A poem I enjoyed from L. S. Klatt's poetry collection, Cloud of Ink.

May Day

I am adrift in a burned-out canoe
without a helmsman. It was once a birch
straight & narrow made swift. The planets
revolve behind the blue sky, but I don't
witness. The news is good. The willow
has waded into the pond, & the purpose
of the pond is outside of me. The bow
of the boat follows the breezes. Light-
years from Zero.

So I buy Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. I think they taste better than the Nestle Toll House ones which seem more popular (maybe they're just more popular because they're cheaper?).

On the back of the Ghiradelli bag there is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. We used to have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that we made all the time. But we stopped making them because the recipe called for shortening and the general populace went through a phase where shortening was just one step away from death or something. (I've since heard that the new formula for shortening isn't worse for you than any other sort of baking fat. So I'll probably try to dig up the old recipe at some point.)

Anyway! I made the Ghiradelli recipe before, when I was at Tech. I did it in a single bowl out of laziness, and it just didn't taste that good. I mean it didn't taste bad, but it wasn't everything I dreamed it would be.

But Ghiradelli chocolate chips were on sale in December, and I bought a couple bags, and I thought I would try out the recipe again with a few alterations. So here's what I did...

Ingredients:
1.25 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup bread flour [original recipe called for 2.25 cups flour total]
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon [I added this]
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup white sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups (1 bag) chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a medium bowl, stir flours, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
In a slightly larger bowl, beat butter and sugars until creamy (or almost creamy). Add vanilla and eggs, mix until creamy.
Add dry mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop dough in roughly round blobs onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until golden brown.

A few notes:

- I really only used bread flour because we're almost out and I want to use up our bag. And Mike's other chocolate chip cookie recipe uses the same 1.25:1 ratio.

- Recipe says it makes 4 dozen cookies if you had tablespoon-sized blobs. I ended up having 26 cookies. So...apparently my cookies were twice the size that they intended? But mine came out about the size of my palm, which is the size I like.

- Recipe says bake for 9-11 minutes. My giant cookies needed around 20 minutes (I guess that makes sense).

- Mike thought my cookies were too cinnamon-y to be truly great. I thought they were maybe just a touch over-spiced if at all. So I'd suggest just 1/2 tsp of cinnamon if you like that sort of warmth. If not, just cut it since the original recipe doesn't have any anyway.

- Original recipe also has an option 1 cup of chopped walnuts or pecans which I skipped because I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies. But to each their own.

I thought I had a post last year about the books I read in 2011 that I liked, but I can't find it. So now I'm thinking maybe it was on Nematode and I deleted it or something. [edit: Nevermind, I found it at the bottom of this entry.]

So here are the books I recommend from the ones I read this year. They're in order of when I read them, not how much I recommend them. *shrug*

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (Week 9)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford (Week 11)
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Sister - Rosamund Lupton
The Best American Short Stories of 2010 - Richard Russo (editor) (Week 32)
Nutmeg - Kristin Valla
Middlemarch - George Eliot (Week 43)