My Cookie Custom

Um, yes. This is me, circa 1991. I was two years old, and obsessed with cookies.

Well, not too much has changed since then. Not really. I think I have a pink hoodie that slightly resembles this one.

Anyway, there's a story my family tells about me that TO THIS DAY I cannot live down. It involves cookies, of course. So, when I was about five years old, my mom and dad took my brother and I to go take pictures with Santa. It was Christmastime, and this was a customary photoshoot in my house. I was never about it, but since I was five, I didn't exactly have free will.

After my brother and I sat on Santa's lap and the picture was snapped (I looked painfully bored, and my brother had red eyes and swollen cheeks from crying--undoubtedly due, of course, to being forced to sit on a strange man's lap), my parents took us around to the little holiday store attached to the Santa photo backdrop. I was walking around, looking at the fake Christmas trees adorned with gaudy ornaments, when I saw them.

The world stopped moving.

Right there, on a china plate, for anyone to grab, was a pile of chocolate chip cookies.

I don't think I ran over to something so quickly in all my life.

I planted myself in front of that plate for a good 10 minutes. It was as long as I could get away with. My dad--who has this all captured on home video--came up behind me, calling my name. I turned around, a cookie in my mouth and one in each hand. He laughs, and tells me to finish up. I proceed to inhale the cookies that remained.

He tells me it's time to go. This does not fly well with me. Mainly because he doesn't allow me to take another cookie.

"Just one more for the road!" I plead, annunciating each word like they're each an individual sentence.

"No!" he says.

This is when I proceed to angrily cross my arms across my chest, mutter a hrumph, and turn away from the camera. I was pissed.

My family thinks this story is hilarious. Personally, I'm sick of it. But it does explain my relationship with cookies.

I love cookies. Love baking, love eating them. With Christmas less than two weeks away, nothing excites me more than the promise of baking all kinds of delicious holiday cookies. There is one cookie, however, that I have perfected into my signature dessert, if you will. It's the classic Tollhouse cookie, and according to my grandfather, no one makes it like I do!

Andrea's (well, kinda) Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups Nestle Tollhouse semi-sweet chocolate chips

                Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, mixing together well with a fork. In a separate bowl, cream the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Slowly add the eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg is completely mixed in before adding the other one. Gradually add the flour, mixing well after each addition, until all flour mixture has been added. Stir in the chocolate chips. Drop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes, or until golden brown. Let them cool for two minutes on a wire rack. Enjoy!

A Satisfyingly Sticky Christmas

As a kid, I absolutely loved Christmas: the presents, the decorations, the music, and most importantly, the magic. I was 12 years old before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. This is probably because my parents loved creating a Christmas atmosphere that was special every year. From picking out our Christmas tree and decorating it to the sounds of the season to baking cookies in aprons dusted with flour, I always believed there was something magical about the season. I was as holly and jolly as they came.

Christmas morning was always a highlight. Before my grandmother passed away in 2004, she spent every Christmas Eve night at my house, sleeping over into the morning to watch all the hubub that came with pounds of wrapping paper and squeals of delight. My brothers and I were always wired for sound, far too awake at 7 a.m. for my bleary-eyed parents, who, unbeknown to me at the time, had spent much of the night wrapping presents, taking well-portioned bites out of the cookies I'd leave for Santa, and setting up our living room into a Christmas masterpiece.

Another Christmas masterpiece? My mom's sticky buns, the best Christmas tradition I can think of. They always magically appeared in the oven that morning, filling our house with smells of cinnamon and sugar. A few years ago, I started helping her make the sticky buns (sometimes I even help her start setting up the presents for my little sister, who, at 10, still whole-heartedly believes in Santa). The buns are made the night before and left in the fridge overnight. It's an easy and simple recipe that packs a lot of Christmas punch.

Even at 21, I still believe in the magic of Christmas. These sticky buns are just a physical manifestation of the joy that's wrapped up not just on that morning, but during the entire holiday season.

MOM'S CHRISTMAS STICKY BUNS

Ingredients

2 loaves frozen white bread dough (Rich's makes a great dough--it's what we use), slightly thawed

1 stick of butter, melted

1 large package vanilla pudding (not instant)

2 tbsp milk

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup pecans (or walnuts) and raisins

Grease a 13 x 9 pan. Sprinkle bottom with nuts and raisins. Pull thawed bread dough into walnut-sized pieces. Fill pan with a single layer of the dough. Heat together remaining ingredients and pour over the dough. Cover the pan with plastic wrap. Let rise in the refrigerator overnight. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes, and then invert the sticky buns onto a sheet of foil. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Here's the Skinny

This book has a double meaning for me.

