I’ve said before that there’s nothing like fresh-baked cookies. I would like to amend it to include icing fresh-baked cookies. Break out the red sparkle corn syrup product!
If I thought it was hard to prevent Toddler Harbat from eating the cookie dough in every stage of production, I underestimated the heroin-like addiction of warm sugar cookies. Damn the torpedos, full speed decorating ahead!
No child of mine is going to grow up without an education in the kitchen, and Toddler Harbat is already well on her way. She’s made various breads, pizzas, smoothies, cookies, quesadillas, and a frittata so far. By three I’m hoping she can make a decent béchamel.
Now here’s a bit of handmade stuff you don’t see every day. I got the chance to climb around a working prototype of a Fisker Karma this weekend (see more here). This is a hand-built vehicle used to promote a new plug-in hybrid that’s going into production in the first quarter of 2011. If you thought a hybrid had to be dowdy or as fast as a heavily-laden camel in the Sahel, let this car change your mind:
I could get all geeky and go over the stats, but let’s stick to the handmade parts of this car. The body panel fit is pretty good considering it had to be custom-made. The interior was a symphony of hand-sewn suede and leather, and even the dashboard had a custom feel to it.
But when you began to poke, prod, and inspect, you could see what happens to a handmade car when it makes a national circuit in front of hundreds of car geeks with sticky fingers. The ink on the window switches was wearing off, the fit of the solar-panel roof was wonky, and the passenger door shut with a clang more like two trashcan lids slamming together. But forgive the Fisker prototype these small details and check out the curves. The z-shaped rear door fits into the wheel haunch like a secret door cut into the stone block of a castle rampart.
The headlights look like the propulsion system on a Star Wars spacecraft.
Even the grill has a Cheshire grin that says, “I know I’m sexy.” And all this in a car that can run 50 miles in complete petrol-free silence. Now lemme see, I just need to get together around 90 grand…
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Well hey…you-know-who has a 98 Volvo with 235,000 miles on it and could trade it in on one of those babies. He says he wants a hybrid. Even deal??