One thing I love to do with my girls is bake. I like to think that I'm passing on a love of all things high fat and yummy calories but in reality, I want them to be proficient in the kitchen. My mom taught me the importance of measuring (Southern style people....dash of this, pinch of that, scoop of this, teeny little bit of that...to this day I can't give anyone a recipe for cornbread, I just have to make it), chopping, and preparation techniques~ cooking makes me happy.
Plus it kept The Man and I from starving the first year of our marriage when all we could afford was flour, cornmeal, cream style corn, hamburger meat and baking powder...you have no idea how much I can make with those few items. Lord willing I will never have to prove it to you ever again either~
So I try and squeeze cooking time in wherever I can. Since I work and my photo-elusive-step-dad does alot of the cooking during the week, tonight I threw together a big ole pan of homemade zitti and stashed it in the fridge...this way, The Man can put it in the oven, brown some rolls, butter some beans and toss together a salad and woohoo major yummy meal!
But since today was the girls' first day back to school, it made sense to make some oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies too....scratch the chocolate chip though cause Duchess finally fessed up to eating the ENTIRE 12 oz bag of chips....so I gathered ingredients while Princess read her daily 20 minutes to me. Then we all jumped in.
The lovely thing about oatmeal cookies is that you can add everything (pecans, walnuts, raisens, peanut butter or chocolate) to them or add nothing at all and they still make you want to waller around in the creamy butter mixture that is the dough, or that could just be me.....
However, my usual recipe went awry somewhere, think it was with the pinch of baking powder, guess I pinched too much cause this monster took over the pan. I actually had to cut state boundaries into this thing!
Duchess wasn't complaining though, just really happy with the end results. Although the sour stomach from too many chocoalte chips resulted in very little actual cookie making it into her mouth.
Princess didn't seem to have that same problem. She was putting cookies away faster than I could carve them off the continent they grew into on my baking sheets. Can I mention how much I love baking paper? Hello mess-less cooking!
In the end, this is the beauty that will call to me tonight as I strain myself into crunches and situps to remove evidence of my batter indulgence! Oh and that darn recipe made four sheet fulls, good thing I was smart enough to email The Man pictures of the end results, he'll come home from work and head straight for the bowl! I love him, he saves me from myself!
