I’m wondering if we’ll be having the same conversation as we had last year. Only it was Wednesday instead of Thursday. The calendar is like that.
I’m thinking maybe texting this year. Yes! I’ll text — Mexican food for lunch! Do you think Mr. G, honey will throw up his hands and shout Cinco de Mayo and do a backflip-handspring-cartwheel? I hope not. He’s on the road, as my fingers fly across the keyboard.
And if you’re cooking for Cinco de Mayo today, this Strawberry Mango Salsa from Two Peas and Their Pod looks absolutely delicious. I’m not cooking today, but I’m definitely making this salsa when strawberry season arrives here in June in my neck of Canadaland.
Ornery Sven is looking in my direction, raising an eyebrow, crooking a finger — The Grinch Who Stole Cinco de Mayo. That’s my cue.
Wanted a cookie Friday afternoon before last to the nth degree. The. Nth. Degree.
Before Twitter, I would have opened a cookbook for a recipe. But I’ve met so many wonderful cooking artists on Twitter, that I whipped open my mini and logged on to one of the many — the one being Two Peas and Their Pod — and plunked oatmeal cookies in the search bar. A bunch of stuff popped-up, not all cookies, but there it was — the oatmeal cookie of my dreams: Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies with chocolate chips. Three cookies rolled into one. Ding. Ding.
Maria substituted mini Reese’s peanut butter cups for the chocolate and I, having neither option, sent Mr. G, honey racing to the store for semi-sweet chocolate chips. He was thrilled to be furthering the cause of home baked cookies; truth be told, cooked anything after the Horrible Heat Wave. I say that in my head with all caps.
Zip. Zip. And he was back with two boxes. Uh, oh. The last time I visited the grocery store — last month, maybe last year — chips didn’t come in boxes. He’d brought me Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate.
We might have had the little these-aren’t-chocolate-chips talk. But it’s okay. I was on a mission, and nothing was impossible.
I whipped out a honking big knife, got all Rambo’d up, and chopped that semi-sweet into yummy, edible chunks. Then, it was mix, mix, stir, stir, scoop, scoop, plop, plop.
It was as I was taking the first tray out of the oven that it hit me. I miss my boys. I don’t have any boys, but I inherited two lean-growing-into-their-feet-cami-covered geek boys when the kidlet hit 8th grade. They hung out mostly on my doorstep, ventured into the front hall occasionally, and stampeded into the kitchen when cookies were baking.
One boy could smell cookies up one and two blocks over and would mysteriously appear at the door. We wondered why he never rang the doorbell, but we always knew he was there. We could feel him. The other boy made smiley faces in all our cookies. Best smiley faces ever. Ever.
These former stoop-standing-hall-lounging-kitchen-venturing Army Cadets are now serving in our Canadian Armed Forces, and I miss their cooking-sleuthing-baking-eating-ways.
I tend to make small cookies, because I get a bigger happy eating two small cookies instead of one big cookie. It’s how I roll. But we have a little cookie baking tradition here at La Casa Elen. As we get to the bottom of the bowl, when there isn’t enough dough left for a decent cookie sheet, we make one big cookie.
Got a cookie baking tradition? Quirk? Oddity? Let’s hear it.
You can find Maria tweeting @ TwoPeasandPod. I love how she thinks about food.
Sneeze. Wheeze. Drip, drip, drip. Spring is busting out all around Hacienda Elen.
Look out allergy sufferers, those trees are mating like crazy — horny trees. No, really. This is why you are suffering so. Spring has arrived about 14 days early, and the trees are having wild monkey sex. Mr. G, honey told me that BC — before coffee — yesterday. It’s the kind of thing that sticks in the mind more than say, tax code. I know he said more, but my brain wandered a little bit after the wild monkey sex reference. I was slurping caffeine and enjoying the idea of my trees getting lucky. Mr. G got this from an allergist on the radio waves. I’m waiting for Twitter confirmation on that.
Hitting the gardening centers today. Plants. Fertilizer. More plants. More fertilizer. Feeling green.
Then I’m going to wander into the kitchen and make this from Two Peas and Their Pod – the cooking couple. I’m seeing a green theme today.
Before I go, I wanted to leave you with something for writer Lisa Kessler’sFriday Happy Dance of Joy!
It was a tough decision. The Beatles? The Who? Springsteen? Celine Dion?
When you’re finished, hop on over and see The Boss here. All 10 glorious minutes of him. I might have clicked a hundred few times already. Sorry Mr. G, honey, but it is The Boss.
