Wednesday, January 15, 2014

cookies: a group meeting adventure

Today I was on snack duty for group meeting.  It is snack duty instead of lunch duty because we moved the time back from previously noon, and then 1:00pm, to 2:00pm.  This is nice because snack duty is less expensive than lunch duty – which was typically pizza from Domino’s, which everyone then proceeded to complain about for whatever reason – and because we didn’t actually enjoy eating lunch during group meeting.  It was awkward.

I want to take a minute here and address my confusion over the Domino’s hate.  I don’t get it.  It seems like really inoffensive pizza.  It has crust and sauce and cheese and toppings.  You can choose lots of different toppings.  They tend to be nicely arranged.  It is not quite as thin as most New Haven style pizza, but I don’t really love the super thin pizza style anyway.  It seems like it just gets soggy and loses integrity before it even leaves the pizza box.

These feelings might actually be why I don’t understand the hating on Domino’s pizza train.  But anyway, we have some pizza snobs who turn their noses up at it and sometimes I can’t help but feel like pizza snobbery is one of the lowest forms of snobbery.  It doesn’t take much to make a good pizza, and I have no idea what it takes to make a great pizza.  So there’s that.  (I usually assume it takes nice toppings to make a great pizza, but these are people who just want broccoli and chicken or pepperoni or just plain cheese.)

Anyway, I decided I wanted to partake in some good old-fashioned bake therapy, so I picked a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that I had saved to Pinterest (lookit this continuity with my last entry!) and made those.  The cookies are very tasty – I subbed in about a half cup of white chocolate chips, because I think that variety is the spice of life (ha ha) and then chilled the dough while the oven preheated.  When I baked them, they came out as little domes, just the way I’d put them in, and I wondered if they had even baked.

They had, they just held their shape.  I got about 30 of them from the recipe and then thought maybe that wouldn’t be enough, so I whipped up a half-batch of Nestle’s recipe (you know, the Toll House cookie recipe on the chocolate chip bag) and tossed in a bunch of Heath bar bits that I had just hanging out in my freezer door.  At first I thought that the second batch tasted suspiciously of freezer (you know the taste) but after sitting out overnight, they just tasted like chocolate chip cookies with toffee bits.

It turns out that people are indeed not intimidated by chocolate chip cookies.  They don’t wonder if they’ll like them.  Chocolate chip cookies are apparently one of the few things that the human race has blind faith in.  And despite the fact that I brought in like 55 cookies, most of them were gone by the time our 90 minute group meeting had ended.  It’s good to know that the little things are the best things, sometimes.

Jen tried one of the Heath bar variety, which I had remembered to sprinkle with coarse sea salt before popping them in the oven, and she turned to look at me.  “Is this salt on top?” she asked, and I nodded yes.  She took another bite.  “It’s not bad.”

And then the group proceeded to make fun of her for failing to deliver an appropriate compliment.  Jen’s last day is February 7.  We will miss her.

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