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

feel it in every cell

IMG_7725, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Garlic and mushrooms and fresh thyme, in close-up. This is a progress shot from getting the ingredients together for dinner a few nights ago – chicken and mushrooms and wine, baked in tin foil, from Happy Days With the Naked Chef. This is one of the first cookbooks I own that wasn’t given to me by my mother or her friends (to ensure that I wouldn’t starve when I started living on my own), so it’s kind of a big deal.

Song of the Entry: Ben Lee – So Hungry

i will build you a cabana

2008/10/02, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

One of the things I’ve been really working on since I got back to Canada has been cooking food that is healthy and delicious, instead of just delicious. Basically, me and my copy of Bonnie Stern’s Best of Heartsmart Cooking have rekindled our relationship.

Case in point: dinner last night, Sweet Chili Chicken (page 239). The recipe is not too difficult (although, like a lot of her recipes, it involves a fair amount of chopping that has to be done before you put anything in the frying pan. It’s not too spicy, and I made extra sauce so that it would go well on rice, plus it travels well for lunch the next day.

Song of the Entry: Two Shots for Poe – Anna Banana