Homework: Kitchen Sink Cookies

I've been good.  Really, really good.  No cookies, no cake, a spoon or two of ice cream.  Minimal processed sugars and dairy.  Low carb, and no refined carbs.  So when my son started his read-aloud homework last night, my reaction was understandable.

"The Cookie Quest?  Sounds like the story of my life," I said drily.  I listened with half an ear as he read, stopping him to ask about words he misread as other words, trying to entertain my daughter, who was making tea in the cupboard, uninterested in her brother's assignment.  At some point, the reading stopped.  I'd lost track of the details, but I had a vague sense of the plot: something about a mother creating a contest-winning cookie recipe, and her son's friend trying to find it out before it was published.  Not exactly a quest, in my book.  I reached for the pen to sign the sheet saying he'd done the reading.

"All done," he said.  "Oh, wait ..." He turned the page.  "Hey LOOK, Ma!  There's a recipe!  We can MAKE these cookies!"  He was practically shouting now.  "Kitchen Sink Cookies," he read, pointing.

"You mean I can make these cookies," I corrected him, knowing full well who was going to end up manning the mixer and dropping little balls of dough onto cookie sheets for two hours.  "Since when did your homework become my homework?"  I scanned the recipe quickly and turned back to N., who was now dismantling the cupboard.

Ignoring me, he continued, "SO?  Do we have all of the ingredients?"

I shook my head.  Negative, dude.  No chocolate in the house.  I can't be trusted.  Actually, I probably could be trusted now.  But I am not about to start taking chances just yet.

"Well, you can go shopping tonight and get the chocolate chips," he assured me.  "I'll copy the recipe for you."  And he climbed up onto the stool to reach a recipe card, beginning the painstaking process--for a first-grader, at least--of transcribing the recipe by hand, in pencil.  "I'm going to use abbreviations.  Do you know what 'tea' and 'tab' will stand for?"

I was beaten.  And really, what kind of a parent would I be if I didn't bake him cookies from his read-aloud homework book?

I didn't go shopping last night.  But guilt-ridden, I went to the store today.

I took a few liberties to make them a little healthier, but really, they're still cookies. I guess I'll have to send them to his teacher.  I hope I get an A.

Have you ever found a recipe in an unexpected place?

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconutties
The "real" kitchen sink cookies, in my book, are made with more stuff.  Like raisins.  Or butterscotch chips.  Or cranberries.  And maybe potato chips and pretzels.  Random bits of things in your cupboard.  You can do that and tell me how they turn out.  In the meantime, I think my name for them is better.

1/2 c. shortening (use Earth Balance)
1 c. coconut palm sugar (or use 1/2 c. brown and 1/2 c. white)
1 egg
1 T. vanilla
3/4 c. flour (whole wheat pastry will work OK)
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 c. oats
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. unsweetened coconut
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (or other nut of your choice, or raisins if you have nut allergies)

Preheat oven to 350.

Using an electric mixer, beat shortening and sugar until well combined.  Add egg and mix well.  Mix in the vanilla.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add to the shortening mixture and beat to combine.

Add in the rest of your mix-ins, and combine well, using your hands if necessary to incorporate all of the bits.  The dough may be a little crumbly in appearance; don't worry about that.

Mold the dough into 2 t. size balls (you can squish it in your hands to make the balls solid), and bake on baking sheets covered with a sheet of parchment for 10-12 minutes, or until browned.  Cool cookies for a minute or two on the baking sheet, and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Store tightly covered for up to 1 week.

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So Long, 2012: Cocoa Mocha Crinkles

It's been a hell of a year.  There was the crash of the Costa Concordia, which made us question heroism.  The horrendous scandal at Penn State, which opened our eyes to be wary of hero worship, and reminded us that we all own the responsibility to protect our children.  The shooting at the theater in Aurora, which reminded us about our vulnerability, and drew the first large-scale media attention of the year to gun control and mental health issues.

Then there was me.  I got to take a long-anticipated trip to BlogHer, and meet some of the women and writers I most admire.  I unexpectedly lost a friend in tragic circumstances that still make no sense, leaving her two children without a mother.  My mother fell down her stairs and had to move in with us while she recovered from her broken ribs and scapula.  Superstorm Sandy left my state without power, and left many without homes to return to.  I got myself elected to the Board of Education.

Finally, there was the tragedy in Newtown, which left us all grieving the loss of beautiful, innocent lives, and rethinking how we will live, to cultivate love for the future.

Despite some of the highs, honestly, I'll be glad to see 2012 go.  I've been cleaning out the refrigerator in preparation for our trip, and it feels good to be empty, to start the year with a clean slate, even in my pantry.   I don't make New Years' resolutions, because I feel that they're sort of artificial and arbitrary, but something about the change in calendar year makes me feel like I can start over, like I can wake up with hope and purpose.  And I'm looking forward to that more than usual this year.

I won't be posting for a little while, because I'm going to disconnect from my computer, and I won't be wrestling with internet on my phone.  But I'll be thinking about you while we're gone, and hoping to return here in the new year (or a little before then) with renewed blogging energy, with some thought-provoking posts, and with some tasty recipes.

In the meantime, here are the last sweets for the season.  We'll be leaving cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve, and if I were Santa Claus, I think they'd be exactly right; chocolatey, snappy, with a slight caffeine kick to keep me awake for the long journey of good cheer before I turned the sleigh towards home.  Wishing you warmth, light, and love during this darkest season of the year.

Cocoa Mocha Crinkles
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1/2 c. butter, softened
1 c. packed light brown sugar
2/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 t. instant espresso
1 t. baking soda
2 egg whites
1 2/3 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 T. unsweetened cocoa powder

Beat butter in a large bowl on high speed for about 30 seconds.  Beat in sugar, 2/3 c. cocoa powder, espresso, and baking soda.  Beat in egg whites.  Beat in flour.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350.  In a small bowl combine 1/4 c. sugar and cocoa powder.  Roll dough into 1" balls (and then into 1 1/2" logs if you like) and roll in sugar/cocoa mixture.  Place 2" apart on a cookie sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are firm.  Transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

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Past Lives, and Rosemary Shortbreads

My mother has been cleaning out her house.  Or at least, my brother's room.

This is, in theory, an excellent thing.  My mother has lived in the same house since she was two years old.  Though over the years before they moved out, her two brothers took things that belonged to them, there is still a good almost-seventy years' worth of accumulation of things there, and after my extremely organized Type-A father died in 2003, there was no longer anyone left in the house to do periodic purging.  She borders on hoarding behavior, her basement pantry stocked full of condensed soup and canned vegetables and brownie mix and pasta (we recently found cake mix there that had expired ten years ago), and every bedroom piled with her clothes and bills and paper and shopping bags with items still in their original packaging, tags attached.  I worry sometimes about what will happen if she downsizes, and selfishly, I worry, too, about the inevitable unpacking of her life that I will have to do some day, even if she never leaves her house.

