I had grand plans for something new I was going to do
today.
To begin, let me explain that I have a mild to moderate
Pinterest addiction. My pinning is
largely limited to my “Namaste” board, my “Style” board, and my “Recipes to try" board. The board with the most pins is
my “Recipes” board. I have tried exactly zero of those recipes.
While many “pinners” on Pinterest have nicely organized
boards – one for deserts, one for healthy options, one for appetizers etc – my
board is a jumbled mess of recipes for spiced and sugared pumpkin donuts; vegan
breakfast bars; pulled pork and coleslaw sandwiches; oatmeal smoothies; double
chocolate brownies with fudge topping; and avocado, tomato and sprout
sandwiches. You get the idea – I entertain
notions of being super healthy, but I love all food.
Today I was going to make soft, chewy, white chocolate and
cranberry cookies. The recipe promised
they would be soft and chewy (the secret? Cornstarch!) I had already started to
wonder in what aisle I would find cornstarch at Jewel. I get anxious when I
can’t find things.
Then I had one of those drives home from work where I
wondered if I might fall asleep at the wheel.
I’m talking one of those “noon class in college and the professor has a
monotone voice – dig your fingernails into your palms to stay awake” kind of
drives. This level of fatigue means one of two things: a) For some reason, I’m
just really tired or b) I’m getting sick.
I’ll know in the morning, but if you’re into that kind of thing, cross
your fingers and toes that it’s the former.
My exhaustion hit me like a Metra train at rush hour. I got
up to my apartment, turned up my heat and lay down in my enormous down puffy
coat. I fell unceremoniously to sleep,
was comatose for twenty minutes, and woke up to drag myself to a yoga class
where I was meeting my mom. I wanted to
skip straight to savasana – which for those of you who don’t know – literally
means “corpse pose.”
After yoga – I drove to Jewel. As I approached the automatic doors – I knew those
soft, chewy, white chocolate, cranberry cookies weren’t going to happen. Nope.
Not by a long shot. I bought some
cereal, some Chobani (on sale!), two Palermo’s frozen pizza’s (on sale!),
Cupcake Pinot, and something new – Pillsbury Ready to Bake cookies, or as I would
like to call them, fake and bake cookies (not on sale). I even passed up the gigantic roll of cookie
dough, thinking it would be too much work to spoon it out and shape it into
cookies, and I would probably end up eating half of the roll anyway.
As the cashier rang up the package along with my yogurt, pizza, wine,
and US Weekly – I felt liberated. I
hoped that there was some uber-healthy, Pinterest-y, organic blogger checking
out my haul and judging it. I was still
going to bake in a new way – just in the laziest way imaginable.
I came home and made a salad and some chicken soup, and by
salad I mean some dodgy looking lettuce, shredded cheese and a generous splash
of poppy seed dressing. (n.b. I’ve
always wanted to use the word “dodgy” to describe lettuce. I read it in a Scottish novel once, and loved
it. I’ve been waiting for the
opportunity, and today my lettuce was, indeed, dodgy). Before I sat down to my
dinner, I popped my cookies in the oven, but not before taking a picture like
they do in all the Pinterest blogs:
There are only 23 cookies on the tray, because I ate one –
despite the writing on the package that screams “Don't Eat Raw Cookie
Dough.” Eleven minutes later I took them
out of the oven. Several of them had
globbed onto one another in the oven, as if each knew it was too measly to make
a decent cookie on its own:
They look pretty anemic – I'm not sure if I baked them long enough - but they taste like chocolate chip cookies, and my kitchen smells pretty good.
I probably won’t be pinning them to my Pinterest board anytime soon –
but they are my something new on a day when I’m to darn tired to do or try
anything else. Sometimes, we all need to
take the easy way out - and when all else fails - eat the cookie dough.
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