Lilith Saintcrow

Yesterday I braved Portland traffic (thank God for GPS) and hopped over to Pine State Biscuits for lunch with Mark Henry, Jaye Wells, and Richelle Mead. Oh, LORD. It was great.

The food was delicious–they bake a mean biscuit over there, as attested by the size of the crowd lining up at the door. It’s a tiny place, but we scored a table. The table itself groaned under our selections, because everything looked good. I tried my first fried green tomato; I was not brave enough for the andouille corndog. Both Jaye and Mark were brave enough for that corndog, though, and pronounced themselves ruined for all other weiners for life.

You can kind of guess how lunch conversation went. This is one of the reasons I love hanging around writers. At one point we were all sitting around giving serious consideration to stalker zombies and build-your-own smut scenes. Though that was later at Tao of Tea, where we sat and had a bit of tea to wash some of what we ate out of our systems. (Note: it didn’t work. But I tried.) Anyway, if you want some good down-home biscuits (not to mention collard greens, Southern sodas, or fried green tomatoes, oh my GOD so good), Pine State is worth the trouble and the crowd. And Tao of Tea is such a neat little place!

I can’t guarantee the conversation will be as raunchy, but I can guarantee the food and tea are damn good.

I got home and did some yardwork right before a stormy afternoon rolled in. Two sessions of hail, thunder, torrential rain–March went out like a lion here in my piece of the world. This morning’s sunny, but I’m thinking the weather is playing an April Fool’s joke on me. (The Little Prince’s April 1 joke was propping a sock monkey up in my writing chair. I was uncaffeinated when I saw it, and my start of surprise made him giggle.)

In other news, I finished Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart. I realized at the end that all Murakami’s narrators are gateways–things come through them, they don’t necessarily act or react. I read Murakami because he evokes a certain mood in me, just like Duras. Sean Stewart also sometimes taps a particular mood; I’m so busy skating along the surface of the story I rarely take a look below at the mechanics of craft. Which is damn rare, for me. It seems I can’t help but read as if I’m going to edit the damn book. Which might be why I’m generally on such a nonfiction kick, occasional grammatical hoohaws and typos don’t bother me so much.

And now I must bring this ramble to a close. There’s a lot to get done today, from wordcount to correspondence.

Back into the belly of the beast I go. I’m still tasting those fried green tomatoes. And I’m happy about that.

I might post tomorrow, I might not. In any case, all the social stuff is done. I miss my sisters already. I’ve had a full house for two days and find myself wondering what I have to cook next and then realizing that it’s back to the normal schedule.

The kids have settled down to watching Marx Brothers movies and I’m considering getting back on the treadmill. A couple days off is a nice, but I need to get back in the swing of things. An odd thing has happened, though, I’m getting wordcount just falling out of my head in dribs and drabbles. Something about cooking just makes the words come faster, no matter if I have to squeeze them in between stirring and roasting. Fortunately all the dinners have gone off smoothly. I won’t be sure how smoothly the writing has gone until I finish this draft.

So, if I don’t see you here on Christmas Eve, have a happy holiday. Regular blogging will definitely resume Monday the 28th. See you ’round, guys.

My sister’s here and I’m about to engage in preparations for Cookiepalooza. It’s very simple: I invited a bunch of people and will be making sugar cookies. There will be wine, laughing, and a spaghetti feed for whoever wants to stay and eat. That way I get all the fun of making cookies and I don’t have to overeat OR throw them away. Plus, my friends get cookies. Everyone wins!

Of course, I would be still fighting off the flu while I do this, but that’s academic. I’ve only got a mild case and I’m dosing it with cranberry juice, orange juice, and a whole lot of water. I’m going to drown this nasty bug. Thank God I didn’t get the stomach-ill portion of it–no, the Little Prince came down with that. There’s an amusing story in there that will mortify him when he’s a teenager, so I think I’ll keep that in reserve.

