Baby Boomers,  It is What it is...,  Personal Growth

Baking Cookies

For as long as I can remember, I have been making great quantities of baked goods (cookies, fudge, candy and pies) every year, at this time, for the holidays.  I spent ten years perfecting my chocolate chip cookie recipe and then I changed it some more to make it a healthy cookie.  I was going through menopause and the doctors said, “no more white sugar and no more white flour”.   So the recipe was updated even again.  I still have the original version written on a message pad that I bought in 1986.  That’s how serious I have always been about my holiday baking.

Well, a couple of years ago, I quit smoking.  I am not sure that it was soon enough, but, it is what it is.  I was 52… since then, I have been s.t.r.u.g.g.l.i.n.g. with my weight.  Suddenly I find myself needing a Ph.D. in nutrition.  Recently, I was talking with my daughter-in-law and she expressed a frustration with this very need.  If you want to be healthy in today’s America, you must do an e.x.t.r.e.m.e. amount of research and NOT trust anything you see on the food packaging.  It really is that difficult to find good food.  So my favorite daughter-in-law tells me that she has actually become resentful because food companies make it difficult to just simply go grocery shopping.  But I digress…apologies.

This year, I have no little people around to bake for.  My grown sons have partners, and everyone seems to want to eschew sugar.  I don’t get the warm fuzzy vibes for cookies and holiday sweets locally.  My partner and I are working very hard on losing another ten pounds before the holidays.  He is going to the gym and I am faithfully walking twice a week and stretching three times a week.  We eat tons of vegetables and I make an extreme effort to cook dinners that are less than 500 calories.  We quit ice cream, rarely eat bread and finally: the pasta is whole grain.  I want you to know that I resisted whole grain pasta for YEARS.

My oldest daughter has been instrumental in our diet transformation.  She finally convinced me through a series of (lectures really) research articles, that food, has indeed changed in the last 30 years.  My own observation is that some things are going back to the way they were when my mother was cooking, for example, now my daughter tells me that sugar is the “safest” sweetener (and so the pendulum swings, doesn’t it?).

In any case, this year I said to myself “self, don’t bake all of that mess, you don’t want to eat cookies and fudge now, it will just mess up your diet, no one likes that stuff and no one appreciates that stuff.”  Well then, here is what happened; I started thinking about my mothers (Patsy and Ella Mae) and their cooking and all of our traditions.  I got all nostalgic and then I remembered that my partner’s son-in-law loves home baked goodies.  Then I thought about my daughter in Virginia, who doesn’t worry so much about food processing and sugar and she is taking care of 3 boys under the age of 4!  Then I thought about posterity.  And, of course!  Here is the other piece: I love baking and cooking and fooling around in the kitchen.  I figure that I can find an audience that will appreciate holiday goodies from my kitchen.  I just have to mail them away very quickly so that my partner and I do not gain 5 pounds.

I can’t quit baking yet, I’m just not going to give it up.  I will, some day, and maybe even soon, just not today…

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies:

I do use butter flavor Crisco, for a couple of reasons: today’s margarine has a lot of water in it, so it messes up the recipe.  On the other hand, butter melts too quickly in the oven and the cookies come out flat.  The Crisco has some hydrogenated oil, but I don’t know how to get around that flaw yet.  So here it is:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
1&3/4 cups of unbleached whole wheat organic flour
1/2 cup of unbleached white flour (needed for recipe stability)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix in large bowl – I use a fork to stir the dry ingredients briskly
In another bowl, cream together 1 stick of butter flavor Crisco with 1 cup of hard packed brown sugar and 1/2 cup of regular white sugar
Mix in 2 eggs with the beater and 1&1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
Blend / mix the two bowls together into whichever bowl is the biggest.
Add your chocolate chips, 12 ounces is = to 2 cups, I also add 1 cup of chopped walnuts.  Some folks do not like nuts in their cookies, you can take half of the dough out and add walnuts to just that half.
It usually takes about 12 minutes for the cookies to be done, I look for a tan crown on the top of the cookie.
I now use parchment paper (which I love) for baking cookies, well worth skipping the cookie sheet clean up.
25 years ago, I invested in a Revereware stainless steel cookie sheet (no aluminum), it has served me very well.  If you are going to bake, it is worth the investment.

I hope that however you decide to celebrate, that it makes you happy and fills your heart with joy.

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