First of all, it's published by Running Press Book Publishers, a small publishing company based in Philadelphia, PA. From January 2010 to September 2010, I interned there. And loved every second of it. I worked primarily in the children's department, assisting one of the smartest, savviest, most inventive editors I've had the privilege to work for. While the job was, at first, initiation-by-fire, I grew to love my work there. I always knew that I loved books, but I didn't know how much I'd love this industry.

After eight months there, I was convinced that publishing was the right career for me. So, this book represents one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.

But there's more.

Skinny Bitch single-handedly launched my first vegetarian experience. I bought this book for my mom as a birthday present in June. She read it, then left in on my dresser one day.

"I think you should read this," she said. "It might change how you look at food."

I shrugged, picking it up with no hesitation. I wasn't particularly worried that this little book was going to change eating habits 21 years in the making. I was Italian, and therefore a carnivore. I couldn't imagine life without meat. The idea was almost laughable.

Until I read this book. From the second I closed the back cover, I'd sworn off all animal fat. I think I was living under an "ignorance is bliss" veil, knowing there was something wrong with the meat industry, but refusing to look into it further for fear of what that knowledge would bring.

Now I know what I was so afraid of.

I don't think, after reading this book, anyone could run out and eat a hamburger. It's an in-your-face commentary on not only the problems in the meat industry, but the toll eating too much animal fat can have on your health. I'd never even attempted to cut out meat and animal products from my diet before, but this book gave me the motivation to try it.

I couldn't stomach the idea of eating flesh. And that's what the book referred to meat as: flesh. Nothing will turn your insides quite as well as that image. Hearing what these animals go through, how they're treated, is more than enough to stop eating meat out of sheer protest for the cruelty involved in the process. Plus, a diet based more closely on greens and organic products is just healthier.

I was convinced. And I stayed convinced for two months.

I did eventually begin to re-introduce meat into my diet, mainly chicken. I did feel healthier, and I was sleeping better than I had in a while. Like Michael Pollan said in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, it's not the practice of eating meat that's wrong, but the process. And there are plenty of healthy dishes that include meat.

What did I learn? Well, I have a new appreciation for soy, which I used to substitute meat in a number of dishes that summer. I'm also still very wary of beef. I haven't touched a hot dog in months, and I don't think I will ever again. Even though I love hamburgers and meatballs, I'm still trying to find healthier alternatives, because even though my vegetarian venture is over, what I learned is still fresh in my mind. I'd love to be a vegetarian 24/7, but I don't think I'm cut out to be so strict. Having some meat every now and then isn't bad for me, but I will continue to strive to make it a secondary addition to my diet.

The Skinny Bitch Cookbook is on shelves now--check it out and pick it up! It's on my Christmas list!

Photo courtesy of Google Images.

Waffled Weekends

Growing up, I'd wait for the weekend with bated breath and high expectations. It wasn't because I got a two-day vacation from the monotony that was school, or the fact that I could sleep in past 6 a.m. No, I was psyched for the weekends because I knew I'd wake up Saturday morning to this:

Or this:

There is nothing like the aroma of a fresh, weekend breakfast. For two mornings out of the week, I didn't have to grab a fistful of cereal and a too-ripe banana on my hurriedly destructive way to the bus stop. These mornings, my mom passed the spatula to my dad, who, having been quite the formidable bachelor before he settled down, was the undisputed breakfast king in our house.

I remember thinking of my dad as a spatula master, making pancakes in any shape or size desired. My favorite? The mermaid pancakes he'd flip onto my plastic Ariel plate as I'd patter into the living room and watch the morning cartoons (preferably of the Disney variety).

Tell anyone I still do this today, and I'll deny it.

My mom couldn't quite keep herself away from the kitchen--it was as if the mess my father created called to her. She'd follow behind him, clucking with smothered annoyance as she threw cracked eggshells down the garbage disposal and Windex-ed up spilled maple syrup. 

"Clean up as you go!" she'd admonish him, standing there with her hair going every which way and her glasses perched on her nose.

"It'll get cleaned up, Dina!" he'd exclaim, wiping his hands (which were usually covered in batter) on his flannel, checkered pajama bottoms.

"Ugh, now I have to wash those," my mother would sigh. Then she'd stick out her hand. "Give them to me now. I'll run a wash."

He'd look at her like she just asked him to put his hand in the blender.

"I'm not giving them to you right now!" he'd exclaim, as the eggs he'd abandoned in the pan slowly started to smoke.

"The stain will set!" my mom would whine.

I'd get fresh eggs and an extra pancake, and all was well in my mind. 

There was something reliable about this Saturday morning routine. I always knew what to expect, and the predictability was comforting. I loved waking up to the warm aromas, prickling my nose a little earlier than I'd like, but it would roll me out of bed just the same. While I no longer have my dad around every weekend to flip some flapjacks or griddle up some waffles for me every weekend in my Philadelphia apartment, whenever I go home for the weekend, I insist on my Saturday morning routine.

And he always happily obliges.

Photos courtesy of Google Images.