C is for cookie, and cookies are for me

I had an uncontrollable urge for cookies today. I had to have them. And, even more so, I had to have some cookie dough.

I specifically wanted Toll House cookies. I wanted them just how I remembered them from childhood. When's the last time you had a Toll House cookie? I can't remember at all the last time I bothered to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch. It's unfortunate too, because the real thing is WAY better than stupid break n' bakes. Which is something I know full well - but laziness often wins. Stupid.



I didn't eat too much raw dough, I promise. And I asked the eggs if they had salmonella and they said no.

I most certainly did not...

...order $50 worth of Chinese food for myself tonight.

Why, what gave you that idea?

Now if you will excuse me, I really must be going. Something tells me I want to be sure to take my wedding ring off before I fall asleep tonight.

P.S. one of the cats stole a fortune cookie and broke it open. His fortune said something about being ready for an exciting opportunity. I'd say he had already found it.

You know, I might just be pregnant

I stopped into my local neighborhood drugstore this afternoon for some Pepcid AC and two bags of Easter candy.

On my way home from pilates.

Yeah, and I busted into the Reese's Eggs on the 1/2 mile drive home.

This explicitly pregnant lady behavior led me to have my first public pregnancy conversation, when the cashier looked at me while ringing up the lady in front of me in line and said, "so when ya due?" The three of us ladies proceeded to talk weight gain and baby size for the duration of our transactions. Cashier lady also told me that having a lot of heartburn means the baby is going to be born with lots of hair.

I think it may also mean that mom should lay off the chocolate.

26 Weeks

Today marks 26 weeks, aka 14 weeks to the due date, aka two weeks from bi-weekly doctor appointments, aka the last week of my 2nd trimester. Eeek!

Needless to say, we're transitioning from "casual baby prep" mode to "oh crap we gotta get ready for this baby" mode. Considering I just had a friend give birth at 36 weeks, I've realized I should probably try to get all the basics taken care of by more like mid-April than mid-May.

Physically speaking, I'm starting to get big. I know I keep saying that, but no - FOR REALS now. My belly measures 40 and 1/2 inches around, and I'm up twenty pounds from where I started - I've crossed the 150 pound threshold for the first time in my life.
I don't feel bad about the weight. I know I'm a girl and I'm supposed to worry about it, but I just don't. To me, I'm pregnant, and it's a golden opportunity to eat what I want and gain whatever I gain and just not give an eff. Harumpf.

This week in food:


I got my soup made. I realize that this photo is not appetizing even if you love split pea soup, and that if you hate split pea soup this might be the most revolting image you have ever seen. But I did not really have the time, patience or marbles required to style soup attractively, so it is what it is.

(I'm not making that up, by the way. Food stylists use marbles to style soup. To hold up the carrots and potatoes and what not so they don't sink to the bottom. Fun fact!)

Anyway, soup made and delivered to Grandpa. It's a good batch, if I do say so myself. My secret weapon for velvety smoothness was a 1/2 cup or so of leftover mashed potatoes.

Fajitas for dinner. Just in case you were wondering what I've been stuffing my face with lately. My preferred fajita ratio is one small onion to two bell peppers, one chicken breast and one can of black beans. That allows the two of us to stuff ourselves with a couple of lunches worth of leftovers. You wouldn't think it with only one chicken breast, wouldja?

This is my latest craving. Green salad with garbanzos, hard boiled egg and cheddar on top. All dressed with some Italian style dressing. I've had one for three days straight now.

The Quick and Dirty

Clockwise from top left: Cook's Illustrated, Mama's Minutia, Betty Crocker

All right. I apologize for the delay. Before I lose the attention completely of the three people on Earth who actually care about the results of this taste test, I will give you my quick and dirty low down. My well written, publication worthy piece will have to wait for the end of round two.

The Betty Crocker Box Mix: The easiest to make by far (duh) and the texture most favored by tasters. These babies were eight minutes from box to oven. They had the pretty shiny top that everyone seems to appreciate, but I noticed if you touched the shiny top the sensation was not of hardened sugar like on creme brulee, but grease. These brownies are super greasy, which seems like chewiness overkill - they want to be so sure that the texture is ooey-gooey-chewy that they load up on the fats to excess.

My takeaway impression: ooey-gooey-chewy for sure, but also greasy and more sweet than chocolate.

The Mama's Minutia recipe: This one was the next easiest to make - I liked the stove top part of the process. I felt like I was making candy, and it was sort of like candy making - when the dough got shiny and balled up on itself, it was ready to go. These took about 20 minutes from start to oven, not too shabby for a from-scratch treat. I made them with unsweetened cocoa powder, and they were VERY chocolatey. Almost too chocolately. But in a good way. They were also very dense, and so their chewiness rivaled the box brownies, but they lacked the top sheen - surprising because the dough itself was very shiny going into the oven.