I know that children create clutter, and I've claimed quite a few things from my mother's house over time.  Books.  Clothing.  Random pillows and throws.  Notebooks.  So, so much paper.

But I know there are also still many things left, remnants of another someone I used to know, like that overplayed and over-covered Gotye song.

On my birthday, my mother presented me with two canvas shopping bags of things belonging to me, which had been living in my brother's room: one bag containing two sets of artist-quality colored pencils, a set of watercolors, and a large box of crayons that probably date back to the late 1970s; the other containing a pile of awards and plaques.  My spelling bee plaque from the eighth grade.  My ten-year Excellence Award plaque from my dance school.   A plaque recognizing my service as the leader of the Children's Choir at my Catholic church, from my senior year of high school.  Another congratulating me on my performance on the National Spanish Language exam.  And on, and on.

The first bag was easy to deal with.  I gave the colored pencils and paints to my art-obsessed son and the crayons to my crayon-obsessed daughter, who has already made them her own.

The second was not so easy.

I've moved seven times in my life.  I am no stranger to the process of purging things, because there was no space in the car or the moving truck or on the bookshelf or in the cabinets.  I regularly recycle and Freecycle what we no longer need.  So it's odd to me that I'm left wondering what to do with these things, feeling on the one hand like I can't get rid of them (besides, the green citizen in me wonders, how does one recycle a plaque, anyway?) and on the other hand that I need to reduce the clutter in my life, not add to it.  This green canvas bag full of the past made me feel both like I need to retain this physical connection to that past, so I can pass it on to my children, and because--as Lori Lavender Luz puts it so beautifully in her post "Presence"--all of my past selves are me, and yet also like I have no need for physical attachment to that part of my past, to that person I no longer resemble. 

My past lives have been on my mind.  We're going out to LA in less than a week; it will be the first time I've been there since I left in early 1998, fourteen and a half years ago.  It will be a trip full of bitter, and sweet, and salt.  We will visit my old street, my old apartment complex.  We'll eat cake down the street at Sweet Lady Jane where, alone, I mourned the loss of a brilliant and generous-hearted college friend to a rare brain cancer, celebrated small triumphs, recovered from the traumatic experience of oral exams.  We'll walk past the alley where I was mugged at gunpoint.  We will step into the Pacific Ocean, the place my then-boyfriend took me in the dark of night when I first landed in the west coast for the first time eighteen years ago, knowing that I needed to touch the west.  We'll see some old friends.  I can't put my finger on why, but there was something about this act of remembering that has been important to me lately.  LA and I parted ways on less than friendly terms, but recently, I've felt like I needed to go back; I was ready.

I've shelved the plaques for now, in a place where I won't see them, where they will gather dust, like old memories do.  They'll stay there, and I suspect I will eventually forget about them, until I'm deep cleaning, moving, reorganizing.  I'll pull them down and look at them, and probably move them again, to somewhere else out of sight.  Maybe then I will know what to do with those fragments of the past; or perhaps, some day someone else will have to decide whether those artifacts are important enough to keep.

What physical pieces of your distant past do you hold on to, if anything?  What artifacts do you wish you could get rid of, but can't?  What would you do with a pile of old plaques?

Rosemary-Lemon Butter Cookies  

These cookies were made by fellow blogger Susan of A Less Processed Life for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.  I've added a bit more lemon juice and zest, because I liked the pairing of tangy with sweet and salt.  Sort of like memory, come to think of it.

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 t. fresh lemon juice
2 1/2 c. sifted unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T. finely chopped fresh rosemary
3/4 t. kosher salt
1 1/4 t. lemon zest
coarse sanding sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, rosemary, salt, and lemon zest in a small bowl. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about two minutes.  Mix in the egg, vanilla, and lemon juice and beat until combined, then gently beat in the flour mixture until the dough just comes together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured workspace and pat into a 6" round; cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 10 minutes.

On a lightly-floured workspace, roll the dough to 1/4" thickness and cut into desired shapes.

Place the cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle each cookie with coarse sanding sugar and bake for 20-22 minutes or until lightly golden on the edges.

Cool on a wire rack and store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.

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Tea for One: Gingersofts

I got through the weekend pretty well, all things considered.  The events at Newtown have continued to weigh heavily on my mind.  There was a birthday party for a friend in my son's class, and seeing all of the children together made me think about those children who don't get to celebrate any more birthdays.  And those parents whose arms are empty, who wrapped Christmas presents to give to a child who will no longer be there on Christmas morning to open them.  But I tend not to grieve in the form of tears until a few days or weeks after something happens.  It's just the way I work.  And besides, I still have my children.

But this morning, after putting my son on the bus, I almost threw up.  And then I wept, walking back to my house with my daughter in my arms.

Because the reality is that every day I watch my son leave on that bus, and am faced with a complete lack of control over what happens to him.  It's nagged at me a little bit every day since the first day of school.  It was just a little harder than usual today.

I could keep him home.  I'm home now with my daughter; I could homeschool him.  He's smart, and though he also resists instruction and correction from me, we would make it work.

But that's not where he belongs.  He's a social child, a child who expresses his creative self best in the company of others.  We have a good school system.  And horrible things happen everywhere, in many places that are supposed to be safe, not just in schools.

I could enroll him in a private school, a smaller school where there would be more vigilance, more safety measures, less intrusion from the outside world.

But I'm a product of the public school system, and I believe in the value of children from all walks of life learning together, and teaching each other.

I could drive him to school every morning, at least removing one more transition during which something could go wrong.

But he loves the bus, he loves that freedom.  It makes him feel grown-up.  He is probably no safer in my car.  And I trust the bus driver to get him to school and home safely.

So I put him on the bus.  I wave at him through my tears, as he presses his face against the window, grinning in his inimitably impish way.  I try to put things in perspective, feeling lucky for the luxury of waving to him.  I remember, as many people have said, that the risk inherent in becoming a parent is that you allow your heart to walk around outside of your body.  I make ginger tea, because that usually helps to settle my stomach, and maybe I break into the container of gingersofts.  And I wait for him to come home, watching the minutes tick by impatiently.

I didn't want to write about Sandy Hook today.  But it also seemed irreverent to write about anything else.  So I will settle for comfort, for the normal of Christmas cookies.  Because there is more than one way to die in this world, and one of those ways is to refuse to live.  And the children of Sandy Hook deserve a better legacy than that.

Gingersoft Cookies
adapted from Two Peas in their Pod


2 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 t. ground ginger
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ground cloves
Pinch of nutmeg
3/4 c. unsalted butter, softened
1 c. light brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1/4 c. molasses
1/4 c. diced candied ginger
White sugar for rolling

Preheat the oven to 375 and line baking sheets with either parchment or silicone baking mat.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and spices in a medium bowl.

Beat the butter and brown sugar at high speed with a hand or stand mixer until fluffy, about two minutes. Add in the egg and vanilla extract.; beat well. Add in the molasses; beat well.

