Make something cool: Iced Orange Cookies

These are yummy and theoretically good for you since they contain whole grains. Good for Christmas or special occasions, they look fancy and taste great.  These are soft and cake-like cookies with a creamy frosting.

Iced Orange Cookies
From King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking

Dough
11 T unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 t vanilla
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 egg
1/2 cup orange juice (grate the zest before juicing)
2 T grated orange zest (rind of 1-2 oranges)
2 c whole wheat flour

Icing
2 c confectioners' sugar
2 T butter, softened
1 T grated orange zest
1/4 t vanilla
1/8 t salt
2 T orange juice

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets or line with parchment paper.

Prepare the dough. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and soda, and salt in medium bowl. Beat in the egg, then the OJ and zest, scraping the bowl. Will look curdled. Add the flour, beating until smooth. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared sheets.

Bake cookies, reversing pans midway through until they are just barely beginning to brown around the edges, 10 minutes. Remove cookies fromt he oven and let them cool on the pans for 10 min before transferring them to a rack to cool.

Prepare the icing. Beat the sugar, butter, zest, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl until well combined. Beat in the OJ till the mixture is spreadable. Spread icing on the cookies when they are completely cool, using a generous 1 teaspoon icing for each.

Making marriage work

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a ParentMap lecture by Dr. John Gottman at Town Hall in Seattle. It was insightful and entertaining. I thought I'd share my notes with you so you can benefit from what I learned.

Dr. Gottman studies couples and makes observations based on their interactions. Evidently he’s been able to predict with 90% accuracy which couples will succeed or fail based on how they interact. He’s found that the ratio of positive to negative interactions for a healthy marriage is 5:1 measured in number of seconds.

The ability to repair after a negative reaction is key. Listen openly, quick to forgive, etc. Most of the time we are emotionally unavailable when we need to be (statistically only 9% of the time are we both available at the same time). Odds are stacked against us. What makes repair work?

“What can make relationships work is surprisingly simple. Happily married couples in their day-to-day lives have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other from overwhelming their positive ones. They support each other’s hopes and aspirations and build a sense of purpose into their lives together.”

What can you do now to make your marriage work?

1. Nurture the friendship in your marriage
- Build love maps – maintain awareness of your partner’s world. What stresses you out? Values, hopes, aspirations. Learn it and remember (will get you more sex too!). Present problems as “our” problems that we kick around together (vs “you are the problem!”). Avoid criticism. Complain when you are upset, but tell what you need and give a chance to repair that doesn’t feel like attack.
- Share and nurture fondness and admiration – and express it to each other. The marriages that work build a culture of appreciation and respect in the small moments that build up. Like spontaneous gratitude. It is a habit of the mind – scan for mistakes and offer “constructive criticism” vs ignore the mistakes and look for things to compliment and appreciate. What is going right? Communicate your affection and respect, don’t just think it (gentlemen). Listen to complaints that are specific and gentle vs an attack on character. Avoid whining or acting like an innocent victim. Accept responsibility within the first three minutes (especially the ladies) – goes a long way.
- Turn toward each other instead of away. Manage stress as a team. Contempt is ugly – saying something from a superior place or talking down to each other. Avoid insults, name-calling, correcting grammar, condescending tone, etc. Lack of responsiveness is bad. Emotional bank account gets filled up when bids for attention are responded to (master couples responded to bids 86% of time vs 33% of time for couples that divorce).  Each bid for attention is a “sliding door” (the movie) opportunity and is a choice you make.

2. A positive perspective occurs when the friendship in your marriage is strong.
Be a good listener and respond. Don’t stonewall or shut down. Instead, take a deep breath and calm down and try to listen and engage. You have to get to a positive perspective to make repair work, couples will do a cost benefit analysis and if it is more heavily weighted toward disaster they will bail. It gets to the point where you cant switch from negative to positive, so have to cultivate along the way. The litmus test for a marriage is friendship – if it isn’t working you are running on empty in the bank.

3. Deal with your relationship issues and learn to manage conflict.
69% of time we don’t resolve conflict, deal with perpetual problems.
- Accept influence from your partner. Be open to compromise.
- Discuss your problems. Take turns listening to one another about ongoing problems. Resolve solvable problems. Talk about the perpetual ones. The topic doesn’t matter, figure out the underlying issue (talking about money vs what does $$ mean to us?). Often the issue is related to something in their love map (dreams, values, etc.).
- Practice self-soothing to keep yourself calm. You have to relax or else you will dig in heals and hit gridlock.

4. Find ways to make one another’s life dreams come true.
Make sure you know what they are first. Don Juan DeMarco movie.

5. Create shared meaning.
Build a shared sense of purpose. What is your mission and legacy? Celebrations. Holidays. Intentional conversations about what they should mean. How do you want to be treated when sick? How deal with economic setbacks & failures? Goals. Mission. Values. Legacy.

Clean up your room!

There is a lot of angst around cleaning up rooms right now. And I'm not sure why it is so especially frustrating. I'm tired of yelling to motivate my kids and need a new system. It seems like they get overwhelmed with the number of tasks or requests you give them. My son is always getting frustrated because I've asked too many things of him at one time. So I created a little chart in Word to laminate for their room. There are images and words so that they can theoretically work independently on picking up all their stuff. I will let you know if it works. Here's what it looks like: