I assume you’re here for a cookie recipe and we’ll start with that but while I have you, here’s a running list of some things occupying space in my mind on this gray yet bright final morning of 2020—year of quiet desperation, loud desperation, absolute wonder, a lot of humor, much time spend trying to constantly decide whether to laugh or cry or both—you know:
Read moreCONDENSED MILK CHOCOLATE FUDGE COOKIES
The undeniable fact of our existence is such that even on joyful, soul-uplifting weeks (YASSS 2020 way to step up a little!), we still have to deal with the messy, daily business of being alive. Perhaps nothing is going awry and your to-do list is clear and you can sail through these next few days feeling buoyant and allowing your energy to float brightly in the air, untethered from your body and the sticky ins-and-outs of being a human who is alive and breathing.
Read moreBROWN BUTTER SOURDOUGH CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
For the first time in so long, I feel a lightness and a brightness. I think it’s the physical manifestation of hope—there’s an almost electric undercurrent in the air, as if everyone was standing in a silent room and suddenly there’s faint (really good, very catchy) music playing.
If I narrow in to the smallest possible sphere of my life for the past 6 months—to just this house and this street and the daily experience of sleeping and waking and cooking and existing and so on—I’d actually say that life has felt joyful and good. If I stay in the exact present moment (which a small baby pretty much demands most of the time), then I’m generally anchored by pleasant sensations, as if the day is quilt stitched together out of discreet bits of thread—a cup of tea, one length of thread; a walk down over to the little harbor, one length of thread; a chapter of “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar, one length of thread; a run down Moores Lane then over past the Island’s End golf course; another length of thread.
Read moreBROWNED BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIE BARS
When I was little, I had my own specific list of likes and dislikes. A hard pass on raw tomatoes, creamed onions, sweet winter squash, and anything licorice-flavored. A definite green light on fresh peaches, sticky orange sweet rolls, homemade strawberry ice cream, barely-blanched sugar snap peas, cucumber sandwiches, Grape-Nuts cereal with cream, buttery-tasting Club crackers with thin slices of bright orange Cracker Barrel cheddar, buttered bowtie pasta, pats of butter melting on warm-from-the-oven potato bread, and really just butter in general now that I think of it.
Read moreMINI CHOCOLATE MARCONA ALMOND WHOOPIE PIES
Could I chart my life in chocolate? Probably. You could too, I’m guessing.
Second grade: Sifting through the shiny pile of miniature candy bars I’ve spilled out onto the carpet after a few hours of trick-or-treating in the frigid October air. The nubby multicolored rag carpet is soft under my knees and there’s a fire blazing cozily in the living room where all the parents sit together. My sisters and I are engaged in fierce, sugar-fueled negotiations with the other kids—three Mounds bar for one Twix; two Kit Kats for two Crunch bars; five Almond Joys and two Butterfingers and a box of Milk Duds for a single king-sized Snickers.
Read more