With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture a half cup or so at a time until all of the flour is mixed in.  Mix in the crystallized ginger either VERY gently with your mixer or by hand.

Roll dough into tablespoon-sized balls, and roll each ball in white sugar.

Place the cookie dough balls two inches apart on prepared cookie sheets.  Bake 8-10 minutes (they should still be soft, just cooked in the middle and barely crispy around the edges).  Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet for a minute or two, then transfer to a cooling rack.

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The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap: Honey Basil Shortbread Cookies

There's no denying it.  In December, I become a cookie fanatic.  And to a cookie fanatic, there are few things more lovely than getting a package of home-made cookies in the mail, especially from a friend you have yet to meet!

For the second year, I decided to participate in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap hosted by Love & Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen.  This swap requires participants to send one dozen cookies to three different bloggers, and in exchange, three additional bloggers send a dozen cookies each to you.  All in all, you get to meet six new bloggers and try three new kinds of cookies, and there's a round-up at the end wherein one could salivate over all cookies in the exchange.  Last year I agonized over the cookies to send: I wanted to offer up something really different, really unique, but didn't know where to begin.  I scoured the internet, and wound up with mostaccioli, which are traditional chewy almost cake-like Italian cookies, made with wine.  I also learned a lot about attractive packaging and sending cookies in the mail last year, lessons which I tried to apply in this year's swap!

This year, Lindsay and Julie upped the ante and partnered with Cookies for Kids' Cancer, a national non-profit organization committed to funding new therapies used in the fight against pediatric cancer, which claims the lives of more children in the US than any other disease.  Each participating blogger made a small donation to the organization for the honor of participating, and OXO® will be matching the total donation, dollar for dollar, up to $100,000 dollars!

I'd been in sort of a baking slump, and I have to credit this year's swap with helping me to get my cookie-making mojo back.  I've tried and modified quite a few recipes that I'm posting here as a result of my search for the perfect swap cookie!  During the past year I've become especially interested in using traditionally savory herbs in sweet treats (like the basil ice cream I made), and I wanted to send something that represented my blog and my commitment to local food sources; so I decided to make Honey Basil Shortbreads with local honey and basil.  I get my honey from Tassot Apiaries, which is just a few miles away from our house (they also make fabulous soap and other items which you can order online); their honey is among the best I've tasted anywhere, and I practically live on it during cold season.  I loved the fact that you can really taste these flavors in the cookies, though they're not overpowering.  I also thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with cookie stamp patters using found objects.  I don't own a cookie stamp, but I pressed my cookies with a swirl-shaped wire, with the top of a clean star-shaped pattern in the top of a spice-jar shaker, and finally, as you'll see below, with the back of a pie server! My recipients were:

• Michelle Hilton of From Calculus to Cupcakes
• Rosalynda Thorn of This Mama Can Cook
• Susan Bronson of A Less Processed Life

My swappers did not disappoint, either!  I received:

• Honey Vanilla Macaroons from Ruth at the tasty tRruth (see, Ruth? I was paying attention!),
• Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies from Denise at Addicted2Recipes, and
• Espresso Shortbread from Sarah at Cooker Girl, to whom, in a bizarre twist of fate, I sent my cookies last year!  (Sarah, in a great twist of irony, I just baked some soft Gingerbread cookies ... not yours from last year, but definitely similar!  I'll be posting the recipe soon.)

I loved the honey taste in Ruth's macaroons, too.  Denise's Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies left me desperately seeking a pint of Haagen Daaz' Peppermint Bark.  And Sarah's espresso shortbreads were just right; not overpoweringly coffee-flavored, but perfect with a morning cuppa joe.

Thanks again to everyone who made the cookie swap happen, and to Lindsay and Julie for hosting!  Congratulations, ladies, on your fundraiser, and on helping the food blogging community to give such a fabulous gift together this year!

Honey Basil Shortbreads
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens


1 c. butter, softened
2/3 c. sugar
1 egg
3 T. honey
1 T. fresh snipped basil (or 1 t. dried)
2 t. finely shredded orange peel
1 t. vanilla
3 c. flour
sugar for stamping

Preheat oven to 375.  Beat butter in a large bowl on medium high speed for about 30 seconds until fluffy.  Add 2/3 c. sugar and beat until combined.  Add egg, honey, basil, orange peel, and vanilla and beat until combined.  Beat in flour.

Place a small amount of sugar into a shallow bowl.  Roll dough into 1 1/2" balls, and place them about 2" apart on your cookie sheet.  Dip the patterned bottom of a glass, a cookie stamp, or serving utensil (I used a pie server!  This is a great time to experiment with found objects in your kitchen, to see what they turn out like!) into sugar, and using the glass or stamp, flatten balls to 1/4" thickness.

Bake 6-8 minutes or until bottoms are light brown.  Cool on sheets 1 minute; transfer to wire racks and cool completely.

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Risking Joy, and Cornmeal Lime Cookies

I have, for as long as I can remember, been a type-A control freak.  This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me in real life, and to be honest, it's served me well academically and professionally.  But it's also been something of a liability in parenting; if there's one thing having children proves to me, again and again, is that I can't always be in control, and sometimes that's OK.

The other day, at a park playdate with a friend, I was on the "big girl" swing with N. sitting on my lap, letting go of her just enough so that she could experience the adrenaline rush of a brief freefall, pumping us both high enough so that after she got past the initial uncertainty, her squeals were near-continuous.  As we swung into the icy breeze, I couldn't help but notice how the other mother hovered over her child, who was swinging just imperceptibly next to us, and swooped down when her small lip quivered with uncertainty, picked her up and pressed her to her chest.

There's no rulebook for potential parents, of course.  Parenting styles are as varied as the individuals who parent, no matter what path we take to achieve that role.  We know our children best, and sometimes we can avert disaster by being attentive, by responding to comfort them before they even know they need comforting.  My friend is a fabulous parent: smart, caring, nurturing, encouraging.  But I was also struck by the thought that as parents, especially as parents who have experienced loss, we have to make a deliberate choice to risk joy, and that joy sometimes requires letting go.

And then I thought, well, maybe that applies to everyone.  If you've ever known loss, it becomes hard to trust again.  Joy is a risk.  It's a risk because you might connect to something that will be taken from you, or you might never find joy at all.  But there must be something about being human that drives us to take the risk again and again, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Last week, on one unseasonably warm day, I decided to take N. for a walk before we met I. at the bus.  We locked the door and picked our way down the steps as toddlers do, and when she hit the sidewalk, N. began to run.  And run.  "RUNNNNNNNNNNNN," she chanted, punctuating her footfalls with "NNN...NNN...NNN," only to rev herself up and do it all over again, occasionally turning around and saying "Mommy's turn?"--encouraging me to run, too.  I decided to follow her, just to see where she went.  When we got to a street, I asked her to hold my hand to cross, but otherwise, I made sure she was the one in the lead.  I don't know if it was the weather, or if she loved being in front, or some of both, but she ran that way, "RUNNNNN .... RUNNNNNNNNN!" for the better part of a mile, to downtown.

