Chocolate
I had no idea that there was such a thing as too much chocolate.
Grams was sleeping on the couch. She’s ninety. She takes a lot of naps. I’m not anywhere near ninety and I take almost as many naps as she does. She also goes to water aerobics three times a week. I do not go to water aerobics. Partly because of the beached-whale phenomenon that tends to occur when I’m in a swimsuit, and partly because I’m usually napping during aerobic time.
But today I was in charge of making the cookies. Normally Grams gets the Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip and Walnut cookie mix. Fairly fail safe, not too difficult. I don’t know why anyone would ruin perfectly good chocolate chip cookies by adding walnuts—but she’s ninety. She gets a lot of leeway for making it that far and still going to aerobics. But the store was out of the chocolate chip with walnut mix, so today she had only chocolate chip cookie mix. Sometimes life hands you warm chocolate chip cookies with out walnuts and you can only smile, get all gooey inside and wonder why you’re so lucky. And even luckier when it says “three hundred chocolate chips inside!!” on the outside of the mix.
Instead of a half cup of softened butter, Grams prefers Canola oil. “It’s better for you.” She says. And Grams does worry about our health. She also recently lost her measuring spoons so she got out a big mixing spoon and said to use that for the Tablespoon—‘it should be close’. And I’m sure it is.
So I added the egg and a half cup of Canola oil and mixed it all up and added the extra chocolate chips that we always add to ‘enhance’ the cookies a little. Who knew that a half cup of softened butter doesn’t convert right over to a half cup of Canola oil? They should really make that little star and the fine print a little larger on the back of the bag. I guess it should have been a clue when I didn’t need the Tablespoon. I thought maybe only the walnut cookie mix needed some extra ingredient that would use a Tablespoon. I thought it looked kind of funny—all the chocolate chips looked like they were greased up ready to shimmy into latex pants that were way too small. It was then that I read about how one half cup of softened butter could be substituted for a couple tablespoons of water and one third cup of Canola oil. Hmmm. Oh well, guess we’ll see how that works out.
Grams has a bulk bag of semi sweet chocolate chips for just these occasions. All her cookies are ‘enhanced’. Probably one day while she was at the gym she saw some body builder and realized that he was a little enhanced. Always one to look for positive things in the world she likely thought this was a great idea when applied to baking. Who knew that adding two and a half more cups of chocolate chips to the ‘three hundred chocolate chips inside’ would be a little much. Normally in the world of physics more chocolate is better. But after mixing up the batter and realizing that there wasn’t enough dough to hold all the chips together it occurred to me that perhaps there was a limit on amount of chocolate one cookie could support. But now they were all greased up with little bits of dough spattered through out. I had no choice but to bake them and see what happened. It was hard because a ‘spoonful of dough’ turned out to be a bunch of chips falling off the spoon that I tried to mush together on the cookie sheet. Hmmmm?….. with a furrowed brow…..
I have patients who do these kinds of things. They don’t read the directions on the bottles, and they don’t listen to me when we talk about their problems and I tell them ‘you need to go to the gym’. Why can’t they just follow directions? Apparently that’s what Rachel Ray would say to me. Follow the freaking directions!!
When Grams got up I was feeling a little self conscious about my baking abilities. “I’m a doctor Grandma, not a freakin’ chef!” --- right on the tip of my tongue ready to spout out when she asked why the cookies didn’t stick together. But she didn’t ask. Nor did she say anything when she picked one up and a bunch of the chips fell off and the whole thing just kind of fell apart at the chocolate chip fracture line. If left alone on the baking sheet they did resemble cookies. It was when you picked one up that the problems became apparent.
Oh well…. Grams didn’t take me up on my offer to make more cookies before I left from my little visit. She was probably thinking about that huge guy at the gym who’s neck muscles got so big that they smashed close his esophagus and he choked to death.
Sometimes too much enhancement can lead to real tragedy.
This has been a real eye opener for me. It may not be my neck muscles that are getting big, but I’m still in danger of having my esophagus smushed close.
