Cookies and Happy Thoughts

Chocolate Chip Cookies make me happy...for so many wonderful reasons.  The chewy cookie, the warm, melty chips...the way a glass of cold milk tastes extra specially refreshing served along side.... I used to love seeing that yellow Nestle Tollhouse bag of chocolate morsels when I was little...i knew that a fresh baked batch of cookies was just around the corner.  Watching my mom combine all the yummy ingredients in a bowl, mixing the butter, brown sugar, flour and chips with a big wooden spoon, then dropping spoonfuls of dough on to a cookie sheet.  The 9-10 minute wait for a cookie was almost unbearable.  While they baked, I was allowed to eat the left over dough off the spoons and bowl - yes, I realize how "unhealthy" and "unsafe" that is, but I'm 35 years old and still kicking.  :)  I still enjoy baking chocolate chips and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how easy it is now--buy a pack of cookie dough, already mixed up and portioned out into 24 scrumptious cookies.  ready to eat in less than 12 minutes--gooey, warm and melty chocolatey goodness...YUMMY!

My great granny's buttermilk cut out cookies from Christmas are my other cookie comfort food.  I'm proud to say I have FINALLY mastered the art of baking these cookies and the tradition is not going to die with my mom.  Christmas in our house was always family oriented--we helped decorate cookies, we made our own tree ornaments and one year, my little brothers sang carols to my parents as a present.  GOOD times.  Anticipating christmas cookie time is probably the most exciting moment between Thanksgiving and Christmas morning.  The smell of these cookies, topped with a sweet powdered sugar icing with a touch of anise is enough to transport me back to being a little kid again!  THEN the fun part of decorating them - icing them then using powdered sugar, drages, and sprinkles to create a perfectly designed cookie.  The best part about these cookies - the longer they sit, the better they taste. 

I find that when I can't shut off the overthinking and can't journal out what's bouncing around inside my head that baking gives me that quiet focus.  What's an even better bonus now is that my kids are finally old enough to help out with baking, so we have our family time--measuring ingredients, stirring batter, dropping spoonfuls of dough on cookie sheets and picking out the right cookie cutters to make the PERFECT cut out cookie... all a perfect recipe for smiles all around!  :)

...only downside is that eating all the cookies has led to me needing to diet to fit into summer clothes... *sigh*...think I'll have another cookie, please!

bad dreams

I had this bad dream the other night - I dropped my kids off to a new school and walked my son to his new class room. He found an open desk, put away his stuff and sat down, but I couldn't leave him in the room. I had this overwhelming feeling that I made a mistake, and I removed him from his safe school he had always known and tossed him into a new environment that was cold, dismal, disorganized and scary.

Reason I describe it as that is because there was a noticeable lack of color in the classroom, it was very dark and gray; it was overcast and cold outside. The window in the room was opaque, so you couldn't see outside. The desks were scattered all over the room, some were in a circle, others arranged outside the circle. Another part of my dream that stands out is that he chose an empty desk in the circle, but when other kids came in, they edged him out of the circle.

What the heck am I supposed to make of that?? Not that I need something else to worry about these days, you know?