I felt lucky to witness that exuberance, to be part of it.  And really, that kind of joy is worth the risk, isn't it?

Cornmeal Lime Cookies
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens 
These cookies are an unexpected combination, a bit of a risk on your holiday cookie plate.  But totally worth it.

3/4 c. butter, softened
2/3 c. powdered sugar
1/8 t. salt
1 c. flour
1/2 c. cornmeal
2 t. finely shredded lime peel
1/2 t. vanilla

In a large bowl, beat butter until fluffy with an electric mixer on high speed for 30 seconds.  Add powdered sugar and salt, and beat well to combine.  Beat in flour, cornmeal, lime peel, and vanilla.  Cover and chill at least one hour, and preferably longer.

Preheat oven to 350.  Roll dough 1/4" thick; using a 2" cookie cutter, cut dough into shapes and place onto a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.  Decorate with sugar if desired, and bake 8-10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges.  Transfer to wire racks to cool.

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Hope, and Pistachio-Rosewater Slice and Bake Cookies

My oven broke last night.

It was a small tragedy.  I had designs on a batch of granola last night and more cookies today.  My husband had bread on deck.  We did everything we could: restarted the oven, unplugged the oven, flipped on the cleaning cycle (sounds like tech support, doesn't it?), only to be faced with the grim reality: the oven would turn on, but not heat up.

Of course, it will be repaired.  We're lucky we can afford to fix it.  This is not the end of the world.  I went a full week without oven access when we had no power, and I lived to tell the tale.  But it's holiday baking season, and the oven is my refuge.

I was thinking yesterday about my complicated feelings about the month-long celebration that December has become.  I dislike the shopping season that arrives earlier and earlier every year, the decorations in stores that make you feel like you're behind on your gift-giving preparations (not to mention assuming that everyone who shops celebrates Christmas).  I dislike my trifecta of family gatherings--the Thanksgiving/Birthday(mine and my brothers')/Christmas get-togethers--that make me feel pressured to give out of obligation.

But I get it.  When I was a practicing Catholic, I loved advent.  I loved the lights, the candles, the music, the smell of pine, the general feeling of goodwill.  Advent was appealing because it was about nurturing hope.  And if you're feeling like you need hope (and really, who doesn't?) there's nothing better than more of it.  Days and weeks of it.  And it's for those reasons that I don't mind the December holidays taking over the entire month.  The people who shop?  Misplaced hope, manifesting itself in consumerism.

These days I don't celebrate advent, really.   My son requested an advent calendar this year, because his grandpa (who is Jewish, mind you) gave him a secular one created by a famous illustrator last year, so we got one and we open one window each morning.  We also tear one link off of a paper chain he made in his (Unitarian Universalist) religious education class.  But those nods to the countdown until Christmas are background to the baking I do during late November and December.

It's not that the world needs more cookies.  I sure as hell don't need to eat more cookies.  But holiday baking is my coping mechanism, it's my reminder to hope.  When I feel depressed about the obligatory elements of the holidays, I retreat to the kitchen and chop nuts and beat sticks of butter into fluff.  Baking gives me a sense of purpose and accomplishment and forward-looking-ness that has been particularly welcome this year, as I continue to job-hunt and ask myself what it is I "plan to do with [my] one wild and precious life."  When I'm done baking cookies, I have cookies.  I can count them.  They're a measurable achievement.  And then I can give them away, which makes me feel good.

So here's hoping that the nice repairmen (and yes, they are men, because I called the old guys who have a shop down the street) will work their magic soon, and restore my coping mechanism to me.  Because I need a little Christmas, my way.

What is your favorite way to prepare for holidays, whether they're the Christmas holidays or other important holidays in your tradition?

Pistachio Rosewater Cardamom Slice and Bake Cookies
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1/2 c. butter, softened
1 3 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 c. powdered sugar
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
2 t. rosewater
generous pinch of cardamom
2 t. finely shredded lemon peel
3/4 c. salted dry-roasted pistachios, finely chopped

Beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl for about 30 seconds on high speed.  Add sugar, baking soda, and salt, and beat until combined.  Beat in egg, vanilla, rosewater, and cardamom.  Beat in flour and 1/4 c. of the pistachios (you may need to knead them in).

Divide dough in half.  Roll each half into a log about 1 1/2" diameter.  Place remaining pistachios on a sheet of waxed paper, and roll the dough logs into the nuts.  Wrap rolls in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hours.

Preheat oven to 375.  Cut rolls into about 1/4" slices.  Place 1" apart on cookie sheets and bake 7-9 minutes or until the edges are slighly browned.  Cool on cookie sheets 1 minutes, and transfer to racks to cool completely.

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Baking A Difference: A Bake Sale/Auction for Sandy Relief

Welcome to our nation-wide blogger baked goods auction to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy!  UPDATE: BIDDING IS NOW CLOSED.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO DONATE TO THE UNITED WAY HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF FUND, BELOW.)

Though the headlines have begun to fade from the national media, the work to rebuild in New Jersey has barely begun.  Many people, especially those at the shore and in Staten Island, are still without power, weeks after the storm.  Cleanup will take months (see the image below, courtesy of one of my blogging friends, Mastering Mommy Brain, whose parents' home in Ortley Beach was among the affected properties).  Families have been displaced, forced to leave their homes.  Though donations of food and clothing have been plentiful, the difficult work is still ahead, and I'm proud to have so many blogging friends who agreed to participate in this auction, and raise some awareness and funds for the ongoing relief effort!

Proceeds from the auction will go to the United Way Hurricane Sandy Recovery Fund.  My family has worked with the United Way over the years, and I feel confident about their plans to support communities through the rebuilding and recovery process, not just in the short term, but in the long term.  Moreover, they have informed me that they will charge no administrative fees on donations to the Fund!  They are making cash infusions to community-based organizations currently unable to deliver at full capacity, so that those organizations can better serve the needs of those affected by Sandy at the grassroots level. Rebuilding and expanding the capacity of these organizations are critical to overall recovery efforts.  The Fund will be distributed through grants to community-based health or human services organizations in order to bolster or create services that directly address the unmet needs of individuals and families adversely affected by the hurricane.  Near and long-term supports may include: basic needs, such as food; medical and mental health services; transportation assistance; housing and utilities assistance; legal assistance; and job retraining and counseling.

 

Let's Bake a Difference for the Garden State!

We have fabulous items up for auction below!  However, we understand that some of you might prefer to contribute directly to the cause; if you would like to make a contribution to the United Way Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund without bidding on an item, click on the button at the right, and where it says "organization," please write "A Half Baked Life Auction" in addition to any other organizations that may match your donation.  I'd love it if you'd leave a comment on this post, too, or email me, letting us know that you donated, even if you didn't bid, so we can include your donation in the final fundraising tally.

