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Posts from the ‘Cookies and bars’ Category

May 16

Why I do what I do, plus Gram’s oatmeal raisin cookies

Sorry for a bit of silence over the last week. You may have noticed there weren’t Weekend Links on Monday. I apologize for doing that without warning or explanation! Bare with me for a moment, and you’ll get both an explanation and a cookie.

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Next week I’m speaking at Ignite Madison, a story-telling event where participants give a talk based on a theme (in this case, “All About Food”). I’m speaking about eating joyfully and overcoming fears about food and cooking, and in the process of putting together the talk I’ve been thinking a lot about why I do all of this – why I love teaching, and why I have this site, and why I’m so eager to let it all eat up my evenings and weekends and keep my kitchen a perpetual disaster zone. All of the food work I’ve been doing over the past four years has been pretty consuming, in both good and bad ways. I spend a lot of time happily planning classes and daydreaming about the little kitchen I eventually want to open, but I also spend a decent amount of time feeling a little tired, a little self-conscious, a little confused about the whole thing, and sometimes even a little defeated.  It’s hard trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up, and sometimes it’s even more difficult figuring out how to make a stable living out of it. 

So why do I keep doing it? Read more

Feb 12

2 Comments

Peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies

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There’s a sort of tragic story behind these cookies. A real lose-lose-lose-lose situation, you might say, and those don’t come about all that often. I suppose there’s definitely at least one win in there somewhere, since in the end there were a few cookies to eat and they were really delicious. And there’s a good recipe to come out of it that I get to share with you, so that’s another win.

But otherwise, it’s a pretty sad story.

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Jan 20

8 Comments

The Motley’s vegan chocolate chip cookies

This is an update from a post I first wrote in 2010 – the recipe updated for clarity and ease, new photos added, and the commentary streamlined. Enjoy!

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These cookies have an intensely strong flavor association for me – one bite and I’m taken immediately back to college, when I spent much of my time studying (or socializing, or wasting time) at The Motley, the student-run coffee house one campus over. When I was at the Claremont Colleges, most of the food at The Motley was prepared by some off-campus company, aside from the packs of vegan cookies prepared by students. The cookies were delivered every few days, wrapped in packs of three, and they were widely known across the campuses. I probably bought packs of these cookies at least half of my visits there, and together with how often they showed up at other campus events, I can tell you that I ate a lot – a lot – of these cookies between 2002 and 2006. Read more

Nov 24

1 Comment

Whole wheat trail mix cookies for hitting the road (or the skies)

Food is always a big part of our travel plans. Both in the way of food tourism – whenever we talk about travel or places we want to go, one of the first questions is what will we eat there? – and in that food is always a big part of planning the logistics for our trips. I really can’t go more than a couple of hours without eating something, which makes traveling a little difficult sometimes unless we do some advance planning. I’m definitely a little hypoglycemic, and that leads to migraines, and everything just goes downhill from there. One minute I’ll be fine, and five minutes later it can feel like if I don’t find food soon I might have some sort of breakdown (this sounds dramatic, but … well … you can ask Brett).

But I’m a pretty good planner, and if you’ve spent much time with me you know that it’s rare for me to be without food on my person in some form or another. I’m the one you can count on to have a granola bar in my purse, or a baggie full of cookies, or a bit of fruit salad in a tupperware container (I love these, since they’re recycled plastic and it’s virtually impossible for them to leak or come undone in my bag). I can’t remember the last time I got on a plane without at least one meal packed into my carryon.

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Oct 23

8 Comments

Chewy oatmeal cookies with maple sugar and drizzled icing

And, we’re back! I mean that in two ways; we’re physically back in Eugene at Brett’s parents’ house for about a month before we head abroad again, and that means I’m finally back in a place where I can cook and post recipes. Back in two ways, and I couldn’t be happier about both of them. We are exhausted and happy and it absolutely does not feel like three and a half months have passed since we left Claremont, but we certainly feel every single one of those 16,000+ miles we’ve put on our car since July 9. (16,000 miles! That’s more than halfway around the world, you know.) Our last night on the road we stopped in a tiny town in the middle of Idaho – at least I think it was tiny, we arrived and left in darkness – and splurged on a Best Western that had a hot tub. I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything so wonderful in my life as the 20 minutes I spent there. We had driven 14 hours that day, my head was pounding, and nothing would let me forget that I was only one day away from sleeping in my own bed.

But now we’re here! We’re here for a full month so Brett can do his graduate school applications and so we can prepare for the next four plus months abroad. And I will cook. Oh boy, will I cook. Unpacking my stand mixer today felt almost as good as that hot tub in the middle of Idaho. There are only four days in the last month that we didn’t spend more than 6 hours in the car (think about that for a moment – seriously, think about that), and among the many, many other things I did to pass the time in the car I made a fairly lengthy list of things I want to cook while we’re here in one place and with all of our kitchen belongings.  Hopefully I’ll be sharing a lot of them here, a combination of things I love that I’ve never gotten around to posting (like butternut squash soup with tarragon) and things that have been on my to-do list for a long time (like paté and croissants) and things I dreamed up while we were driving back and forth across a continent.

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