Week in Review

Fay Schmaye

Ahhh, yes, another false alarm!! Lexi's first day of school was postponed on Tuesday due to the small possibility of the wind blowing and the chance of rain only for the day to turn out to be a beauty. Roll to Thursday her actual first day...rained....and still freakin raining. But nothings canceled today, I still have to go out in the rain to head to the dentist (can you feel the excitement people) so annoying. It's been windier and rained more in the last 10 hours then it did during all 72 hours the local meteorologists stood around in a state of euphoria watching and waiting to see which way the wind blew. Even with all their fancy equipment and years of education they still can't accurately predict the direction of a storm, instead displaying the "cone of uncertainty" that generally encompasses most if not all of the state. To me that's the equivalent of a Dr. sending you for an MRI and a Cat scan only to tell you that you have a mass located somewhere in your body between the right ear and your left pinkie toe, then sending you home to "wait and see" what happens. And then there's "the preparers". Who are these people you ask. These are the individuals who run out to the grocery star as soon as they hear it's going to get windy and rainy and stock up on SPAM, water, peanut butter and bread, they board up their windows or even worse tape them (which is useless), and sit glued to their TV's or their weather radio's just "waiting to see what happens". Puhhhleeeease, I'll tell you what's gonna happen, it's gonna rain and the wind is going to blow...deal with it. Get out some board games, pop some popcorn and freaking relax! I've lived in FL since the late 80's, prior to that I lived on a cornfield in Illinois so I've weathered my fair share of hurricanes, tropical storms AND tornado's. I'd much rather sit through a hurricane than a tornado...

So what do you do when it's supposed to rain, everything is closed and your kid is home from school.....why you bake (that way IF the power does go out you'll have cookies to eat!). This is exactly what Lexi and I did on Tuesday, we made both chocolate chip toffee cookies, and peanut butter cookies.

Here's my little helper...

Balls of delicious dough...

Our sweet reward...

Jen's Chocolate Chip Toffee Cookies (adapted from the Nestle Tollhouse recipe)

What I do different is I use a combination of dark and light brown sugar, my grandma says that back in the day they didn't have light and dark brown sugar they just had brown sugar, so one summer my cousin Jenny was on a quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie and she mixed the two together added, toffee and it's perfect. Then instead of one cup of chopped nuts I add ~ 1/2 cup heath toffee bits (just the Bits o' Brickle not crushed up Heath bar) and then a 1/2 cup chopped walnuts. Bake and enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cookies (adapted from the Jif irresistible peanut butter cookies recipe)

What I do different...I use butter flavored Crisco ( I prefer to bake with all butter but have found that all butter in a peanut butter cookie makes them to dry and I prefer my cookies a little soft) rather than the regular Crisco, I cut back on the vanilla using only abt. 1/2 tbsp., then I add about 1/2 cup salted peanuts. Finally I use a fork dipped in sugar to criss-cross the cookies and sprinkle a little extra sugar on top. Again bake and enjoy