Now without further ado, on to the auction details:

• Bidding opens at 8pm EST on the evening of Sunday the 25th.  Bidding will close at 11:59pm (one minute before midnight) EST on Monday the 26th (Cyber Monday!).  Please tweet the auction as much as possible, so that we get lots of traffic and bidders during the day!  It would be great if you would use the hashtag #Sandy in your tweets, and #bakeadifference.
• Each individual item has its own page with its own comments section.  These pages will include information about the starting bid, and will be available for you to view by Sunday night.  The bidding will happen in the comments section on each item's page; it will be up to you to refresh the item page to see the highest current bid and bid above that amount.
• In order to be eligible to win an item, bidders are required to leave a name and valid email address in EACH bid comment.
• Your bid must be at least $1 higher than the starting price or previous bid (if there are any) but can be as high as you’d like!  Bidding will go up in increments of $1 (not $.50, or $.25, etc.).
• Comments/bids are timestamped; if you are the final high bidder, you will be notified that you won within 24 hours.  Timing of shipping for items won may be negotiated between bidder and seller, though we prefer that items be shipped within a week, and all transactions must be complete by January 1.  Seller will cover shipping costs.  (UPDATED in response to comment below: items will be sent to U.S. shipping addresses only.  Apologies to my international blogging friends!)

Winning bidders must make payment and send their mailing address to me via paypal within 72 hours of the auction ending.  If payment is not made, winner forfeits item and the next highest bidder is awarded item. Once payment is made and shipping address is received, winning bidders will receive contact information of individual in charge of shipping their item.  Once all payments have been received, I will send a single donation, on behalf of the auction participants, to the United Way fund.

Get ready, get set, BID!  Here are our Fabulous Auction Items:
(click on the link above the picture to go to the bidding page for that item):

Ten Trail Mix Cookies As Big As Your Head

One dozen Vegan Gingerbread People

A 9"x13" Pan of Blondies

Holiday Set: Key Lime Fudge and Dark Chocolate Espresso Shortbread

photos courtesy of Southern Living

8x8" Pan of Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

Gourmet Granola (2 winners)

Two Dozen White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies

Fifteen Gingerbread Muffins

Four Dozen Stained Glass Cookies (2 winners)

Banana Bread (with mix-ins of your choice, 5 winners)

Completely Delicious Oatmeal Cookies (with mix-ins of your choice)

Zucchini Bread

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Friendship, Under the Circumstances: Fudge Brownies

First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been part of my parachute these past few days.  You feel like you're in free fall, and then you look behind you, and there it is: a beautiful, bright, vibrant thing, slowing your descent, cushioning the fall.  I am lucky to have you all, the virtual friends and the ones I can reach out to touch.

As you might imagine, I've been thinking a lot about friendships these past few days, especially female friendships I've made.  Which is sort of ironic, considering that one of my most recent posts was about sisterhood, and how I was feeling like I came late to the table of female friendship.

The friend I lost this weekend was the co-founder of the working mom's group I started (another irony, since I'm not currently working outside the home).  She wasn't someone I necessarily would have chosen to befriend, except for our circumstances: she was also kicked out of the stay-at-home-moms group that we joined for companionship and support when there were no other alternatives (we joked about this for years).  She wasn't and she was like me: unlike me, she loved her TV shows, she smoked, she was much more laid back than I am, she drove an SUV ... but more like me, she loved her children fiercely, she was smart, she was strong, and she was ready with a wisecrack or with an ear at just the right times.  Together, we coalesced a diverse group of women who were negotiating the balance of work outside the home and the commitments we wanted to make to our families.  The group has been through its ups and downs, and has been pretty quiet formally for the past year or so, but it still exists, and it was responsible for some unlikely life-changing friendships, even if we weren't the ones who were changed.

Crisis has a knack for doing this, doesn't it?  On the anniversary of September 11th, I also think about the friendships that were forged over that tragedy ... the people who happened to be in the same place at the same time watching in horror, or the people who had to cope, together, with the aftermath of unexpected loss, finding each other at the scene of devastation.  Because sometimes, despite the best intentions of others, you simply need someone who gets it, someone who has been exactly where you were.  And sometimes they can take you down roads you would never have traveled.

The blogosphere is like this, too.  There are certainly "tribes" of people that form, reinforcing the things we already share in common.  We look for them, because they make us feel better about our writing and our belief systems.  But there are also "circumstantial" connections that we make, happenstance meetings that change our writing, our career paths, our decisions ... sometimes our lives.  And those are just as worth treasuring as the ones that mirror our experiences.

When I lived in LA, I ran into an old acquaintance ... someone who'd had a thing for me back in college.  He introduced me his high school friend and wife in San Francisco, and the wife introduced me to her friend, whom she made through an ex-boyfriend, in LA.  The chain of coincidences that were required for me to meet this woman was dizzying.  But it was one of the most important friendships I made when I was out there.  C. was like everyone's older sister or aunt, and she took me under her wing.  I have memories of going to visit her in her apartment, cats curling around my leg.  Perhaps most importantly, I remember sitting with her on the 3rd Street Promenade eating pizza that claimed to be just like New York's best, talking with her about my dissatisfaction with graduate school.  Her answer?   "So why don't you leave?"

It had never occurred to me that I could ... but I did.    That chance connection, to someone I would never have befriended, changed everything.

I really ought to catch up with her again.

Today, be open to the happenstance connections in your life.  You may be surprised at where they take you.

Has a circumstantial/happenstance acquaintance ever changed your life?

One Pot Fudge Brownies
Though the memory is grainy like an Instagram photo, I recall us making these brownies in C.'s house one day, or was it a place I was housesitting? maybe after going out for Indian food.  They were completely inedible as brownies; we had to use a spoon to eat them right out of the pan.  But they were exactly right.  I've since tweaked the recipe, and now you can actually cut them and remove them from the pan, but you do have to wait for them to cool.  Otherwise, be prepared to break out your spoon.  And no, these are not very attractive.  Do you really need attractive brownies?

1/2 c.butter
1 2/3 c. sugar
2 T. water
4oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 1/3 c. flour
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 /t .salt
6 to 12 ounces of good dark chocolate chips or chunks

Preheat oven to 325.

Spray a 9x9" baking pan with cooking spray.

Melt butter in a medium to large pot over medium-low heat.  Stir in sugar and water and mix until the sugar is completely dissolved.  The water will want to do its own thing; don't worry about that.  Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate until completely combined.  Stir in the eggs, one a a time, and then vanilla.  Mix well.  Put some elbow grease into it.  Resist the urge to lick the spoon at this point.

Sift together the dry ingredients, then add to the pot.  Stir well.  You'll see that the mixture begins to look like one large mass of chocolate dough.  That's right.

