Control Issues - Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are a couple things I like to have in the freezer with a holiday weekend coming up.  A good loaf of banana or cranberry bread, sliced and wrapped, ready to go camping, to a picnic, or serve as a smoothie companion for houseguest breakfasts.   

The other freezer item is a batch of cookies, all baked, and stowed away in ziploc bags.  If someone drops by as you're rolling out the grill, you don't have to worry about producing a dessert as well as dinner.   

Toll House cookies are perfect.  They're my all time favorite standby.  A bit humble as desserts go, but what guest doesn't love seeing a big platter piled high with chocolate chip cookies, no matter how much dinner they've eaten?  

(Just don't add a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or they'll never go home.) 

 

It's hard to imagine a cookie better than the traditional Toll House. 

I think I've found one, though.  Didn't have to go far, either.

Toll House cookies, but all chocolate.  With chocolate chips.  

Uh oh.  Trouble.

It was all there but the walnuts.  We can take care of that. 

The only real issue is how to eat just one, and not the whole darned plateful.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Walnuts

(aka, "Double-Chocolate Dream Cookies" on the Nestle bag.)

2 1/4 c. flour

1/2 cup Nestle Baking Cocoa

(As an equal opportunity choclaholic, I felt free to use Hershey's Cocoa.)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup butter  (Allow butter to soften a few minutes, cold doesn't work as well.)

1 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 large eggs

2 cups Nestle semi-sweet chocolate morsels 

1-2 cups walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

(Or, if you want to follow directions, go for 375.  Truthfully, I didn't see that 375 until just now as I was referring back to the recipe.  Oops!  I've been baking the Toll House cookie recipe at 350 since the sixth grade, when my mother first let me start using the oven.  Maybe next time I will try it using the directions.  I have a feeling either way works fine.)

  

Combine flour, cocoa, soda and salt in a small bowl.  Set aside.

Beat butter, brown sugar, white sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl until creamy. 

Beat in eggs, until light and fluffy. 

Gradually beat in flour mixture. 

Stir in chocolate chips and a cup of walnuts.  (Or two cups if you like them as much as we do.)

Here the recipe says to drop by rounded tablespoonful onto ungreased cookie sheet.  Do that if you like small, meager, stingy looking cookies.  But if you like big, generous, rich looking cookies, double the amount of dough for each cookie.  At least.  So it ends up about six cookies to a standard sized cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.  (Or 350 for 10-11 minutes.)

Until cookies are puffed.  Or, if you like them to come out a little crispy, until they lose their shine.

Cool on cookie sheet for a minute then remove and let some of them cool completely.  (Eat some of them warm, of course.) 

Pop whatever's left into ziploc bags and stash them way in the back of the freezer.  

Now go ride your bike or something.  Just do your best to forget they are there, until the guests drop by.  

World Turtle Day - Respect Your Inner Tortoise

The purpose of World Turtle Day, May 23, sponsored yearly since 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue, is to bring attention to, and increase knowledge of and respect for, turtles and tortoises, and encourage human action to help them survive and thrive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle_Day

Turtles. 

The symbol of slow. 

Born with all that weight to carry around.  Yet such determination to get where they need to go.

Not everyone appreciates that.  But I do.  I love that turtle-urgency to be on the other side of the road, no matter how many lanes there are to cross.  No matter if it takes all day.

 
I have always been a slow runner.  A sucky runner, actually. 

Before Jane Fonda wore leg warmers, before Jamie Lee Curtis became Perfect, jogging was in vogue.

A 3 mile jog every day up Tropical Trail from the marina was my staple exercise.  Even into pregnancy, in those days of just-sit-still advice.  Living on a sailboat was becoming more and more cumbersome.  But the morning jog was, by far, the hardest 40 minutes of every day.

That summer, in Boothbay Harbor, when my new doctor got his first look at my ponderous pregnancy, the first words out of his mouth were not “what do you eat” but, "What do you do for exercise?"

