Cookie Time

When Teri's family came out this summer, Rita's kids (Reggie and Hayden) came over to re-enact our last cookie-making day several years ago. As you can see from the picture, they aren't little kids anymore! It all went as planned except that they all looked a lot older and Reggie wasn't clutching her little black doll. But Harry still had his mouth stuffed with the cookie spoon instead of stirring like he should have been. Everything went as planned, but I don't think there were many cookies left to cook as the kids all ate the dough as did I. Maybe we'll do it again in a few years.

I've made those cookies - chocolate chip - for years and have never gotten them just quite right. But I have now found the way to do it that I absolutely love!! Before I incorporated the new cooking method - before they always came out crisp, and I hate crisp -  I decided to cut down on the time cooked which I did. So now I take them out when they are almost still white and soft. I don't let them sit a long time before I put them on the drying rack. Sometimes they're still soft and almost come apart, but I manage. Before they cool off too much I put them in a GoodWill tin container and put them in the freezer. Then I can eat them right out of the freezer and they aren't hard - they're soft and delicious. My grandkids love them, so I guess they're successful. One thing I forgot to mention is that occasionally, when I'm cooking, my nose runs. Sometimes I don't get a kleenex quickly enough so my nose drips one drop in the cookie dough. But it's all cooked in the end, so that shouldn't matter. That could be the reason for my success! In fact, I'm sure it is!!

I'm thinking maybe I could have a second career authoring a cookbook. I'd like to share my success with my chocolate chip cookies and the secret ingredient that could work with many other recipes. I may just give it a try! I'll bet it would be a best seller, even better than "Fifty Shades of . . . " I don't think there was much cooking done in that book, and it certainly wasn't the high point of the story.

Another success story!

The other day I read in "The Oregonian Newspaper" about Tori, an Indonesian orangutan who became famous for smoking. She was mimicking humans she saw smoking in the Satwa Taru Jurug Zoo in Solo, Central Java, where she is located. She would take cigarettes tossed in by the nice visitors and then mimic them as they smoked. But the good news is that she quit all the smoking just before she welcomed her baby ape to a better, smoke-free world. I loved that story and especially the picture that went along with it. But they left out the important part of the story. How did she quit her filthy habit that had been inspired by humans?

I'm wondering which method she used to quit her unhealthy habit. If she tried Chantix, which I see on tv continually, was she carefully monitored? That has so many possibly bad side effects according to the ad. Did they watch for suicidal actions, swelling of her face, lips, tongue or throat, mood/behavior changes, panic attacks(possibly when she couldn't find anymore cigarettes), hostile behavior, depression . . . the list goes on and on. Was someone watching her during her withdrawal to make sure she didn't harm herself or her unborn little ape?

She could also have used nicorette lozenges or the gum. But there is a chance people, and possibly apes, could become addicted to the gum and then have to return to smoking to get rid of the addiction. Crazy!

Or could she have used hypnosis to cure her addiction? I wonder if that has ever been tried before. How would you go about hypnotizing an ape? Would the ape lie down on a concrete slab - probably not a couch - and would the hypnotist do his thing from outside the bars of the cage or would he be eye to eye with the ape - up close and personal.

So many questions to the story . . . but I think it shows just what you can do if you put your mind to it as Tori did. Her baby ape's name is Jokowi. I'll bet they'll be a lot of little Jokowis next year!