Fox and Bunny and Woodpecker Stew

This may be the best damn chocolate chip cookie I have ever made.  For all that I can bake, cookies give me the most trouble.  (As do brownies from scratch, but I think I’ve finally cleared that hurdle.)  Every recipe is different — sometimes they should be pulled out early, sometimes late, and it’s entirely too easy to miss the mark altogether.  Maybe because I’m a chewy cookie girl and try to make every cookie into a chewy one.  Maybe.  (Why crunchy cookies exist, I’m not sure.  Talk about a waste of calories.)  Whatever it is, cookies tend to be my culinary nemesis.  I have the hardest time making them just so.

And then I stumbled upon this delightful little recipe by Heidi Swanson, who crafted her version based on Kim Boyce’s chocolate chip cookies.  Two of my favorite cooks of all time and one masterful rendition of the classic.  Dense, moist, chewy, not too sweet with a terrific crumb — mind-blowingly good.  And whole grain to boot.  These women are geniuses.

Needless to say, it’s bangin’.  I finally have my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Fiery hot chilies paired with cool cucumbers.  Spicy, sweet, tart, and well rounded.  Best of all, it’s as easy as can be.

I ate it plain, but may try pairing it with fish next time.  Would be a stellar addition to any barbecue.  Most definitely a welcome addition to the rotation.  Recipe courtesy of the ever inventive Big Girls, Small Kitchen.

I love my long hair.  Perhaps I should use the past tense: I loved my long hair.  And then it became something I clung to.  Youth, beauty, sex appeal — all of these things are attributed to long hair.  Somewhere in my subconscious I was convinced a large part of my attractiveness was due to my long hair.  It took me entirely too long to realize just how sick of it I was.

You see, the last time I chopped my hair off I was fifteen.  I walked into the salon and handed my scissor-happy hairdresser a picture of Lisa Kudrow sporting a cute layered ‘do.  I figured I’d look like this glamorous pixie with gloriously easy and perfect hair.  Enter invaluable life lessons #876 and #877: A, I look horrible in layers.  ATROCIOUS.  They make me break out in hives.  And B, be EXPLICITLY clear when going for an extreme revamp in hairstyle.  Also, don’t be afraid to fire your stylist.

For starters, short hair is not easy.  More importantly, when you have a prominent jaw that looks great on your male sibling but isn’t the most feminine of features, short hair makes you look round.  And potentially somewhat androgynous.  (In the years since growing out my hair, whenever someone sees a picture of me during high school they comment on how I’ve lost weight.  Rather, I’ve gained somewhere in the ballpark of 10-15 pounds.  We’re talking ROUND.)  Life lesson #878: Hair cut to one’s earlobes is to be done with the utmost care and understanding of all the consequences it will most surely entail.  This I learned the hard way.

Hence I swore I’d never cut my hair short again.  And I haven’t.  I want to be drop dead gorgeous and sexy!  And then one day I snapped out of it.  Not only was I finding myself admiring girls my age with short hair (some with hair shorter than I’d ever dare, sporting those phenomenal pixie cuts) — and sexy short hair at that — I finally realized just how sick I was of the same look I’d had for well over a decade.

So…you see where this is headed.  I chopped it off!

I think I’m onto something.