Huh? A doctor who wasn’t determined to make me quit running? A doctor who believed in exercise? Now here was a doctor I could like.

I answered up immediately. "I run three miles a day."

(I had even learned that no one called it jogging anymore, it was running.)

"That's not running", he scoffed.

Oh.

I was crushed.  But when he turned around, the nurse whispered, "Don't mind him. He's just mad because his sister's a better runner than he is."

It turns out that my new doctor was a marathoner.  And his nurse was right.  His sister was better.  The best in the world actually, winning Olympic gold the next summer.

So believe me when I say, I have been dissed by the best of them.


Lesson number one for the slow.  Keep any personal elation close to the vest. 

A dogged shuffle is the stuff of scoff to real runners.  I learned to confide my times guardedly, and only to trusted friends.

Once, at a Melbourne Art Fest 5k, out of 23 runners in my age group, I managed to take a third place. 

TriLady, always truthful, blurted out, "That's because nobody good was there!"  She needn't have worried.  I was in no danger of imagining myself fast. 

Of dozens and dozens of race medals since, there are only 3 in my keeper shoebox:  The medal from my first-ever marathon finish.  An Ironman finisher medal.  And that little bronze bobble on a flamingo-pink ribbon from the Melbourne Art Fest the year nobody good was there.

2011.  Still jogging along.   Sometimes walking if that's what it takes.  

No more pavement.  Soft trails are scarce near Cement-a-lot Beach.   It’s a 20 minute drive (or forty minute bike) in order to get to the park to run.  Just another part of the picture, like remembering your waterbottle, or tying on your shoes.  
  
Sometimes in the midst of struggling - Keep running! Don’t walk! - it’s good to remember the hardest 40 minutes.  To recall the hours, the steps, the years.  Don't forget the occasional pain.  And the occasional elation.

Take it all to the struggle with you.  Distill it all down into one single moment.  This moment, this step you're taking right now. 



This Sunday.  Wickham Park Marathon, 50, 100, and 200 Mile Fun Run.

I’ll be lucky to run a dozen of those miles, though I’ll be trying for fifteen.  While also trying to stay invisible among the many, truly amazing people who run it.

“It’s OK, you’ve got all day,” Popeye reminds me.

I know.  And I’d aim for a nice quiet walking finish of 26, or even a midnight 50, if I didn’t need my knees again next week.

But I’m going to need them.

Next week.

And the week after that.

Because this is the shell I live in. 

And I have so far left to go.

Going Buggy, But Not At Graham's Swamp

There's nothing lovable about love bugs.  

They blossom here over pavement whenever the temps are just right, mostly in May.  They hover in tandem, unwittingly awaiting messy deaths on bumpers and windshields.

Geesh.  Get a room.

At least mountain bikers can smile.  Poor roadies!  

It is so worth getting out on the road this time of year, though.  Especially if you are heading to a trail in a Honda Elephant with your mountain bikes on the inside.  (And the bugs on the outside.)

You'd think these grossest of bugs would be found in a place named for a swamp.

But no.  They were all out on the road.

We did our best to take out our share.

After a night of rain, the best trail around is Graham's Swamp. 

The dozen or more climbing challenges are pretty evenly interspersed along the 6 and a half mile course. With lots of twists and turns, rock options, bridges, and on dryer days, plenty of sand.

By Sunday afternoon though, the rain had cleared out.  Clouds puffed white in a suddenly blue sky.  Temps landed somewhere in the high 70's.  And best of all, the sand was damped down.  

Graham's Swamp.

80% easy, winding singletrack.


20% hard, sweaty climbing.  

100% non stop fun. 

Because, of course, what goes up must come down.

Taking the bailouts is a no-brainer for me. 

Not everyone does, though.

A big fresh gouge in the trail at the bottom shows where somebody landed less than gracefully.

Impressive. 
 
I take a picture.

A disturbance in the force.

At the end of the loop, I catch up with Popeye and Krafty, surprised to see them at the trailhead when I get back.