My takeaway impression: I really want to make these with dutch process cocoa and see how they turn out. Also, if you put half the pan in the freezer so you don't end up eating too many, but then you go and take one out of the freezer and eat it because you're out of fresh brownies? Heaven. I can't believe I've been eating brownies for thirty years and never knew they were better frozen. Thanks a lot to Deb of Smitten Kitchen for pointing this out (and also for posting the brownie recipe in the first place and starting this whole snowball rolling).

Cook's Illustrated recipe: As expected, this was the fussiest to prepare, but still really didn't take too long. About 25 minutes from start to oven. I must admit that because I am sort of immature and tend to rebel against overly authoritative instructions, I didn't follow this recipe to the letter. That makes me a bad scientist, and calls the validity of this whole exercise into question.

Here's what happened. I failed to find dutch process cocoa in any of three stores (since when is it so impossible to find?), but I did have some cocoa mix that was dutch processed cocoa plus sugar, which said you could use in the place of cocoa powder if you reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe proportionately. Fine, right? Well, I'm not so sure. These Cook's Illustrated brownies were SO CLOSE to perfect, I HAVE to make them over again with the correct ingredients and see what happens.

Except I am going to change one other little thing also...the recipe calls for two teaspoons of instant espresso. Two OPTIONAL teaspoons. That much espresso gave the brownies an almost bacon-y, smoky flavor that I can't say is really what I'm looking for in a brownie. I think when I make the next batch, I will reduce it to one teaspoon.

Oh, another fussy Cook's Illustrated thing I didn't do, but probably should have. They called for lining the pan with foil and removing the brownies after 10 minutes of cooling, so that the heat retained by the Pyrex pan wouldn't overcook them. I didn't go through the whole foil sling making process, because I didn't do it for any of the others and I was trying to make all things equal. The brownies did get a little overcooked, however, and the texture suffered. I can tell from the vast improvement in texture of the frozen version that the foil sling is an important measure.

My takeaway impression: Near perfect. I can't wait to remake the recipe with the right cocoa-to-sugar proportion and the reduced espresso powder. Frozen version almost impossible to resist.

It all makes sense now

I just spent the past hour or so rifling through my cookbook collection, trying to find an alternate shoofly recipe, maybe see how the pie works, maybe figure out where I saw it in the first place.

The only place I could find it was in Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts. Under "Coffee Cakes."

I love it when an obsession comes full circle.

At least my glucose tolerance test isn't for another week

Behold, the sweet syrups section of my pantry.


I have been thinking about doing something with these syrups for a while now, and yesterday the perfect opportunity presented itself. One Ms. Jennifer Jo (the artist formerly known as Mama JJ) posted an entry to her blog about shoofly pie, and queried her readers as to whether or not they were fans.

I was without a formal position. I had never tried shoofly pie, or even heard of it, until I saw a recipe for it in one cookbook or another a couple of years back. I was intrigued, because it sounded to me a lot like pecan pie minus the pecans - and I've always thought pecan pie would be better without the nuts in the way. But Mama JJ - Jennifer - posted a recipe for what she calls shoofly cake, and said try it, see if you like it. So I did.


Holy sweet mother of all things that are holy and sweet. Did I like it? I became instantly obsessed with it. As a matter of fact, my first conscious thought upon waking this morning was SHOOFLY. I had two helpings last night and it's all I can do not to eat more right now. Any time I'm in the kitchen I end up standing over the stove, staring at it.

You make it by making a kinda sorta crumble topping, only that part is the crust. Then you pour a mixture of your sweet syrups, egg, boiling water and baking soda (science!) over that, and top it off with a little more of the crumble mixture. Then it begins to look and smell exactly like a 9x13 pan full of Guinness, which I considered a very positive omen at that stage of my little experiment.

In her recipe (click that link up there), Jennifer calls for 1 cup of light Karo and 1 cup of molasses, but says that you can play with that ratio according to your love/hate of molasses. I like molasses-y things, but I was also in possession of two rather old, rather empty bottles of Karo syrup, one light and one dark. To use up the bottles, I ended up with about 1 1/4 cups of Karo (more light than dark) and 3/4 cup of molasses.

The end result was perfect. It was less sweet than I expected, which is actually a good thing. It's the sort of thing where the flavor in every bite is so exquisitely nuanced - thanks to the molasses - that you cannot wait to eat the next bite (or the rest of the pan, for that matter) to get to more of those little sneaky flavors. And the textures. The slightly crunchy little crust layer, the ooey gooey, almost batter-y middle and the more cooked top...heavenly. It reminds me of brownies without the chocolate, if chocolate were something awful you were looking to get rid of in the first place.

So do I like shoofly cake? Um, yeah. I am smitten.

