Museums, Muffin Pans, and Midwinter Blues

Good gravy, it's been a rough few days into the new year. To keep the blues from settling, I decided to break in my new dough tamper and mini muffin pans, and try a new recipe. Ta da, jam tarts!

Some time ago, I came across this recipe over at Evil Shenanigans. I'm a little nervous anytime I'm doing anything with pastry dough, I end up with a lot of disasters. But these were a snap! This dough bakes into a buttery shortbread. Very good & VERY RICH. I experimented with the filling, using a generic strawberry jelly, some Crofter's organic blueberry jam I've been hoarding, and a seedless organic mixed berry conserve. They're going fast, I hope there are some left in the morning to take in to work. I used Earth Balance and soy milk to make it vegan for my co-worker, Ritch.

We went to see the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum on Sunday. I don't regret going but it was a little disappointing. The artifacts themselves were fascinating, but it was overcrowded and poorly organized. And of course there were a lot of thoughtless, self absorbed twits in the crowd. And the cheesy icing on the cake was being forced to have to exit through the tiny gift shop, which was a nightmare of merchandising and way too many small children running around. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures once we were let inside. There were sentries standing on every corner, like agents from The Matrix with their little earpieces. The security was understandable; there were some pretty cool artifacts and a lot of them were gold. There were statues of course, furniture the king used, gorgeous jewelry, a tiny carved set of traveling games, even a marble toilet seat! The sandals that his mummy wore were very thin pounded gold, I almost sobbed out loud wanting to take a picture! But this was the best I could do.

You can look here for more info about King Tut's cartouche.