinds of foods are usually marketed and labelled as naughty and sinful? Chocolate, ice cream, cakes, desserts. Less frequently: cheese platters, mashed potatoes, filet mignon, risotto. None of those are particularly scanty on the calorie side of things, but it’s the girly treats that are branded sinful, wicked, etc.

C’mon, food bloggers: referring to something tasty as wicked is just stupid, cheap and immature. You can do better.

2. The expression “you won’t even miss the meat” (usually with an astonished exclamation mark). Here’s a news flash, broadcast on all channels: some people can struggle through life without the meat. Sometimes they even go without meat for, oh, days at a time. Some true freakazoids go years – YEARS – without meat. Somehow they still manage to cobble together a meaningful existence. Sometimes they even seem happy with their food, even take pleasure in cooking and eating. How do you think they manage? I’ll tell you: meat, frankly, is not obligatory. Even most dedicated meat-lover types don’t eat meat with every meal. You don’t see Cocoa Pops with “tasty enough to make up for lack of meat” on the side of the box, do you? Cheese boards don’t come with whispered apologies for the absence of sausages, do they? Fruit salad doesn’t need a “WARNING DOES NOT CONTAIN MEATS” byline on the menu, does it? What about apple pie? Guacamole? Crackers? It’s not just vegetarian foods that cop this kind of talk: you also see “you won’t believe it’s healthy!” on anything not-horrifically bad for you, which suggests that healthy food is never anything but some sort of drear obligation, endless chewing on flavourless chaff. For crying out loud, people, can we lighten up on this sheer amazement that something could not contain pork chops and still somehow manage to be enjoyable?

I have other quibbles, such as the ubiquitousness of bacon and sriracha in every single food-related discussion anywhere on the Internet and the swarm of Oreo-stuffed baked treats that seems to be sweeping across the blog-o-world (seriously: how busy are you that you can’t take the time to eat your cupcake and then your Oreo?) — but honestly, those are quibbles about other people’s preferences and they don’t really impact me, except my slightly increased risk of eye-roll strain. But the other two are seriously bothering me. If you’re writing about food, think about the language you’re using: think about the messages you’re sending and the judgements you’re making. Yeesh.

Good things about summer:

1. Cherries. Just bought a kilo from the farmers’ markets for a stupidly low price. I almost feel like asking the sellers if they know how much cherries are worth, but all the stalls are selling for the same stupidly cheap rate, so clearly the market is just in my favour right now. I don’t want anything more from life than to keep eating cherries. Except…
2. Boysenberries. A friend came over last night and brought a bowl of boysenberries. I am blissed out on boysenberries. Boysenberry swirl was my favourite flavour of anything when I was a kid: ice cream, yoghurt, cake, packet-mix-self-saucing-pudding. They’re even better in person: lush and juicy and oooh hang on a sec I’ll be right back.
3. Late sunsets. Can you say “drinks on the back deck every night”?

That’s all. It’s a short list and it’s mostly food things. I’m clinging to these because summer also means hot hot weather and that’s pretty sucky. Love cold weather; less love for the hot. My house stands up nicely to the heat — there’s fans, an air-conditioner, and dark shades you can pull low over the front windows so not too much light/hot gets in. Surrounded by trees, too, so we get tons of shade (and tons of comments from Negative Nancys about roots getting into the toilet pipes; honestly, whatever happened to decorum?) (where was I?) (oh yes) and tons of plums. But I can’t stay in my house eating plums all summer. Bitch’s gotta work.

So this summer, so far, it’s been cool and damp and I love it. Normally by this time of year I’m bitching about how it’s too hot to sleep: this year, slumber city. Normally I’m living on lettuce and yoghurt and whining about how it’s too hot to cook: today, I’m an all-singing, all-dancing, cherry-powered cooking machine! Bread! Yoghurt! Tabbouleh and couscous! Dolmades! Maybe later dolmades: it’s almost three o’clock and I don’t feel like blanching the vines leaves right now. On the other hand, yeeeeaaah dolamdes!

Hellz, it’s cool enough that I’m thinking of getting out the jumper I cast on at the end of spring and working on it. Then I remembered that these cool weather oases are fleeting, and turned back to the summer dress. I’m on track to finish it by, oh, 2014. It’s a good project, though.