The holidays are upon us like ravening hounds. You think if I throw enough cookies behind me it’ll slow them down so I can escape?

Yeah, me neither.

Over and out…

I shouldn’t Twitter on a sugar high. Last night I gave some choco-chip cookie tips, and did promise to give my recipe. It’s adapted both from my mother’s and from Better Homes & Gardens.

BE WARNED: this makes a LOT of dough. I’ll tell you why in a little bit.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2c butter
1.5c brown sugar
1.25c granulated sugar
2.25 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. table salt
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
5c cake flour
1.25c-1.5c regular flour
1 pkg. of the best choco chips you can afford (I use Ghirardelli’s.)

OPTIONAL: 2.5 c. chopped nuts, or half a package of Heath toffee bits.

How you do this:

First of all, buy the best butter you can afford. A lot of cookie recipes tell you to use butter and shortening, but to me that is an abomination. (Shortening belongs in biscuits, not cookies.) I know it affects the texture of the finished cookie, I just can’t bring myself to think that change is for the best. I bake with butter unless there’s a compelling reason, taste-wise, not to. And for these cookies, there just isn’t.

Melt the butter in a very heavy saucepan over low to medium heat. (I have a Le Creuset saucier that works very well.) While it’s melting, measure out your sugar and brown sugar into a heat-proof bowl. (I use the metal bowl for my KitchenAid mixer.) Whisk the sugars together.

When the butter is fully melted, pour and scrape it into the heat-safe bowl with the sugar. Whisk it together until it looks like, in the Princess’s words, “swampwater.” (It will smell like caramel, and if you heated it to soft-ball stage it would be.) Now put a plate or something over the bowl to keep any critters from trying to sample the deliciousness, and let it sit for a minimum of 15 minutes. (This recipe owes a lot to the NY Times, courtesy of Pim. But this step–melting the butter–I stole from a Cooks Illustrated magazine.) If you’re like me, you’ll wander away, and come back to it twenty minutes later when you realize you were indeed doing something in the kitchen before you got distracted. Or you’ll clean the kitchen, then move into cleaning something else until the timer rings and you wonder what it was for, then you realize you’re making cookies.

Anyway, once the wait is over, measure out your dry ingredients–cake flour, 1c of the regular flour, salt, and baking soda–in a separate bowl. Mix them together thoroughly. The low-protein cake flour is to give the finished cookie a more tender crumb, and you only need to start out with 1c of the regular flour. Use table salt for this step, too, not kosher. (Kosher salt comes later.)

Now put the butter-and-sugar swampwater (it will have a shiny glaze to it) in a mixing bowl, careful to scrape it all out. (I’m a fanatic about scraping.) Use a whisk attachment and whip it, whip it good. Whip the snot out of it. (This step is to incorporate little air bubbles in there.) Turn off mixer, add the eggs and vanilla, whip on low to blend, scrape bowl, then whip on medium for a minute or 90 seconds to get some more of those air bubbles in there. Those air bubbles help, with the baking soda, the cookie be “fluffy.”

When it’s all whipped, switch to a paddle attachment on your mixer and slowly (like a serving-spoonful at a time) add the dry ingredients. (If you don’t have a paddle attachment, don’t fret. Use what you’ve got. The type of mixer with dual beaters just means you have to go slow and scrape the sides a little more frequently.) When they’re all added, shut the mixer off and test the dough. It will be a lot softer than you’re used to, but you can still judge if it needs more flour. Sometimes humidity seems to play merry hob with my cookie dough. Anyway, add up to another half-cup to a cup of regular flour to make it stick together like a cookie dough should. But keep in mind, this dough will be soft.

I know you’re not supposed to, but I often just keep my mixer on low and slowly dump in the chocolate chips. (Plus toffee bits, if I’m feeling frisky. You can add nuts if you like…but not me. Oh, no. Not me.) Then, voila, turn your mixer off. You have ambrosia.