Add the chocolate chips/chunks and mix briefly but thoroughly, so that they don't melt too much.  Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 25-35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out gooey but not wet.  Allow the brownies to cool in the pan thoroughly before you attempt to cut them, and then do so with a wet knife.

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Perfect Moment Monday: Cookie Dough

Perfect Moment Monday is a monthly blog hop/writing prompt, sponsored by Lavender Luz at Write Mind Open Heart, about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between. On the last Monday of each month we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join.

When I was in college, a slightly-more-than-friend (not quite a boyfriend, but not quite a friend, either ... remember those kinds of relationships?) took me hiking.  We wound our way up a rocky trail that looked out, at the top, over a stunning valley on fire with the color of autumn.  He took me in his arms, bent me over backward so I could see the bowl of the valley and the bowl of the sky in perfect opposition, upside down, and whispered in my ear: "take a good look, and remember this."

And to this day, I do.

I've written before about in-betweenness and about stillness.  About how I'm not good at either one of those states of being.  How they are uncomfortable places for me to inhabit, because I just want to get there.  To the end of things.  Or at least, to keep moving.

But there's also something stunningly beautiful about that liminality, too, the second of stop-motion between here and there, when you're exactly in the middle, even if you're in the middle of chaos.  If you can be aware enough to notice those moments, they can take your breath away.

Which brings me to my Perfect Moment Monday.

Usually my Perfect Moment Mondays (or Perfect Moment any days, for that matter) are quiet affairs.  So it was a good challenge to notice one during a particularly chaotic day.  I was in charge of four kids today, two of my own, and two that belong to my friends.  I love these kids, because they mix so well with my own: the older boy is a year older than my son, but is a good match for him in terms of interests and challenges him to keep up physically, and the younger boy is a gentle but ever-so-slightly mischevious spirit whom my daughter adores.  And yet, having four kids to watch, especially when one of them is a toddler, is a lot.  On days like this I always think of two moms with four kids who live on my street, and marvel that they do this every day.

After a long morning cooped up inside because of the rain, and a long hour of reluctanctly patient quiet trying to let my daughter nap, everyone needed to get out.  We took a variety of wheeled things (bikes, scooter, wagon) to the park up the street, which was--miraculously!--not drenched, and spent some time climbing on the playground and zipping around in circles.  Eventually, my daughter found her way over to the swings; when she tired of the "baby swing," I took her in my arms, sat with her in my lap on the "big girl swing," and held on tight around her waist as I began to pump, sending us higher.

"Higher," she said, "higher ... higher ... squeee!"  She squealed with a mixture of delight and fear as we rose higher into the air, nesling into my chest like she rarely does at home.  The air was warm and thick, but the wind on our faces and in my hair felt good, and suddenly, I reached that point where the chain on the swing just about goes slack before gravity takes over and you arc back down again towards the ground.  I felt her whole body tense with pure joy at that moment, enjoying the place where she held her breath, between "up" and "down."

And I heard my friend's voice, as I often do during moments like this, when I notice them, saying "take a good look, and remember this."

That space between, when it's not one thing any more, and yet not quite the other, either.  Delicious.

Cookie Dough Balls
After the cake yesterday, you're going to get the wrong idea.  Trust me, it's not all sweets around here!  I made half of this recipe in order to put them into ice cream that we made together today as a treat for the boys.  They're not yet ice cream, and they'll never be cookies, either, because they don't have any baking powder.  But you can eat the dough because there isn't any egg in them.  Vegan cookie dough.  Two versions: one not really healthy, and one healthy, with nuts.  Your choice.  You can't go wrong.

The standard sweet version:
1 c. turbinado or coconut palm sugar (brown sugar will do, too)
2 T. sugar (your choice)
1/2 c. nondairy milk (I used soy)
1/2 c. nonhydrogenated margarine, like Earth Balance

1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
1  3/4 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
 1 1/4 c. dark chocolate chips

In a large mixing bowl combine sugars and nondairy milk until sugars are moistened.  Beat in margarine and vanilla creaming until combined.  Add flour and salt and beat to form a soft fluffy dough.  Fold in chocolate chips.  Place a sheet of waxed paper onto a cutting board.  Scoop out balls of dough onto waxed paper (I used a 1/2 t. scoop) and freeze 1 hour or until firm.

The healthy version, from Love Veggies and Yoga:
2/3 c raw cashews
1/3 c oats
2 T. agave
1 T. maple syrup
1 t. vanilla
1/4 c chocolate chips

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The Politics of Cookies

I have clearly been living under a rock for the past twenty years, because I hadn't heard about the Family Circle Magazine Presidential Cookie Bake-Off until I read Grace Hwang Lynch's post about it on BlogHer.  In case you hadn't, either, here's how it works: the two presidential candidates' wives are supposed to submit their best cookie recipes for judgement by the American cookie-baking public (this year, on Facebook).  The tradition started in 1992 when Hilary Clinton made an off-the-cuff remark about not staying home to bake cookies and make tea, appearing to snub SAHMs, and needed to save her reputation.  So she and Barbara Bush went spatula-to-spatula, making themselves Middle America-Friendly.

Apparently every winning woman so far (save one) has gone on to be First Lady, so the stakes seem pretty high.  Slate has gone so far this year as to critique Michelle Obama's recipe, citing its lack of oats (which seems to be a surefire way to win, according to their highly scientific study) and use of Crisco as the fat.  (Gee, how would Americans react to a gluten free recipe, I wonder?  Or a vegan recipe?  Heaven forbid.)  And the New York Times reported that Ann Romney has been serving homemade cookies to prominent donors at the Romney home on Lake Winnepesauke, a "personal touch" that has earned them some serious campaign finances.

I like cookie recipes as much as the next person (oh, heck, even more than the next person), but I'm sort of stunned that this kind of antiquated contest is still happening, in 2012.  I mean, come on.  What if the candidate bakes cookies, rather than the spouse?  What if "home made" cookies in that house are the kind you squeeze out of a tube?  What if the candidate is a female, and the "First Spouse" would be a male?  Would we still hold the bake off?  And why do we care that the First Lady can bake?

I mentioned this to my son on the drive to a birthday party today, and while he liked the idea of a cookie contest, he was (1) confused that only two people were participating ("but mom, why can't other people try to win, too?"); (2) confused that this was a contest that had anything to do with winning the presidency ("don't we vote for the president?"); and (3) concerned that the contest might not be fair ("but what if they don't bake good cookies?  Maybe they should have another kind of contest.").  Exactly, kimo sabe.

Grace Hwang Lynch points out that what bothers her about the contest is that no one ever expects her to bake cookies.  She does it because she likes to, not because she has to.  And this whole thing reminds her of the 1950s expectation of dinner on the table and a cocktail in the shaker when a woman's husband arrived home from work.  What bothers me most, I think, is that both of these women are intelligent and well-spoken, and neither one of them has said anything about the stereotype that this perpetuates.  Which suggests that despite all of our clamoring for feminism and liberation as a nation, we really want highly visible women who can find their way around in a kitchen, who symbolize the hearth and the cult of domesticity.