I’m not used to big, chewy, sugar-and-butter-laden, chocolate-chippified snacks. I’m typing at the speed of sound while doing a bidding war on eBay for something I don’t want while Skypeing with my Nan and singing along to Depeche Mode. I’ve never felt so ALIVE!

Oh, now I’m sad. Another cookie, please.

My doubts first began to burp when the pattern insisted that one size would fit all sizes from XS-L. Since I’m working with a limited amount of yarn, this concerned me: it suggested that the pattern was made to stretch enough to fit the L, and then the springiness of the ribs and cable would snug it back to fit the XS as well. So I started making plans: maybe I could start over and do fewer pattern repeats, make it snugger overall…all of which was brought up short, sudden and sharp at the end of the 12cm of 2×2 rib (which, mysteriously, took me for-fucking-ever).

Okay, here’s the thing: you cast on 220 sts, work in 2×2 rib for 12cm. Then in the last round, you increase to 224 sts, so that you’ve got a multiple of 16 ready for the cable pattern. Logic: impeccable. Except. Big fat problem: there is no way you can incorporate those 4 sts evenly into the work without fucking up the ribbing. And if you like your ribbing to flow seamlessly into your cable pattern — and most right-minded, charismatic, lovable champions do — you don’t want to fuck up your ribbing. So…why not just cast on 224 sts to begin with? You got me stumped, and I feel stoopid for not reading the pattern ahead and figuring that bit out already. Still, worth noting for next time.

So, realising there was no way I could smoothly incorporate those 4 sts, and no way I could accept the ribbing-cable-pattern-flow thing being interrupted unnnecessarily, I decided to frog. Plus, it would give me a chance to reevaluate the rest of the pattern, see where I could economise and make the whole thing smaller. You have 7 cable pattern repeats on both the front and back: I like the number 7, and I particularly like odd numbers in pattern repeats. So I thought I could trim down to 5 repeats front and back, but that would drop my stitch count so much as to make me suspicious. I could drop down to 6 repeats front and back, which is a less extreme reduction, but also cancels the pleasing odd number of repeats thing. Feeling a glow of maturity in reaching this compromise (with whom?), I read the pattern again, and decided I would adjust the end/start of round marker so that the waist shaping would always fall between cable repeats: my glow of maturity built to an inferno of grownuppityness!

While I was grabbing the ball winder to begin frogging Green Sprite, on a whim, I also grabbed the yarn scales — and made a crushing discovery. Yup. Not enough yarn, by a long, long margin.

Green Sprite dances away from me like Le Fée Verte, the little minx.

Coffee Tunic is definitely staying in my to-knit queue, however: despite my little dummy-spit about the ribbing-to-cable transition, it’s a bitchin pattern and have commenced rummaging in the stash to see what else I can make it from. But where does that leave Green Sprite? A hazy, teasing flicker in my imagination, that’s where. A tantalising succubus of a design, haunting my soul and also needles.

I love food. So I love reading about food, food blogs, forums, etc. etc. Awesome places to yammer about yeast, waffle over waffles and shoot the shit about shakshouka. But, in keeping with Sturgeon’s Law, 99% of food blogs are crap are not to my taste. People, it’s not enough just to shove a photo of a slice of cheesecake up there and assume that it will distract us all from bad layout, dud writing and uninteresting posts. Allow me to guide you through some basic principles.

I’ve got some rules about what I’ll read. (I didn’t sit down and plan these out or anything, these are just observed patterns of behaviour.) First rule is that you’ve got to be interesting. Time is short. Like my legs. Your skills with a baked ham may be beyond reproach, but if your writing is blabbery and unfocused, you’ll just sound like a nine year old who needs to pee LIKE RIGHT NOW, and you’ve lost me. No recipe is so awesome it’s worth trawling shit sentences.

Rule two! I am uninterested in your cupcakes. You can have photos of dear wee decorated cupcakes that moisten the panties of the masses: I can promise you they will not move my cold, dead heart. It will be as a marble heart carved on the tomb of your ancestors.

Third rule: if at any point your recipe suggests I have to open a packet of cake mix, brownie mix, powdered French Onion Soup mix, or any other prefabricated box of crap, my cursor is already hovering over the back button. Proceed with extreme caution, and know that the presence of two prepackaged ingredients is likely to result in a muttered curse and clearing Chrome’s history .There are exceptions, obviously: peanut butter, sriracha, mayonnaise, jam, Cointreau – I could go on). If you post a recipe that involves pre-grated cheese, you should be prepared for the repercussions. That chill on the back of your neck and those nightmares you’ve been having: yo. You deserved it. (If you post a recipe that involves cheese from a can, then you can expect carbuncles, bunions and plagues of dildos raining on your next garden party. That’s not me, that’s just divine justice, but I wholeheartedly support it.)

Rule the fourth! A sandwich is not a recipe. C’mon, put some effort in.

All of this boils down to one thing, and it holds true across the internet. Don’t waste people’s time. Never forget for a second that your brave little blog post is launched into the heaving, extra-spicy combination laksa of info, stories, pictures and games that is the internet, and your reader could be reading something waaaaay more interesting and informative at the click of a mouse. Give folks a reason to stick around and read your blog instead of, say, foodgawker, Wild Yeast or Rabbit’s Reviews. You’re asking someone to give their precious time and eye juices to you: to make it anything less than 100% worth their while is downright rude. And stupid.

Let’s talk about this.

1. “Kitchen Sink Cookies“: biscuits with heaps of things added. “Kitchen Sink” as in “Everything but the…”. Can be applied to soups, stir fries, casseroles, bakes and the like. How does this not conjure up images of soggy biscuits covered in used tea leaves, squashed under dirty cutlery and plates with bits of dried egg? Is everyone else using their kitchen sinks for something far more dainty and neat than I? Have I been committing a huge faux pas all this time, using my kitchen sink for dirty dishes? I wouldn’t want to eat anything named after that zone.

3. “Garbage Quiche/Soup“: in application, very similar to the “Kitchen Sink” approach. Scraps and leftovers from the week revived in quiche or soup form. I am totally behind this practice, but the name…Imagine it: your friends show up one evening, bearing a much nicer bottle of wine than you’d usually buy for yourself, and you say “Fantastic! That will go really nicely with the Garbage Quiche!” The name suggests you scraped out the scungy stuff from the bottom of the crisper and the lid of the compost bin and slapped it in a pot. Eat up, chums.

2. “Chockablocks“: What a whimsical little name! Definition: biscuits with loads of extras: oats, sultanas, nuts, chocolate bits, etc. They are chock-a-block with extras. GET IT? If you’re more than eight years old you have no excuse for employing twinkly twee twiddlesome names like this. You start with chockablocks, then you move on to snickerdoodles, suddenly you’re wearing a flouncy apron, ironing your colour-coordinated tea towels and crinkling your nose if the dog hasn’t been washed in the past hour. You’re probably the kind of person who sees nothing gross about the name “Kitchen Sink cookies” because your kitchen sink smells like cinnamon and is so shiny it keeps the neighbours awake at night.

4. “Icebox Cake“: after seeing a bunch of recipes on foodgawker labelled “Icebox Cake”, I had to look it up. I mean, I know what an Icebox is — an old-timey word for frij — but I didn’t understand its relevance to the recipe. Now I get it: it’s because you leave the cake, once assembled, in the icebox overnight! CLEVER. I’m going to start calling everything I make by its preparation or storage equipment. Can I offer you another bowl of Tupperware Container Soup? You can have some Pantry Crackers and Crisper-First-But-Then-On-The-Bench-For-A-While Cheese to go with it.

5. “Impossible Pie“: this is one I learned from Aunts and Grandmothers (misc.). It isn’t always pie, but the “Impossible” part of the recipe name is essential. It’s an Impossible Pie because…wait for it…it’s IMPOSSIBLE to stuff it up! Hah! I assert that it is completely unnecessary to have a joke in a recipe title. I further assert that, if you’re going to make that sort of claim, you’d better have the balls to back it up, mate. I hear that recipe name/punchline, and I think “impossible, you say?” Believe me, I will dedicate myself to fucking up that recipe, ruining your joke, wasting the ingredients and swearing at the children.

Right. Feeling much calmer now I’ve got that off my chest. Strozzapretti, anyone?

So instead, I’m planning. I’m researching companion planting and organic pest control; I’m doodling garden plans (“and then the pavers should sweep past the elephant-shaped strawberry patch, towards the rosemary chessboard…”) and looking up planting versus harvesting times. And I’m cashing in on the Spoonfully Seed Bank!

Tiny!

Last summer I saved the seeds from one of our tomatoes (picture provided to remind you what a tomato is):

Ahh, happy times.

as well as the seeds from some really good rockmelon and watermelon from the Farmers’ Markets. Today I cashed in and planted them. I also planted some broccoli and beetroot because, well, why not.

Recycling at its finest!

In the spirit of minimising waste and making use of what’s on hand, I planted all my seeds in planters fashioned from leftover milk cartons, etc. I suspect there’s some submerged psychological impulse there…something about growing sprouts in kindergarten and not getting a turn with the pinking shears or something.

A safe outlet for my craft flashbacks.

I’m on crutches for another five weeks minimum, and all these seeds are supposed to be ready for planting out in six-to-eight weeks. So I’ll be off the crutches, and then the following week, it will be time to plant the wee ones out! Lines up nicely and makes me feel less grumpy about not being able to do the other, more vigourous stuff. See me being all mature and patient? Making the best of things, being sensible and calm and not chucking a wobbly even a bit.

Lessons in patience brought to you by plants in polyurethane.

So, in about six weeks’ time, look for the inevitable post about planting the seedlings that grew while I was recovering, leading to crapping on about healing, growth, patience, etc. If you don’t feel like waiting that long, here’s the tl;dr version: cycle of life, yo.

I’m craving yoghurt and vegetables and nuts. That seems healthy until you start craving them in epic proportions.

I don't ask, I just listen. More vegetables, demanding tummy?

Today I thought I’d try some cooking. My bad recovering leg can tolerate some weight, and the crutches just piss me off in the kitchen, so I prop them up in a corner and get around by putting weight on the benches and so on.

I know what this stress fracture needs!

I’ll be the first to admit that I do like to overdo things. You’re not having fun unless you’re weeping with exhaustion and self-pity by the clothesline at the end of it, that’s what I always say. Overambition plus cravings for vegetables, raised to the power of self-congratulation after a successful cup of tea equals lunch! I took all the vegetables I could find and started chopping. The veggie cravings were one thing, but while I was slicing garlic and onions, I realised there was another itch to be scratched (damn oxycodone): the return to normalcy.

The surgery I had was really, really minor; so minor that when I tell people about it I avoid saying ‘surgery’ or ‘operation’ and use words like ‘thingo’ or ‘hospital visit’ or ‘mushrooms’ instead. But the longer effects have been rattling my cage a bit. I’ve been worrying about not being able to run, ride and drive, and I’ve been a bit grouchy about having to give up some plans. Getting behind a knife and slicing up some onions is such a normal, familiar thing it immediately reassured me.

All brought together!

It was still a bit too much: I’m pretty stiff and my bad recovering leg is tired and sore now. An easy peasy recipe, but I think I might have been moving around a bit too much. It’s a really simple crustless quiche (or baked frittata, if you like): some cooked potato and cubed broccoli stalks plus sauteéd onions/chilli/garlic/broccoli leaves plus some sliced cheese, all bound together with a few eggs and baked until set and tasty-smelling.

Things I learned about cooking with a dud leg:

• If you get into the habit of putting your hands on the edge of the bench to support your weight, you will eventually try to support your weight using the handle of the wok, extended temptingly over the edge of the bench.
• Your reflexes aren’t as good as you think they are, and even if they were, your leg is still slow.
• There really is no way of moving a hot dish out of the oven if you already need to support yourself with a hand while unencumbered with a big hot bowl.
• Your vast and glorious vision for Cooking All The Things was a delusion fed on fatigue and hospital-strength painkillers. Be realistic and maybe give foodgawker a break for a while.
• You’re probably not ready for kneading bread. No, not brioche either. Put Bertinet down.
• The smell of frying onions and garlic is a panacea, a mood enhancer and an appetite stimulant all in one. The smell of frying chilli is half glorious, half mace. Try to remember that you can’t get away from the fumes as quickly as you normally do. Either forego the chilli or accept a little cheerful weeping, coughing and snorfing over the sink.