I didn't go to Arby's

I resisted the urge for Arby's last night, but that doesn't mean I have steered clear of temptation.
That, my friends, is a Sarducci's sub. An Italian sub to be precise. And it was my oh-so delicious lunch today. For those uninitiated, Sarducci's is a little strip mall sandwich shop in Kirkland, most famous for being the favorite lunch stop for members of the Seattle Seahawks - for years anyway, before they moved their training facility from Northwest College down to That Thing They Call the VMAC. So you can see how a place that keeps NFL linebackers coming back for more is also the perfect joint for a pregnant lady to frequent.

My sandwich of choice is the Italian, a symphony of pig in the form of ham, pepperoni and salami that somehow manages to bring in just a hint of the bologna flavor you remember - in a good way - from your childhood Oscar Mayer sandwiches. The meat trio is just pork fatty enough to give you a very contenting mouth feel, and it doesn't hurt that they slather (yes, slather, it really is the perfect word here, they use a spatula for crying out loud) the fresh made bread with mayonnaise and deli mustard. It is such a big, rich, satisfying sandwich that my eyes were too much bigger than my stomach for once and I still have a half waiting for me in the fridge.

But wait, you are saying, aren't pregnant women supposed to avoid cold cuts LIKE THE PLAGUE?!?! Aren't you in fact KILLING YOUR BABY WITH EVERY BITE?!?! Yes, listeria is a risk with cold cuts. Yes, some doctors say to avoid them completely. But reasonable -er, some- doctors, like mine, say that you can have cold cuts every once in a while as long as they come from a reputable establishment. If you have ever eaten a Sarducci's sandwich, then you understand that I trust those people like I trust my own family, because they feed me delicious food. And I figure that a sub every 2-3 weeks surely qualifies as "once in a while." I don't mean to offend by being glib about the health of my baby and my responsibility to keep pork chop safe, but c'mon...have you had one of these sandwiches?!

What I've Been Eating: The Early Weeks

It seems that everyone who finds out I'm pregnant wants to know what sort of things I've been eating. The most common question I get by far is "so, any crazy cravings yet?" and because I'm socially awkward I usually just say no, not really and the disappointed questioner goes off to find someone more interesting to talk to. And there I am, left wishing I could really sparkle with some story about the tuna fish-raspberry jam-banana-onion ring panini I just had to get up and make at 3 am.

But once I stop and think about it, removed from the pressures of simple conversation, I realize that I have been eating some strange things the entire time. The trouble is, when people ask me about crazy cravings, I immediately think of the weird pickles and ice cream combinations that we've all heard about on every sitcom that has ever gotten desperate enough to get one of the characters pregnant (i.e. all of them). I haven't craved anything like that, but I have craved specific food. I would say they are more like obsessions than cravings. To wit:

In the beginning, it was breaded chicken products. Chicken fingers. Wendy's chicken sandwiches. Anything that combined batter and some semblance of chicken breast, I had to have it. I think that I must have had some form of breaded chicken at least 10 times during the last two weeks of September. It was chicken fingers and Dr. Pepper at a baseball game that gave me away to my first friends to find out. I remember calling Husband as I drove home from Pilates to tell him that I was going by Wendy's for a chicken sandwich and I was powerless to stop myself. And of course there were the hospital chicken fingers, from the week my grandfather was in the hospital. I took this picture with my phone to show my husband that yes, I was having chicken fingers AGAIN.

After the chicken obsession came the ramen phase. I had to have some form of noodles and broth at least once daily. When the noodles that came in the cup o' noodle or the ramen pack ran out and I had leftover broth, I put leftover spaghetti noodles in my bowl and ate them, too. The ramen obsession culminated with our supposed-to-be-romantic anniversary trip to San Francisco, which I spent curled in the fetal position in the dark hotel room due to a sinus infection. I sent Husband out on a noodle hunt with the aid of Urban Spoon, and luckily he was able to secure me some form of noodles and broth from a nearby Thai place.

By the time the noodle phase ended, I was feeling a little bit more like a normal person than a newly pregnant woman, and my food obsessions petered out. The one thing that has remained: a serious downgrade in the quality of my diet. I'm supposed to be eating vegetables and whole grains and growing the baby's brain, right? That ain't happening. All that I want is fast food, ice cream, cookies, more fast food, and pizza.


Under normal circumstances I am very much a whole grain, lean protein, local fresh produce kind of girl. These are not normal circumstances, however, and I CANNOT go to bed without a giant bowl of ice cream and at least two oreos. We have had pizza Friday night for the last three Fridays and I can tell you I have no intention of stopping that trend anytime soon. Husband has noticed the surge in junk food purchases when I grocery shop and actually felt the need to tell me I didn't have to try and finish off said junk food without him seeing it.

So there you have it. No outlandish concoctions, just a bunch of junk, and a husband who is worried I have become some sort of Secret Eater. I'll update here though if I do start going for anything crazy.