There are two things I want simultaneously, but they are mutually exclusive. If I get the one, I cannot have the other, and if I get the other then I cannot have the one. Most of this past summer I have been on the fulcrum of the teeter totter with my wants perched on either side, trying to navigate to one or the other while keeping my balance, which did not happen.
It was a summer of sliding, slipping, falling off, running this way then that way. There were dreams of connection and happiness bursting into showers of sorrow, and oceans of sorrow blossoming into hope.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have the one, but not the other, or rather a chance at the one with the exclusion of the other and have spent days grieving the loss while still being grateful for having the chance.
To complicate this whole mess, and it was messy inside and outside, all of this was done on the poverty diet, designed to keep me functioning with my underlying medical condition (POTS) while managing a super tight budget. Some malnutrition may have occurred along with a few lost pounds, which were readily found again, thank goodness.
I made some music, wrote a practice exercise to focus on weaknesses in my skill level (happy to report that it’s working as designed), wrote about 12,000 words for the sequel to Witchified: Cesily’s Grand Opening plus updated the artwork.
I’ve been painting in the art studio focusing on Water. There’s a series of 5 paintings that I will put up for auction (eventually) to raise money for the recovery efforts in Lahaina after the horrible fires there that took place on Aug. 8th. These are learning paintings, and I’m slow, so I will naturally miss the news cycle, and for most of the world this tragedy will be behind them, so once they are finished the most I can hope for will be to raise awareness, and be a fresh influx of money, even if it’s a small amount, to encourage and let everyone know they are not forgotten. Updates on the paintings can be found here.
I just settled back into my place where I had been planning to move out from, and sort of got the hang of my job when I got Covid. Today is the final day of my isolation, so Happy Labor Day, cough, cough, sniffle.
The whole weekend has been managing this illness, and in the few bits of the day where I feel okay, doing some laundry, cooking, washing dishes, and oh yes, I made cookies. Comfort cookies.
Here’s the thing about this batch of cookies. I had all of the ingredients mixed together for a batch of delicious Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, but the dough looked unnaturally crumbly.
“Why is it dry?” I wondered, then with a growing horror realized I had left out, of all things, the egg.
Now I have two choices, and neither of them are ideal.
I can cook the crumbly dough and have crumbly cookies, and that will be how the cookie crumbles.
OR
I can try to add the egg into the dough and risk having cookies which look like and taste like they are covered in baked egg.
I imagine this can all go badly. I can’t go back in time and separate out the wet and dry ingredients. I mean there’s a reason why these things are done in a certain order.
Against my better judgment, I broke an egg into another bowl and whipped it so that at least the yoke and the white were mixed thoroughly and then, cringing with self-loathing and spite and regret, dumped the mixed egg into a well I had formed (somewhat) with the dough and began folding and stirring and watching the yellow slime of the egg coat the surface of the dough, the chocolate chips, the oatmeal with a fascinated disgust until at last I could bear it no more and declared it time to form and bake the cookies.
Some days there are no good choices, just ones that are suboptimal. Trade offs. You can feel that either way you are losing, and can forget that maybe either way you are winning. Either way there will be cookies.
The cookies came out tighter than usual, but tasty and with no obvious indication that the egg had been added last of all. They do not easily crumble.
And if you’ve read this far, or are a reader of this blog long time, here is a gift to you. The secret of these cookies is that they are made with half ww flour, and half regular flour, so the glycemic index on them is lower than if they were only made with regular all purpose flour. Plus they have a little more fiber, a little more flavor, and a little more substance. I spent years adapting recipes to whole grain alternatives, and this recipe has been tested and refined to be delectable.
I have a recipe for a big giant batch of cookies, which was great when there were a lot of bellies around me demanding cookies, but since I live alone, and I just make cookies for myself, I have the small batch recipe, too.
And I’m sharing the recipes here.
Thank you for reading. This is now a cooking blog. 😉