Grams was sleeping on the couch. She’s ninety. She takes a lot of naps. I’m not anywhere near ninety and I take almost as many naps as she does. She also goes to water aerobics three times a week. I do not go to water aerobics. Partly because of the beached-whale phenomenon that tends to occur when I’m in a swimsuit, and partly because I’m usually napping during aerobic time.
But today I was in charge of making the cookies. Normally Grams gets the Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip and Walnut cookie mix. Fairly fail safe, not too difficult. I don’t know why anyone would ruin perfectly good chocolate chip cookies by adding walnuts—but she’s ninety. She gets a lot of leeway for making it that far and still going to aerobics. But the store was out of the chocolate chip with walnut mix, so today she had only chocolate chip cookie mix. Sometimes life hands you warm chocolate chip cookies with out walnuts and you can only smile, get all gooey inside and wonder why you’re so lucky. And even luckier when it says “three hundred chocolate chips inside!!” on the outside of the mix.
Instead of a half cup of softened butter, Grams prefers Canola oil. “It’s better for you.” She says. And Grams does worry about our health. She also recently lost her measuring spoons so she got out a big mixing spoon and said to use that for the Tablespoon—‘it should be close’. And I’m sure it is.
So I added the egg and a half cup of Canola oil and mixed it all up and added the extra chocolate chips that we always add to ‘enhance’ the cookies a little. Who knew that a half cup of softened butter doesn’t convert right over to a half cup of Canola oil? They should really make that little star and the fine print a little larger on the back of the bag. I guess it should have been a clue when I didn’t need the Tablespoon. I thought maybe only the walnut cookie mix needed some extra ingredient that would use a Tablespoon. I thought it looked kind of funny—all the chocolate chips looked like they were greased up ready to shimmy into latex pants that were way too small. It was then that I read about how one half cup of softened butter could be substituted for a couple tablespoons of water and one third cup of Canola oil. Hmmm. Oh well, guess we’ll see how that works out.
Grams has a bulk bag of semi sweet chocolate chips for just these occasions. All her cookies are ‘enhanced’. Probably one day while she was at the gym she saw some body builder and realized that he was a little enhanced. Always one to look for positive things in the world she likely thought this was a great idea when applied to baking. Who knew that adding two and a half more cups of chocolate chips to the ‘three hundred chocolate chips inside’ would be a little much. Normally in the world of physics more chocolate is better. But after mixing up the batter and realizing that there wasn’t enough dough to hold all the chips together it occurred to me that perhaps there was a limit on amount of chocolate one cookie could support. But now they were all greased up with little bits of dough spattered through out. I had no choice but to bake them and see what happened. It was hard because a ‘spoonful of dough’ turned out to be a bunch of chips falling off the spoon that I tried to mush together on the cookie sheet. Hmmmm?….. with a furrowed brow…..
I have patients who do these kinds of things. They don’t read the directions on the bottles, and they don’t listen to me when we talk about their problems and I tell them ‘you need to go to the gym’. Why can’t they just follow directions? Apparently that’s what Rachel Ray would say to me. Follow the freaking directions!!
When Grams got up I was feeling a little self conscious about my baking abilities. “I’m a doctor Grandma, not a freakin’ chef!” --- right on the tip of my tongue ready to spout out when she asked why the cookies didn’t stick together. But she didn’t ask. Nor did she say anything when she picked one up and a bunch of the chips fell off and the whole thing just kind of fell apart at the chocolate chip fracture line. If left alone on the baking sheet they did resemble cookies. It was when you picked one up that the problems became apparent.
Oh well…. Grams didn’t take me up on my offer to make more cookies before I left from my little visit. She was probably thinking about that huge guy at the gym who’s neck muscles got so big that they smashed close his esophagus and he choked to death.
Sometimes too much enhancement can lead to real tragedy.
This has been a real eye opener for me. It may not be my neck muscles that are getting big, but I’m still in danger of having my esophagus smushed close.
posted by M @ 11:00 PM
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