woodhearts?

the current winning chocolate chip cookie recipe

Preheat oven to 375.

In medium bowl sift together: 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda. Set it aside.

In large bowl, beat 1 cup soft (not melted) butter [unsalted, use something at least as good as Plugra] with 1 cup packed dark brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar until creamy. [If you have an electric accoutrement, or really developed muscles, you can use cold butter.] Beat one large egg into the mixture, then another, until incorporated and fluffy. Beat two tsps of vanilla into there. Fold in half the flour mixture, then the rest.  When it is all together and smooth, mix in at least one bag of chocolate chips.  I have had the best luck with Ghiardelli, but Scharfenberger baking chunks work well, or you can use cheaper chocolate, whatever you want.

Chill the batter to make it easier to form, if you want. I keep my batter covered with parchment paper in the freezer in between batches.

Put one tablespoon, semi-spherical, bits of batter on a parchment-lined baking sheet - no more than 12.  Resist the urge to make really big cookies unless you are working with a hotter oven and very cold batter, I think.

12 minutes in the oven.  Let rest for 5 minutes. Makes a little over 30 cookies.

dinner

Baked Quinoa With Spinach and Cheese

I (barely) modified this NYTimes recipe.  My modifications were all cheapening steps, as well.  So. Boil water with chicken or vegetable boullion cubes, and use that to prepare 1 cup of uncooked quinoa.

Follow the recipe steps for wilting the spinach and cooking everything together. Since i’m not a huge onions fan, i extra cook the onions until they start to get a little caramel-y. I also used 3 garlic cloves instead of 2. Why not?

Unless you have access to cheap fresh herbs, I’d substitute a shake of poultry seasoning (it’s mostly sage) for the fresh sage, and cheap brand swiss cheese instead of gruyere (this choice was necessary for me, because i live at the 10km mark of the NYC marathon and could not cross the street to have more cheese access).

It’s a pretty simple recipe if you prepare your ingredients in advance (which I have to do because I have no knife skills.)

Eat it. It’s good for fall.

how to make a pork chops dinner

ingredients:

4 pork chops boned or boneless, no one cares
salt
pepper
2 golden delicious apples, or other brand
the end of a bottle of maple syrup, so you can kick it and get a new one
dried cranberries, maybe 1/4 cup
more butter than you care to admit, perhaps 3/4 stick, salted
cinnamon
sugar
green beans, buy more than you think you’ll need
some type of oil, maybe vegetable or canola, but probably not olive
nuts, optional

the first step in cooking this dinner for 4 persons is to plug your portable mp3 device into a loud, portable, all-weather radio, press play. feel free to sing along.

clean the green beans, cut off the ends.  core the apples.  people say to peel them, too, but why?  don’t peel them.  chop the cored apple into roughly 2 cm cubes, but don’t get hung up on making them cubular.  set green beans in a colander, apples in a cereal bowl.  pour end of maple syrup bottle onto apples, add granulated sugar as needed, mix with dried cranberries and some cinnamon shakes.  set aside.

set oven to 175 F. put salted water on to boil.

put some oil in pan.  salt and pepper pork chops. when oil is hot, cook two chops at a time, maybe 3 minutes per side. if you’re me, you’ll freak out, worry that the chops are not cooked all the way through, panic, pour some water in the pan, causing oil splatter, cover the pan and create a steam pan for an additional minute or so.  take pork chops out of the pan and place them in a baking dish that you’ve had sitting in the warm oven. repeat until all your pork chops are in the dish. (please don’t do the steam thing, it’s probably a bad idea.)

melt a lot of butter in the frying pan, maybe half a stick.  add the apple mix and cook it down for awhile.  at this point the water is probably boiling, so put the green beans in it. when the apples are soft, pull them out, put them in the warm baking dish with the pork chops, and reduce the liquid in the frying pan ‘til it gets “thicker.” pour that on top of pork chops and apples. add nuts if you want.

drain green beans, return to pot with butter, salt, pepper.

et.