Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Cookies’

Jun 28

6 Comments

Lime cornmeal cookies (emotional distraction)

This quickly approaching life transition (11 days. 11 days!) means a lot of goodbyes. Goodbyes to favorite restaurants, goodbyes to old routines, goodbyes to most of our belongings (either stored or sold or donated), goodbye to Pomona, and – most significantly – goodbyes to all of our friends, colleagues, and mentors in the area. Most of the time it hasn’t really sunk in that anything big is happening, but every once in a while I catch myself realizing that it’ll be the last time I’m seeing someone or going somewhere, or that I won’t have another chance to do something before I go.

I spent this last weekend gathered in Palm Springs with six of my closest college girlfriends, which coincidentally ended up being the last time we’ll all be together before two of us move away this summer. We lounged by the pool, we sipped cocktails, we laughed, and we had the sort of serious conversations that come from our shared liberal arts college background – as we generally do when we’re together. We managed to spend all three lovely days together without any sort of big teary goodbye, and I’m glad we spent the time laughing and acting like it was just another weekend, instead of something more intense. It was all left on a positive note, and I’m trying to focus on that memory as Brett and I speed through the next 10 days full of goodbye dinners and happy hours and brunches.

These might help.

iced2

Read more

Apr 4

Whole wheat shortbread sandwich cookies

Whole_wheat_shortbread_cookies

I’m pretty pumped up about my new jam making skills. Except that I’m not actually a big jam eater.  I’ll have a piece of toast and jam every now and again, if it’s particularly good jam, or maybe put some between some cake layers.

I actually once asked a professional jam maker what the heck he does with all the jam. I think he was a little offended, but it was a serious question. So much jam!

After I made a bunch of strawberry vanilla jam on Sunday and wondered what the heck I would do with it, the vision came pretty quickly – nutty, earthy, salty, sweet shortbread cookies. Read more

Feb 24

4 Comments

Experimentation, rebellion, and ginger molasses cookies

Working at a cooking school that emphasizes “no recipe/follow your inner chef-style cooking” and going to professional culinary school classes has me fascinated by the ways recipes are developed and written. I don’t know where we’d all be without recipes to guide the way we cook, but I’ve started to see how limiting and confusing recipes can be. No wonder people are overwhelmed and confused by cooking, when recipes state things as law and generally don’t explain why you’re doing things that way or what other options you have. Of course I understand that cookbooks wouldn’t sell very well if recipes included all of that information and blossomed to paragraphs upon paragraphs of notes and instructions – but I do think that recipes as written can be sort of counter-productive in teaching people how to cook. (And full disclosure, here: I’m about to give you two recipes. Part of the problem, I am.)

All this is to say that I’ve started to notice a bit more rebellion and a bit more of the scientific process – two generally dormant parts of my personality – coming out in the kitchen. As I understand more about the potential techniques and options that can go into the making of a cookie, for instance, I start to question the instructions of various recipes. I start to wonder what would happen if I took the baking technique of one recipe and added it to the dough of another. Or what would happen if I chilled the dough. Or if I added a bit more spice. And then I start to experiment.

Ginger_cookies

Read more

Dec 19

5 Comments

Awesome New Life food: filled cream wafers and roasted sunchokes, among other things

So. Friday was my last day at work. There’s quite a bit I could talk about here – like the heart-warming, breath-taking support I saw from my coworkers and friends at the college over the past few weeks. Or how exhilarating and terrifying it is to up and jump off the professional path I’ve been on for more than a decade. Or how exciting it is to be sitting here writing this, in the middle of the day on a Monday, at my favorite coffee shop – watching people, watching the weather, watching the Christmas lights twinkle at the cleaners across the street, watching whatever I feel like I want to watch. Not every day will be like this one, but I love knowing that unscheduled days like this one will come along more often, giving me the time to reflect, to experiment, to slow down a little.

Some_crust

Read more

Aug 22

14 Comments

Perfecting Gram’s chocolate chip cookies – success!

After years of trying to perfectly recreate my grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe – tweaking ingredient quantities and baking method and everything else under the sun – I FINALLY DID IT.

chocolate_chip_1

Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »