In which our Heroine sees red and is prompted to make black and whites

I blame the man standing on line in front of me at the Deli last Friday. He was quite portly and wearing an ascot...an ascot! and if I hadn't been so fascinated with him, I wouldn't have been staring and then I wouldn't have noticed that he bought a black and white cookie. When it was my turn in line, I purchased a black and white cookie too. Back out onto the street and continuing with my walk, cup of steaming hot coffee in one hand and my cookie in the other, I bit into it and imagined myself going over to the man's house and hanging out with him, the 2 of us wearing poofy slippers and eating bon-bons while we watched old black and white movies. "Oh Nelson (I named him Nelson) can you pass me the silver tea service please dah-ling?" I snapped out of it pretty fast..my cookie was stale and it pissed me off. I'm so tired of that, go to a deli and grab a bagel, it's stale, stop in a coffee shop buy a muffin, it's stale. Native New Yorker that I am, I'm actually not into making scenes, so 99.9% of the time I throw the thing out and just hold a grudge against the place forever rather than go back and demand a refund. I threw out the cookie.

Damn, I really wanted that cookie.

The stale cookie made me angry enough to want to bake my own, I figured it was a good project for Sunday afternoon (we had no plans), it would satisfy my craving AND give me something to bring the co-workers on Monday. I decided Tom needed to be involved.

Sunday afternoon I asked Tom if he would like to bake some cookies with me. He said sure, which kind of surprised me because Tom and I are like oil and water on projects together and so we avoid them... well except for the Christmas card which we kind of HAVE to collaborate on. Anyway, I was most impressed with how he didn't protest (too much) when I mentioned that we would be doubling the recipe. Now don't roll your eyes and shake your heads...I'm bringing cookies to the "locusts", I'm going to need a lot.

Nancy Baggett wrote a book called "The All-American Cookie Book". It's filled with some pretty decent recipes, has some nice pictures, and while some of the recipes are fairly labor intensive they are pretty easy to follow. I'm not going to write out the recipe-it would take me 4 days (it already takes me a really long time to write these entries), so I'll just highlight a few things from our afternoon of baking.

I'd like to just mention that I read the recipe before-hand to make sure we had all the ingredients. We needed powdered sugar, (this recipe uses quite a scary amount), so I ran out to the store, where the normally short lines were now snaking out the door. I tried not to think about being seen in public with my lazy Sunday look of- out-of control and frizzy hair, but of course it was all I could think about, well that and how if I had a hundred gazillion dollars and a personal trainer I could look fabulous five minutes after having a baby too, (my response to one of the magazines that cover the lives of the stars, because I talk to magazines while waiting on lines). Back home and flour flying everywhere, I was measuring the six cups we were going to need, when Tom asks:

"Where's the sour cream, in the fridge?"

"What sour-cream?"

"The sour cream we need for the next step"

I'd like to just point out that NOWHERE did I see sour cream when I read the recipe earlier on. So...back out, my hair even more crazy looking, because in between measuring flour and sugar I was head-banging to the sounds of Red Hot Chili Peppers. I came back home to find Tom putting the finishing touches on the tripe (you know, THE TRIPE!) Ok, before this entry gets longer than it already is (because OH MY GOD it's taking me so long to write) I'll just say that we had fun making the cookies. There really were quite a lot, and Tom was a good sport about it, especially because we didn't finish until after 10 p.m. My living room became the holding station for the cooling cookies, while Tom made the icing, I cleaned up so that we could start the assembly process of icing the cookies and making the second big mess of the day. I got to smear the vanilla Tom did the chocolate, we lined them up again to let the icing dry and then I packed them away in air tight containers.

I checked my email just before going to bed last night and there was an email from my boss. I don't usually work on Mondays, but I am working this Monday, and so my boss emailed me to tell me she had mentioned to one of my co-workers that I would be coming in and his reply was "Oh good, perhaps she'll bring goodies".

I think I'm spoiling them.

Written by Deb on February 10, 2003 11:25 AM