HopelesslyJoan

When my kids were small, we were “financially challenged”, the result of my lack of marketable skills and my complete belief in my role as home-maker/nurturer…and my very poor choice in male partners…three husbands by the age of 26. I fell hard and fast into love and lust (3 children by age 26), with difficult men. They included a nickle miner who loved beer more than me, a perpetual university student and a country music musician. Hmmm. It was an interesting few years.

Always an optimist and and impressed by social activism, I decided to be a “back to the earth” type rather than “poor”. I bought secondhand baby clothes and furniture, and made my own preserves, shampoo and bread.

And cookies, of course. Peanut butter, shortbread and chocolate chip , my favourite, which my kids often helped bake. Well, “helped” may not really be an accurate description of what went on in our kitchen, but it was fun, educational and cheap!

Now, 30 years later, cookies still bring back happy memories of quality time spent in a hot kitchen in the middle of a Saskatchewan summer, deftly maneouvering around three small children all squabbling over who got the spoon first, bringing trays of yummy freshly baked trays out of the blazing oven. I fed my children healthy cookies, saved money and was a good Mom, to boot! I felt happy.

Recently, I started baking cookies again after a long hiatus. Life got better financially, kids left home (coincidence?), I learned life as a single woman was just fine. I was also fighting off mid-life weight gain.

Then I found myself with time on my hands after a surgery that left me in chronic pain. At home on pain killers. I started to crave chocolate; lots and lots of chocolate. I found a dollar store that sold large bars for a dollar! I was eating so much chocolate, I feared diabetes and malnutrition were waiting ’round the bend.

I decided I needed actual nutrients, like those found in eggs, flour and butter. I needed “real” cookies with “healthy” dark chocolate . So, I dragged out my Betty Crocker cookbook, the apron my son made for me for Mother’s Day 1993 ( he met girls in Home Ec and is happily married now and a father), and I bought a brand-new state-of-the-art cookie sheet. I was ready for baking delicious cookies.

Months later, I am still amazed at how awful my cookies are. I have made a batch a week for 12 weeks, and each turns out a little odder than the one before…sometimes, there is improvement, sometimes a relapse. I have tried two different recipes, so Betty C. is not the problem. On occasion, I have caught an error (too much wine while baking and using whole wheat flour instead of white) Me, drinking the wine, that is…not wine IN cookies.

One kind soul, while tasting a new batch remarked how “interesting” it was that I could bake cookies without the chocolate chips actually melting… sometimes the sugar doesn’t melt, either and they crunch. Sometimes they are so greasy, they burn into flat brown disks on the pan…sometimes I have to dip them in a cup of hot tea to bite an edge off.

I still eat them all, of course, because I am thrifty forever. Poverty will do that to you. Plus, I can always find the chocolate chips in them and they always taste good. And, of course, I remember the really perfect ones the kids and I made together in that hot prairie kitchen everytime I lick the spoon. Then I feel happy.

How about you? Have you got a favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe I can try?