But some people will want to cook their cookies, and not just get sick on the dough.

Here is an important step: cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and put the dough in the fridge for at least twenty minutes while you preheat your oven to 375. (Preheating is important. DO EEET.) This will “set” the dough and make it behave when you shape it.

A few things about baking these cookies: they’re meant to be big. I use my bigger spoons to measure out the dough, not my wimpy teaspoons. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper–it’s cheap, it will keep the cookies from burning, and it makes cleanup so easy. And please use baking sheets with no sides. Jelly-roll sheets with the sides do sometimes prevent the cookies from browning right.

I usually do about six to an oven batch on my huge Ikea-bought cookie sheets. (Oh, Ikea. I love you so, so much.) First I measure out the chunks of dough, then (like the OCD baker I am) I use my fingers to shape them just slightly so they are lovely and round and perfect.

Then I sprinkle each cookie with just a little bit of kosher salt. Kosher salt is finer than table salt, and the extra bit of it makes these cookies GOOOOOOOOOOD. Don’t believe me? Try it. I am such a salt fiend, too. I swear I was a deer in a past life, a deer with a yen for salt licks.

Cook in 375 oven for 8-14 minutes. Ovens vary, and the temperature of the dough makes cooking times vary too. I check the cookies at eight and twelve minutes respectively, and I do three or four batches to varying done-ness because some kids here like crispy cookies, others like soft cookies, and still others just want the sugar. Much of cookie baking is practice–you will be able to smell when these are done. Cool on the pan set on a wire rack, for five minutes, then transfer cookies carefully to another wire rack to finish cooling. (Note: cookies are most fragile right when you take them from the oven. They will cook slightly more and firm up in the first five minutes on the cooling pan. Again, practice makes perfect.)

Now, here’s why I make this dough in job lots. To get the best effects from it, you need to cure it, tightly covered, in the fridge for 36 hours or so. It really does make a difference, but if your ravening hordes demand OMG COOKIES NOW you may have to do a few batches so they don’t tear down your battlements. Plus some people (NOT ME, I SWEAR!) may snitch bits of dough.

I line a big Tupperware bin with parchment paper, scrape the dough into it, cover the surface of the dough with plastic wrap, then put the lid on tight. It sits in the fridge for a day and a half, and after that I measure out batches of cookies, put them on a lined baking sheet, and plop the sheet in our big freezer for a little bit. When the shaped balls of dough are half-frozen, I pile them in more Tupperware and keep them in the freezer. I get the whole chunk of dough frozen like that, in shaped cookie bits. So that whenever we want cookies, I just go out, load up a baking sheet with frozen shaped ones, and bake them–370F for about 12-13 minutes. (That extra five degrees cooler just seems to make frozen dough react better. YMMV.)

And that is why I make tons of dough at a time. If my kids ever move out I am going to go on mad quests for more hungry people to feed.

The cookies are best slightly warm, with milk. I prefer the crispy ones myself, until they’re about a day old. Then I like the soft ones.

There’s some survivors in the kitchen calling me right now, as a matter of fact. I have a proof to eyeball today, too. I wonder if I can get that done on a sugar high?

Over and out.

I’m over at the Witchy Chicks this morning, guest-blogging about writing paranormal. A big thank-you to the Chicks, especially Yasmine Galenorn, for inviting me!

Today I shall be trying something I have not tried before. No, it’s not rollerblading or skydiving. No, it’s not demon-hunting (done that) or recreational drinking (can’t do that anymore, got kids) or lumberjacking. Oh no.

No, today I shall be making French Onion soup, from a Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe. Because I am completely and utterly insane. Wish my poor desperate soul luck.

If I may get philosophical…Life doesn’t just throw one thing at you. It throws a bunch of crap at you and hopes something sticks in between long periods of not-much. Since it is in the nature of life, I guess I can’t complain. Or I could, but it wouldn’t do any good.

Over and out.