I made these cookies yesterday.  Not because I was expected to, but because my son saw the recipe on the side of a cheerios-equivalent box, and wanted to try them.  It was a collaborative effort.  In the end, I decided that they're not really my favorite kind of cookie: they're crunchy rather than chewy, and they're a little too sweet.  They really do taste the way you'd expect a fancy moon rock might taste.  Luckily, I am not trying to please the majority of the cookie-baking and cookie-eating American public, nor am I trying to win a bid for the title of First Lady.

What do you think about the contest?  Am I completely misreading this?  Overreacting?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Moon Baubles

1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 1/2 c. Cheerios or similar O-shaped cereal
1/2 c. candy coated chocolate pieces (MnMs, preferably dark)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla; beat until fluffy. Stir in flour and baking soda; mix well. Add cereal and chocolate pieces; stir just until blended.

Drop by rounded 2 teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Let cool 1 minute before removing from cookie sheet. Makes 4 dozen.

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Didn't We Almost Have It All? Oatmeal Cookies

About a year ago, Esperanza posted a response to an article in The Atlantic entitled "How To Land Your Kid In Therapy."  It was, in short, a piece about telling our children (and our parents telling us) that they (we) can have it all, and the fallout when they realize that they (we) can't.  At the time, the post really resonated with me, not because I ever told my son that he could have it all, but as a professional who had just recently become a stay-at-home-mom (temporarily, I thought), I found myself wondering whether it really was possible for women to "have it all," and what that really meant, anyway.  Esperanza concluded that we are encouraged to want too much, and that we need to learn how to be satisfied with what we have; I wasn't entirely satistfied with that answer, but I've been mulling it over ever since.

This week, The Atlantic's cover article, entitled "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," went more or less viral.  In it, Anne-Marie Slaughter talks about her decision to step down from a position at the State Department in order to prioritize her family life, and what she thinks would need to change in order to make "having it all" a real possibility.  Though it focused, I feel, mostly on how the dilemma played out for the working mother,  responses by other Atlantic writers offered additional perspectives on the conversation, suggesting everything from "the problem isn't women, it's about the pressures of elite jobs" (I disagree) to "women who whine about it make us all look bad" (I also disagree).

I do agree, though, that there is no such thing as "having it all."  Because in addition to a problem of labor relations (because workplaces really are not very family-friendly as a rule, to anyone, women or men), which is potentially correctable, it's a fundamental problem of definition: not our definition, but the definition that someone created for us.

What is "having it all"?  Is it reaching the top of your field, sitting in the corner office, controlling the finances and having all of the decision making power?  Is it having the perfect family with 2.5 children who attend all of the right preschools, later getting into Ivy League schools?  Is it having both of these things effortlessly?  According to whom?  Is full time parenthood even compatible with a family-friendly workplace?  Maybe it is, but I don't think that it's possible to spend 24 hours a day at work AND 24 hours a day at home.  That's just not good math.

The other day, I was at my annual ob/gyn visit, and was saying something morose to my midwife about not being able to lose the last few pounds of baby weight.  She looked me square in the eye and said, "well, maybe that's just where you're supposed to be right now."  I must have looked surprised, because she continued: "You're healthy.  You exercise.  You eat well, and you allow yourself indulgences.  I'm not unhappy.  You shouldn't be, either."  It's not a matter of being happy with what we have, or "settling," but adjusting our scale so we measure ourselves, and not someone else.

Bessie Stanley, in 1904, published a short statement that is often misattributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson in a slim volume of collected words of wisdom from readers of Boston's National Magazine.  You've probably heard it somewhere before.  It goes like this: "He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; and whose memory a benediction."

I'm not saying that we ought not to strive or to achieve things.  If you read this blog enough, you'll know that I'm about as feminist as they come without the bra-burning (I draw the line at panty hose), and that I think that the glass ceiling is still very real, and needs breaking.  Slaughter makes some important points about workplace attitudes and policies that need adjusting, not just for mothers, but for the sanity of all working parents and non-parents.  I'm just suggesting that the achievement is not the same for everyone.  Maybe some people (fathers included) can be great at having a high-pressure job, and they can come home and eat family dinners and be present for their children.  They should be given the opportunity to do so.  It so happens that I think I'm a better parent when I'm working outside of the home, though I know now that I need to be home for dinner, and at night; that I don't want to be the president of anything.  It's true, I probably wouldn't sing as many songs or talk to my kids as much as another parent, but they will probably not turn out to be cretins.  (Well, they might be cretins, but it won't be all my fault.)  Maybe that will be my "all."  Still: that is not everyone's measure of success.  And that we ought to stop pretending there is a single measure, and looking down our noses at everything else.  Because if we can, if we are encouraged and given every tool to achieve what we feel is important (and I'm talking about all of us here, the blue-collar workforce as well as the white-collar professionals), and not what someone else feels is important, then we will have it all.

These are for Keiko, long overdue.  I promised her an oatmeal cookie recipe, and I'm finally posting, in the middle of CSA season, no less, when I ought to be posting about chard.  (Don't worry, that's coming.)  Keiko is a great example of someone who has come up with her own measure of success, and continues to change that measure as her goals change.  I really think that the "Fertile Life" she describes may be as close as we can come to "having it all."  Which is something, in principle, I think we can all aspire to.

Have you read the article, and what did you think?  Do you think it's possible to "have it all," and what would that mean for you? How do you measure success? 

Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
3/4 c. flour
1/4 c. dark raisins
1/4 c. golden raisins
1/4 c. dried cranberries
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
6 T. unsalted butter, softened
1/3 c. packed brown sugar (I used light)
1/4 c. sugar (or sub evaporated cane juice for both sugars)
1 egg
1/2 t. cinnamon
4 T. dark raisins for topping
4 T. golden raisins for topping

Preheat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, stir together oats, flower, raisins, cranberries, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.  Combine dark and golden raisins for topping, and set aside.

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Add egg, cinnamon, and vanilla; beat until combined.  Gradually add oat mixture and mix well.  Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls, about 2 inches apart, onto two baking sheets.  Place 1 mounded teaspoon of raisins on top of dough.  Bake until cookies are golden brown but still soft, 12-16 minutes.  Cool 5 minutes on sheets; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

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Women, Success, and Quinoa Cookies

The other day, Dr. Peggy Drexler posted over at the Huffington Post about the notable absence of female role models in popular culture.  Drexler writes that "strong, confident, accomplished women are out there by the legions. But they are going about building lives beyond the peripheral vision of popular culture."

I happen to know a lot of amazing women.  Some of them work outside the home.  Some of them are stay at home moms.  Some of them are accomplished writers.  Some of them do all of these things at once.  Few of them are traditional business successes (because that's simply not the circle I travel in).  But when we get together to talk, seldom do we seem to talk about our success.  More often, we tell each other stories of crisis, stories about things that don't go well.  I remember reading a blog post by Kathy Caprino, a career and life coach, a while back also on the Huffington Post, about this particular phenomenon, and I remember thinking to myself, why is that?