So it’s probably a bit early to be cooking anything too ambitious — but here’s the tradeoff to weigh up: does the psychological/emotional benefit I get out of doing familiar, happymaking things erase the cost of the tired, sore leg? I’ll think about that after lunch.

Once-baked would just be, er, scotti?

Today I made biscotti! Never done that before. Today I also built a garden bed! Also never done that before, and, while satisfying, it was slightly less interesting than the biscotti. Although both lacked conflict and drama, and therefore the narrative structure for either is pretty weak. But the biscotti is pretty pretty! So there’s that. (There’s what?)

line 'em up!

Biscotti, in case you can’t be arsed looking it up on Wikipedia, means “twice baked” (from medieval Latin via modern Italian), and they are pretty fantastic. If you like crunchy biscuits, boy howdy are you going to love these babies. They can be really simple — these ones are flavoured with just lemon zest and chopped almonds — or really lush and decadent — I found plenty of double chocolate biscotti and chocolate-drizzled biscotti and so on. Man, people get carried away.  Biscotti seem very easy to make: you mix the wet, mix the dry; combine into a thick, tacky dough, then shape into two loaves and bake them. Cool, slice, then re-bake until they’re dry and hard. Ta-da! You just made biscotti! (In your mind. In real life you just read a sentence on a blog.)

crumb close-up, pre-second bake

Sifting through all the recipes for biscotti, you can’t help but notice people love to jump on board the Excess train to FlavourWorld. I always thought of biscotti as a pretty restrained kinda biscuit, with a few nuts or maybe some spices, but you really notice how many people run with the opportunity to add more flavourings.

I’m sympathetic: I know the itch to add more. But…c’mon guys.  It’s like a phobia of simplicity. Cake is fine, but it isn’t TRIPLE DECKER CHOCOLATE CAKE STUFFED WITH PRUNES STUFFED WITH MASCARPONE DRIZZLED WITH MAPLE SYRUP AND CRUMBLED HAM.  Cheesecake is just embarrassing unless you’ve made the base from Mars Bars and then poured peanut butter over the top and sprinkled it with caramel fudge pieces.  Chocolate chip biscuits? Ahem, don’t you mean TRIPLE FUDGE RIPPLE CHOCOMORES WITH TWO TYPES OF CHOCOLATE CHIPS? I mean, settle down, people. Not every recipe has to be cranked up to 11 on the flavour-ometer-tron. There’s deliciousness to be found in simplicity: consider the wonderful flavours of a perfectly ripe tomato, with basil and olive oil. Meditate, if you will, on the perfection of a strawberry, or a piece of warm bread with soft butter. What I’m trying to say here is that delicious, moreish treats are totally possible without adding mini M&Ms and chopped marshmallows and chocolate-covered pineapples. Just relax and keep it simple.

Now we're talking...bake two completed!

After baking my two loaves for about 45 minutes at a pretty low temperature, I let them cool completely on the bench before slicing. I mostly did this because I needed to put the bread in the oven before it overproofed, but it also made sure that the once-baked loaves were firm and hard, and that I could hold them steady while slicing (because frankly, there’s a fair bit of resistance: you’re going to need a big ol’ serrated bread knife). I think I want them in thinner slices, but that will come with practice. A lot of the recipes I found had really mondo uber-fat fingers of biscotti, waaaaay too chunky to dip into your espresso cup. Kind of moving towards a thick finger cookie, really.

Big ol' pile of yes please.

These are delicious. Really awesome.  Really hard, crunchy and dry and perfect for dipping in tea or coffee. Apparently the traditional recipe uses no fat or oils, relying on eggs to provide just enough moisture to bind the dough together.  Normally I love biscuits that are chewy and soft, so God only knows why these babies are rocking my casbah so hard, but I’m not one to ask the probing questions. Clicky for recipe: I used lemon zest instead of orange. I can see room for experimentation: I really like the idea of mixing in some anise or ginger, or maybe trying the apparently ubiquitous craisin-pistachio combo.  But that’s as zany as it’s going to get. None of this chocolate-bacon-caramel-and-froot-loop biscotti business around here, thank you very much.