Football and Almond Biscotti

I almost felt like I had a football overload because of the craziness of today's matches! First of all, Holland eliminated the 5-time champion Brazil. I always say statistics and history mean absolutely nothing in football because the teams don't play the same players that make the record. But when it comes to Brazil, I just feel that they will win just for being Brazil... just like Manchester United will win just because they are Manchester United. I'm talking nonsense here I know. Holland was my third favorite team coming in this World Cup just behind Spain and Argentina (though I'm having doubts about this right now). The Dutch squad can boast players of equal caliber as Brazil's in my opinion. I thought after the first half, they put in a very convincing win, and probably could've gotten a couple more goals.


The second match of the day was between Uruguay and the last remaining African country Ghana. I had predicted a nil-nil draw, so I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining the match turned out. At one point it almost seemed like both teams skipped the midfield and just took turn attacking goal to goal. I'm a big fan of Diego Forlan, and I wanted Uruguay to win so I was so happy to see his beautiful freekick equalizer. And as long as it is not Spain who's doing the PK shootout, I enjoy watching any PK shootout.. it's exciting! I truely think Ghana was the unluckiest team ever in the last 3 minutes of extra time and in the shootout as well. For the next round I hope Holland gets into the final, and hopefully meets Spain. (I don't want to jinx Spain so I will do no prediction).

So after my dad finished off the last piece of Banana chiffon cake I made yesterday, we were once again out of breakfast food for tomorrow morning. Since it's Saturday tomorrow, and we always make cappuccino, I wanted to make something that will go well with cappuccino. I decided to give biscotti a try. The Costco biscotti is horribly expensive, and god knows what kind of chemical or preservatives go into store-bought products these days. There are a lot of recipes for biscotti out here and I had a difficult time deciding which one to use. There are two general type, butter based and egg based which uses no fat. I finally chose egg based, but decided to incorporate just a little bit of butter in it. The end result is pretty amazing. My dad kept saying my biscotti taste better than the Costco ones. I used this recipe from Joy of Baking and just added about 1/8 cup of room-temperature butter to the egg mixture.

Lastly, a picture of my niece Ruthie looking like a 小無賴.