she says i'm much too thin, she asks me if i'm sick

IMG_7778, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Remember that healthy eating kick? I’m still totally on it, but I am not made of stone.

These cookies are – according to Smells Like Dessert – the absolute Holy Grail of chocolate chip cookies. I’m not entirely sure I agree – they’re good, but they’re not so good that I’m going to quit on my trusty family recipe. (They are also HUGE. Like, ENORMOUS. I can see why the recipe calls for making them so large, because they are a lot softer having been baked like that, but. This definitely makes giant, Starbucks-sized cookies, and one is more than enough.)

I also did something a bit weird with this recipe, which may be why I didn’t love them quite as passionately as the original blogger. When I went to start baking, I discovered that my brown sugar was hopelessly hard and unusable, so I tried a substitution gleaned from the internet: one cup of white sugar and a quarter cup of molasses to replace one cup of brown sugar. It worked out – the texture of the cookies is perfect, and they’re not too sweet – but there is a bit of a molasses-y aftertaste. I don’t mind it, really? But it definitely changed the character of the cookies.

Song of the Entry: Jack’s Mannequin – Holiday From Real

sing the prettiest songs

IMG_7771, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

The new course we’ve started at school is centered around nutrition and horrible metabolic disorders and vitamin deficiencies, which is doing a very good job of terrifying me onto a healthy eating kick. Which – well, I can’t really complain about wanting to eat a balanced diet, because that’s really really good, but it’s definitely changed the way I pick out the stuff I cook. This was dinner a few nights ago: chicken and veggie stir fry, one of the few Bonnie Stern recipes not in The Best of HeartSmart Cooking, which is the only cookbook of hers that I own.

(Fortunately, my parents have access to a photocopier.)

Song of the Entry: Be Good Tanyas – The Littlest Birds

happy valentine's day!

IMG_7786, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.