So.
 
Krafty. 
 
Going for the gusto and gaining a gouge.  
 
That endo was probably spectacular. Sorry I missed it.

Checking for cracks.

Yep, he hit hard.  Needs replacing. 

The helmet, not his head.  :)

Bloody knee, maybe a cracked rib or two.   But no permanent damage (readily apparent, anyway). 

Whew.  So much cheaper to replace a helmet than your head.  And way less messy.

By the time we leave Krafty getting into his car, and get ourselves back out for loop #2, the sand is starting to dry.  

I'm not making all the climbs I made the first time around. 

Popeye is out of sight in no time.

Loop #3.  I am eyeing a narrow, wooden bridge over a sinkhole maybe eight or ten feet deep. 

Thank the trail-builders, it's easy enough to bypass completely. 

As a matter of fact, one might even wonder why it's there at all.  To boost helmet sales at the local bike shop?

Then I remember seeing the trail crew putting it to good use when we were here in February.

Perfect for lunch break. 

Now in my book, that's a useful bridge.

Home sweet home.   Get out the hose.  The splatter of a thousand Love Bugs is a nasty sight.  

But at the end of the day, that's the only splatter we've seen. 

And we're good with that.

XTerra Trail Run - The Claw. Embarking upon the Drunkard's Path.

Another day, another project.

A drunkard's path, which somehow needs to lead to wedding rings...

What sort of quilt pattern would you choose for a 50th wedding anniversary present?  Drunkard's Path?  OK, so it needs some golden rings worked in somewhere...

Next question.  What do you name a ten mile foot race course, completely off road?  Too easy.  That's an XTerra Trail Run. 

But what if it's 10 miles, held on nearly 100% unused trail, and in some spots no trail at all?  What if it includes a bit of swamp swimming for those of less than average height?  And bush whacking up and down the sides of an old phosphate mine?  Sides so steep that you have to claw your way up and slide your way back down?  What do you name that one? 

The XTerra Claw, of course.

Sounds like a blast, doesn't it? 

Makes me sad I didn't enter.

But I have learned not to waste an entry fee when there's no swim or bike ride first to even things up a bit.

Popeye, on the other hand...

May 1, 8AM.  The Claw 10-miler start.

Who knew there would be so many trail runners up for 10 miles of bush whacking?  135 men, 82 women. 

There was a five mile distance as well.  91 men, 90 women.  

The trail goes off the side of a berm.

See the vines hanging?

Most people end up swinging down. 



Plenty of orange ribbons marking the way.

Just so no one misses out on the free foot wash/creek run.

Better the foot wash on the creek side of that berm

than the other side, the swamp side.

Popeye does well.  First in his age group, 7th overall.   

I'm saying he's ready for Wickham Park Marathon at the end of this month, and the Richmond Xterra in June.   (Wish I could say the same for myself.)  

"Mugging" for the camera.

All the 10 mile finishers get a mug.  Thank you, XTerra and TampaRaces.  After beer glasses, mugs are always the best prizes.  Can't drink out of a medal!

Then we get to ride. 

Someday I promise to stop and take a photo of the North Creek bike section.  It's on the other side of that green swampy stuff in the picture above, with narrow edgy trails built up to follow the contours of the berms. 

Uh, narrow edges.  Swamp directly below.  Gators.  My all-time favorite Florida combination.  Please excuse me this time for not stopping.  

The only pictures I took this trip were of the pretty, flat sections, where you can stand and hold a camera without danger of sliding off an edge.  There isn't one of the tougher stuff that Alafia offers.   Although, there were two unicyclists about to tackle Rock Garden, speaking of tough.

About thirty five miles of trail riding for the weekend, plus ten miles of running (and clawing) for Popeye.  Then it's time to break camp and head home....

....where I have special permission to use the extra large, Claw coffee mug.

And for somehow turning a queen size Drunkard's Path into a golden anniversary quilt - I'm probably going to need it.

Right after I go for a run.