20 August 2024 Tuesday

In a tale so boring and off-topic it would be only insulting to you, faithful audience, I find myself laid up in bed with illness. That’s why I’m not in the kitchen chopping veggies and whistling a merry tune. But, like so many times when the body doesn’t feel great, the spirit gets all the more restless.

In case I’m like Pepys and people read this way in the future, I’ll remind y’all that tonight we the people watched Michelle Obama begin a new era in American History on tv. It was very exciting. Then, I watched a man butcher and dress an ostrich (I suppose I should add for future readers this didn’t happen at the Democratic National Convention, I’m watching another program now), immerse it in a plastic garbage can filled with salty water and spices, build a clay oven, gather sticks, shake down a lemon tree, pull carrots and turnips from the earth, cut milky kernels of corn off the cob with a little scythe, and well, I’m all riled up. He does it all on his farm in Azerbaijan, a backdrop of majestic tree covered mountains, a sweet flowing river with natural springs. Chickens, geese, grouse, guinea hens, pea hens, and at least one ostrich.

OK, so he dug a well-type deep oven, tons of crackling and logs and got her all ablaze, set in an enormous pot of rice and vegetables, that put the ostrich on a rack on top of that, covered in foil. And oh, now it’s beautiful thick chunks of fatty-skin ostrich meat, coarsely hacked, and thrown into the rice.

I got a burrito.

OK, next day, it is now the 21st. I forgot to mention that last night I de-iced the freezer, which was thrilling. A fun project when you have a “walking” disease. Tonight, I got nothing. Wiped out, watching the Democratic National Convention seems to be the thing. But still, a man needs to eat. I found in the fridge a large pot filled with chicken broth, so I made chicken noodle soup, nothing exciting. The kind of thing you make and eat when you’re not feeling super.

Well, not quite. I need something a little extra today. A little something sweet. For tonight’s rally, I will enjoy some homemade dark chocolate chunk cookies with a glass of milk. Yes, I am doing this. I made these with melted butter, which will supposedly make them chewy.

OH I am so looking forward to my little piece of heaven. Watching ABC news heartthrob David Muir talk about what Michelle and Barak said last night, me licking hot molten chocolate from my beard.

And I forgot to mention that I got a new little cookie scoop that made the cookies uniform. I had no idea of course, they would spread quite so much.

But spread they did. And they are absolutely delicious. This is a great one-bowl chocolate chip cookie when you need cookies impulsively. A lot of what slows cookies down is letting the butter come to room temperature, then creaming with the sugar. This recipe has us whisk the sugars together with melted butter. That, plus only one egg and a little baking soda, and bang!! you got yourself a flat, spread, super chewy cookie in your mouth. I used whole chocolate bars from Ghirardelli, dark chocolate, 80 something cacao. It’s a good cookie.

I feel like I’m fourteen years old!! I’m eating chocolate chip cookies, watching Bill Clinton talk on TV! I hope they don’t pre-empt Seinfeld. Oh wow, now Oprah.