I wonder if it's the nature of our connections with one another.  Do women connect better around crisis, because it invites sympathy and empathy?  Are success stories too individual, and therefore not the kind of stories that build relationships?  Do they seem boastful, and women are less given to braggadocio than men?

I think about the blogs I read.  Though I haven't done a scientific study, most of their writers (all women) are most prolific when there's something going on that bothers us (I'm including myself here).  Something that's worrisome.  When writing can be a cathartic release.  And while it's true that we gather our tribe when we're in turmoil, why does it seem to be that we don't do so when have worked hard to deserve our laurels?

My yoga teacher talked tonight about strength, and about how in asana our consciousness usually goes right to the place of most sensation, and that we should try, sometimes, to bring our consciousness to a place in our bodies that might not be experiencing as much sensation.  Instead of the hamstring, notice our foot.  Our toes.  In life, she said, we are often consumed by pain, or distress, or crisis, because those things make the most "noise," when we could shift our perspective if only we decided to draw our attention--even temporarily--to the smaller, quieter things, like joy.  I wonder if it's the same for failure and success ... that we pay more attention to failure, because it's louder?

If any of this is true, that women don't talk about their successes as often as they do their failures, is it any wonder that popular culture fills the vacuum with celebrities, as Caprino suggests?

It's interesting ... I talk a lot about my kitchen successes here.  Every once in a while, I write about failure.  But I can't bring myself to publish recipes that I think are absolute flops, and sometimes I publish recipes that someone in my family didn't like, because taste is such an individual thing, that it's worth trying a recipe if someone thinks it's good.  Nor can I bring myself to take pictures of kitchen disasters.  And yet, when I'm not in the kitchen, I'm just as guilty as the next person of talking about the things that go wrong.

What do you think?  Is this just my perception, or have you experienced something similar?

Quinoa Fruit and Nut Cookies
I wouldn't count these cookies as disasters at all.  In fact, I thought they were pretty good, and they did the trick of using up the quinoa to which my husband discovered he is now allergic.  However, they do taste like "healthy cookies," as my husband calls them.  Which means you might give yourself permission to eat more than you'd intended.  Consider yourself warned.


1/2 c. (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 c. date sugar (or brown)
3 T. honey
2 large eggs
1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce
1 t. vanilla
3/4 t. almond extract (or more vanilla)
1 c. cooked and cooled quinoa
2 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. rolled oats (not quick)
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t.baking soda
1 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground ginger
1 t. salt
1 c. dried tart cherries or dried apricots
1 c. whole almonds or walnuts, coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 375F degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Beat the butter with the sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Beat in the honey and the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the applesauce and extracts.  Gently mix in the quinoa until well incorporated. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the batter, mixing on low speed until just combined. Remove the mixing bowl from the stand and stir in the dried cherries and almonds.

Drop the dough in generous 2-tablespoon portions 2 inches apart onto the prepared baking sheets.  Flatten slightly and bake until the cookies are golden around the edges and on the bottoms, 12-15 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

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Parenting in the Age of Facebook: Nut-Free Healthy Trail Mix Cookies

First, some housekeeping: anyone looking for a BlogHer '12 roommate?  (Yes!  My husband got me a registration for my birthday back in December, and I hope I'll see many of you there!)

Now, for the real meat of today's post:

This morning I took I. and N. for a walk downtown to get a bagel for I.'s breakfast.  It was an exciting trip not just because N. got to wave to the garbage men, or because I. got to wear his rain boots, but because the bagel store has TV.

Yes, it's true: we have no TV in my house.  Not even one on which we watch videos.  But before you pass judgment, know that we have a Netflix subscription that gets watched on a laptop (though we use it at a snail's pace), and that there are plenty of opportunities for my five year old to use the internet--supervised, of course.

Today, as my son was selecting and paying for his honey wheat bagel (because I think it's useful for him to make small transactions like this on his own, with me standing a few feet behind him), I found myself watching TV, too.  Because up there on the flat screen I saw the video I'd seen a few days ago on YouTube, posted by a FB friend, of the father who'd shot his daughter's laptop (which he bought and just upgraded) in response to her FB post about her allegedly demanding parents.  When I watched it the other day, I found myself angry, but not wanting to feed into the (social) media circus already surrounding this family and their choices about conflict resolution.  My son caught it out of the corner of his eye, though, and wanted to know what it was all about.

I explained what had happened, and how her father had reacted, and then asked him what he thought.  Was the girl right?  Was the father right?  We talked about what was missing in the exchange, what they didn't use: their words.  Communication with each other, instead of through a third party: the faceless audience of the internet.

We worry about our children and cyber bullying.  But what are kids learning from their parents about the proper use of media?

Over the years, the internet has made it easier for me to talk to people.  The blogging community has been a source of encouragement, support, comfort.  Sometimes I feel braver, say things I might not have said in person, even when I'm writing to people I know.  But we can't use this media to shout at each other, or worse -- to shout past each other -- if we hope to teach our children love, respect, and tolerance.

I think that parents have the responsibility to build the foundation for communication early on; this doesn't just mean playing with your kid, but really talking with them, trusting them, treating them with respect, and entrusting them with real responsibilities, letting them know that they're an important part of a family partnership.  Sometimes that means baking cookies with them, like I did with I. the other day.  Sometimes it means asking them to take out the trash.  Sometimes it means telling them a difficult truth.  Sometimes it means letting them sit on your lap and saying nothing at all, and really listening when they have something to say.  And then, I think, it's up to us to show them how the internet is just a tool to extend those same principles of communication.

Where does the internet fail you?  What do you think are the limits of virtual communication?  Have you seen the video, and what are your thoughts about parenting in the age of Facebook (Twitter, etc.)?

Healthy Trail Mix Cookies

2 c. old-fashioned oats
1/2 c. whole-wheat flour
1/4 c. ground flaxseed
1/4 c. wheat germ
1/2 t.salt
6 T. unsalted butter, melted
3/4 c. white grape juice concentrate
1 large egg
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. dried cranberries or raisins
1/4 c. dried apricots, chopped
1/3 c. cacao nibs (or nuts if you prefer)

Preheat oven to 325F. Line baking sheet with parchment.

In large bowl, combine oats, flour, flaxseed, wheat germ, and salt. Add the melted butter and mix well. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combined egg and grape juice concentrate. Pour over the oat mixture and stir well. Fold in fruit and cacao nibs.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 1 inch apart. Flatten slightly with the back of the spoon.

Bake 13-15 minutes, until lightly browned but still soft in the center; do not overbake. Let stand on baking sheets a few minutes to firm up, then transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

Store cookies at room temperature, tightly covered, for up to 5 days, or freeze for 1 month.

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