The Best Cookies I've Ever Made

I bought a new computer last week.  Not because there is anything really wrong with my little netbook; it got me through two years of college, after all, and has logged hundreds of hours of Reddit browsing, solitaire, and Plants Vs. Zombies.  I've even watched a good number of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes on the little thing, even though they told me it wouldn't be powerful enough for quality video.  My netbook has served me well, but it has one major downfall: it does not run Minecraft.  I can't even begin to explain the game right now, just know that after a pretty stressful two years of higher education, it has been a joy to unwind by running around in a virtual landscape made of cubes.

My new computer claims to be a laptop, but that is simply not true.  It boasts a fifteen-inch screen and a full-size keyboard, and while it's probably not as heavy as my first laptop (a big clunky Dell that I lugged around campus for my first two years of college, way back when we had to use ethernet cables in the library) it certainly does look silly on my lap.  So I'm keeping it on the table.

"No, it's not a laptop," said my live-in computer expert.  "It's a desktop replacement."

Okay.

In any case, I spent one and a half days staring at the shiny new screen of my desktop replacement, making a Pinterest account, fooling around with the new confusing Windows 8 start menu, and mining for diamonds, before I decided to get out of my chair and do something productive.  It was already about eight thirty pm, which meant that bedtime was not far off.  Or, that would have been the case if this wasn't a Friday night.  Friday nights, we can stay up til eleven, even midnight!  If I don't have to open in the morning, I can do anything I want.

I found this recipe, and decided to adapt it to use what I had on hand, which included the wheat germ but did not include pecans or dates.  I omitted the white sugar because it seemed excessive, and halved the recipe so as not to end up with five dozen cookies and no one to eat them but myself.  So here it is:

Cranberry Coconut Wheat Germ Oatmeal Cookies

aka The Best

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract, but why not just go for the whole teaspoon?

3/4 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup flaked coconut (if you use the sweetened kind, all the more reason to cut the white sugar from the original recipe)

1/4 cup dried cranberries (you can definitely use more, but this was all I had on hand)

If you're like me, you'll forget to preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  But you can do it later, no big deal.  What's the worst that can happen if you put the cookies in before it's fully preheated?

And if you're like me, you don't want to use separate bowls for wet and dry ingredients, so just go for it.  Cream together butter and sugar until smooth, then beat in the egg and vanilla.  Sure, you can use your electric mixer, but I use a wooden spoon and my upper body strength, so.

Dump in the dry stuff, sprinkling the powder and soda and salt so that it gets evenly distributed.  That's how I do it, anyway, and it never seems to be a problem.  (After I mixed it all up, the dough still felt a little wet, so I added less than a quarter cup of whole wheat flour to soak it up, and it felt better.)  Now, of course, you add the coconut and cranberries, and then arrange your little cookie balls neatly on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for some number of minutes, ten, twelve, whatever, or just watch them the whole time and take them out when they get nice.

I always refrigerate or freeze half my dough so that next time I get the urge to bake, I don't have to go through all that.  Is it crazy that after baking the first batch, I rolled up my piece of parchment paper and put it back in the box for next time?  It's just, it was the perfect size, and it didn't even get crinkled or greasy!  I had to save it.

Man, I can't wait to put this on Pinterest.

Blogs are Stupid / No They're Not

I've tried this before, this "blogging."  Couldn't stick with it.  Nothing really to blog about.  See, your blog has to be interesting, you have to have nice photos and funny or charming things to say, or else how could you presume that anyone would want to read it?  I don't presume that anyone here on the World Wide Web cares much about what I have to say, but then, with that attitude, I'll never get anything done.  No one will ever Pin my posts or Tweet about them, and I'll never get any link karma on Reddit.  Maybe if I really commit this time, if I get really serious about this, I might accrue some fake internet points to validate my existence.

But seriously, I do actually want to be a writer, and I'm better at it now, because I'm a few years older and I spent those years letting people with advanced degrees teach me how to do it.  That's right, I got myself a Bachelor's Degree.  A few months ago, I wrote and revised 70 pages worth of fiction (which, now that I think about it, doesn't feel like a whole lot) and got an A on it and promptly stopped writing.  I'm taking a break, I say, when someone asks me how the writing is going.  I'm doing a lot of cooking and baking, I'm planning my AT hike. And there are countless things I'm thinking of planning, or considering starting to think about maybe doing.

So that is what this stupid blog is for.  For writing about all the cooking and baking, the AT planning (do you even know how cool homemade dehydrated meals are?), the arts and crafts.  Yesterday I made oatmeal cookies with coconut and dried cranberries, and the recipe had wheat germ in it, how neat!  Today I made dog biscuits.  Dog biscuits!  And tonight I'm going to put carrots in to dehydrate overnight.  This is the stuff of blogs.  These things are going to end up on Pinterest.

Really, it's just a motivational tool.  If I want to make this blog really nice so that people will look at it, I've got to do things that I can blog about.  That means quitting just clicking on stuff that looks neat; it means getting off my ass and really doing that neat stuff.  So.  Stay tuned.