{"id":2958,"date":"2002-10-20T00:33:38","date_gmt":"2002-10-20T00:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=357"},"modified":"2002-10-20T00:33:38","modified_gmt":"2002-10-20T00:33:38","slug":"some-lessons-and-a-great-cookie-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2958","title":{"rendered":"SOME LESSONS (and a great cookie recipe)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Challenging day today, capped by someone breaking the window in the van and stealing Tenacious G\u0092s purse while we were at a party in Santa Monica; so while she\u0092s on the phone to the credit card folks, I\u0092m doing a little blogging\u0085we\u0092re both pissed off at the jerk who did this, and at ourselves because we know better.
\nThe day was tough in no small part, because the boys seem to be a little more restless than usual. Under 6 soccer early, then home, and while we were doing chores (with the supposed help of the boys), Littlest Guy and Middle Guy were streaking around the house. I swear that they not only broke the sound barrier, but that once there were flashes of Cerenkov radiation as they went by.
\nWe got the core chores done, with little help from them, and as I started to go into Wrath of God Mode and think about just putting them into their rooms and just nailing the doors shut for a few days, something clicked and I decided to back off and solve the problem in another way.
\nWe were supposed to bring something to the party, and I\u0092d planned on baking something; I thought about some tarts, but time and energy were short, so I decided to knock out some chocolate chip cookies (I make awesome chocolate chip cookies).
\nI got Littlest Guy into the kitchen, and we rounded up the ingredients. Brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, butter, flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, imitation vanilla (when you bake with it, you really can\u0092t tell the difference).
\nWe batched the ingredients into \u0091wet stuff\u0092 (sugars, eggs, vanilla) and \u0091dry stuff\u0092 (flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon), and started measuring everything out. I got him to scoop the ingredients into the measuring cup, and suddenly he wanted to taste everything; so we did. We took a small portion of every ingredient and tasted them as we put them into the bowls.
\nAnd suddenly, I wasn\u0092t stressing, and he wasn\u0092t acting out; we were just two guys standing in the kitchen cooking together.
\nHis brother came in and helped get the Kitchenaid set up (he knows that those who don\u0092t work don\u0092t get batter), and we started mixing everything together. MG showed LG how to separate eggs (the recipe calls for one egg plus one yolk), and we only made a small mess while doing this\u0085and when I didn\u0092t get upset at that<\/u>, all three of us knew that we\u0092d managed to make it into a pretty good day.
\nHere\u0092s the recipe: the core is from Cook\u0092s Illustrated<\/a>, hands down the best cooking magazine out there.
\nPreheat the oven to 325 degrees.
\nMelt 1 \u0096 \u00bd sticks of salted butter, and let cool until it is warm
\nAdd 1 cup brown sugar, plus 2 Tbsp
\nAdd \u00bd cup white sugar
\nBlend until smooth.
\nAdd 1 egg, plus 1 yolk
\nBlend until smooth
\nAdd 2 tsp vanilla
\nMix in a bowl:
\n2-1\/8 cups unsifted bleached flour (compress slightly when measuring)
\n\u00bd Tsp baking soda
\n\u00bd Tsp salt
\n2 Tsp cinnamon
\nAdd dry mixture to wet and blend until uniform and smooth
\nAdd 1-1\/2 semi-sweet chocolate chips (quality counts here \u0096 I use Ghirardelli)
\nMix until uniform
\nCool in the refrigerator for 20 mins (makes it easier to handle the batter)
\nFlour your hands, and make 1-1\/2\u0094 spheres; place them on an oiled cookie sheet \u0096 give about 1\u0094 of space between them.
\nCook for 12 \u0096 14 mins at 325. I usually have two sheets worth of cookies, and swap the sheets between oven racks at 7 minutes.
\nThe cookies should be light-colored, slightly crackled, and very thick.
\nTake them off the sheet and cool on racks.<\/i>
\nTry not to get sick on the batter.
\nHave your kids help you\u0085<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Challenging day today, capped by someone breaking the window in the van and stealing Tenacious G\u0092s purse while we were at a party in Santa Monica; so while she\u0092s on the phone to the credit card folks, I\u0092m doing a little blogging\u0085we\u0092re both pissed off at the jerk who did this, and at ourselves because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}