Tag: addictions

How did I, of all people, miss this?!?!?!

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Today is National Chocolate Chips Day!  Damn!!  Why didn’t I get some warning on this?!  I should already be well into my Chips Ahoy!-induced sugar coma – Face smeared with melted chips, shirt littered with crumbs, one shoe just gone, right hand clutching a batter encrusted beater, left hand resting on on an empty milk carton, and face etched with a smile…

The Original Tollhouse Cookie Recipe in below – Just like Mom makes!

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

PAN COOKIE VARIATION: Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan. Prepare dough as above. Spread into prepared pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack. Makes 4 dozen bars.

SLICE AND BAKE COOKIE VARIATION:
PREPARE dough as above. Divide in half; wrap in waxed paper. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm. Shape each half into 15-inch log; wrap in wax paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.* Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices; place on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

* May be stored in refrigerator for up to 1 week or in freezer for up to 8 weeks.

FOR HIGH ALTITUDE BAKING (5,200 feet): Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups. Add 2 teaspoons water with flour and reduce both granulated sugar and brown sugar to 2/3 cup each. Bake drop cookies for 8 to 10 minutes and pan cookie for 17 to 19 minutes.

Girl Scout Cookie tally, so far…

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

CRAP!!  I have a body fat percentage hovering just under the Santa-level after a Thanksgiving and Christmas season filled with glutoney and sloth (I am looking at knocking the 5 other ones off as well…).  I am working semi-hard at the gym to rid myself of my marine-mammal worthy blubber, but that got shot in the foot yesterday with the arrival of my first six boxes of Girl Scout Cookies.  Jenny Craig here I come…  So far, I have purchased six boxes from a guy,s kid at work, my wife picked up four boxes from one of her employees, and we have four more on the way from a 12-year old family member.  Fourteen boxes of yummy, baked, CRACK!

Fourteen boxes is a bunch all by itself, but when you add the frozen cookie dough that I just bought from another coworker’s kid, the three chocolate bars I was wrestled into purchasing from the 12-year old Girl Scout’s sister, and the 5-10 boxes that I will get pressured into buying outside of my local grocery store, my future begins to become clear: I am going to turn into a fvckin’ Weeble Wooble…

Stepping up on my soapbox now: The little girls that stand with their mom outside Safeway are velociraptors!  Evidenced by the fact that they hunt their quarry in packs, are relentless, and unflinching:  They huddle as a would-be victim steps out of a car, then all break rank before their unwitting mark nears.   One, the cutest and most doe-eyed of the pack, will step right in front of you with a box in her small, outstretched hands and ask you to “Please” buy some of their crack.  While one fumbles with the “No Thank you, I am trying to be good” answer, two of her “sisters” move in from opposing oblique angles and simultaneously cut off a possible escape and present you with another box of baked love-handles to be.  You will end up walking around the store with a minimum of two boxes in your cart, getting the sad also-violated nod from the other addicts who have fallen for their Late Cretaceous Period-inspired snack-trap.

Stepping off my soapbox and returning to my box of Samoas…

Its Girl Scout cookie time again!!

/ Matt Talley

You know how a bear just knows it is time to hibernate and geese just know it is time to fly south for the winter? The wildebeests in Africa just know when and how to migrate across the savannah and the swallows just know that they have to fly to Capistrano. Well, I just know when Girl Scout cookie season is. I feel it in my bones. There is a scent in the air, my Spidy-sense starts humming a little, and I have a Pavlovian response to sage green – the color of their merit badge sashes. Living in Germany for two years wrenched havoc on my system during this annual cookie-lust. I would grow moody and distant as February closed, but now I am back and I can, with some guidance and moderation, enjoy this time of year once again. As a note, self-control with cookies has never an easy thing for me. My wife has to dole them out in my lunch over a two-month period and lock them in a secret location at night. I can’t be left alone with them or she will find me passed out in the kitchen floor with a quart of whole milk, 4-5 empty boxes littered around me, and the crumbs of dozens of Samoas, Thin Mints and Trefoils cascading down my chest. We all have demons and mine are cookie flavored.

All this would work like clockwork except I have been added to some super-secret watch-list available only to 8-10 year old girls and their den mothers. They must have my address details, picture, vital stats, and my feeding patterns. I get nailed by those cute innocent faces at work, at home on the weekends, and while walking into every grocery store in town. They will let other potential cookie-consumers walk by with just the ‘Would you like to buy some cookies?’ pitch. Then they see me coming from across the parking lot. They huddle, then as I near the door one will step in front of me with a box in her hands, flash me the big sad puppy eyes and ask me to “Please” buy some of their crack. Before I can stiff-arm the tike, fake right, roll left and make a break for it, one of her co-conspirators move in from an oblique angle and cuts off my escape with another box of yumminess, looking hopeful while batting her eye lashes. So far this season I have bought 9 boxes and my wife made me promises not to buy another box, but I am a weak, weak man…