Cookies from the Bakeshop

Over the weekend, my boyfriend, his sister, his brother-in-law, and I visited the Bakeshop on Fillmore, in Arlington. My intention to just buy a simple chocolate chip cookie and leave turned into a gluttonous free-for-all when the rest of our party somehow managed a to rack up a bill of over 80 dollars and sample everything while still in the store. While they were buying out the whole shop, I grabbed a second cookie. Here are my reviews.

Peanut Butter Pillow

I was a little surprised when I broke off the first piece to find that this was actually a chocolate cookie filled with peanut butter. It was astonishingly thin. I don't know how they got the peanut butter in such a little cookie!

It was the perfect marriage of textures—chewy cookie on the outside, and creamy sweet peanut butter on the inside, and the flavor was everything I expected.

I won't give this cookie a perfect 5 stars, mainly just because it didn't wow me as I was eating it. But it definitely didn't taste bad.

Sadly, though, this thin, almost-not-giant wisp of a 55-gram cookie cost $1.75, or 3.18¢ per gram! Anti-bargain!

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Chocolate Chip Cookie

The chocolate chip cookie was perfection!

It was soft and chewy and tasted almost like eating cookie dough, but with the added benefit of a slightly crisper outer layer to keep it all together and keep my teeth entertained.

The taste was and not buttery but with some other rich flavor I couldn't identify. I loved it!

A little bit larger than the peanut butter pillow and the same price, this cookie was a slightly better value but still behind the curve at 2.09¢ per gram. Perhaps a special-occasion indulgence.

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Prairie City Chocolatey chunk cookie

My first experience with Prairie City Giant Cookies was not exactly mind-blowing, and I really had no intention of ever trying this brand again—until I made the mistake of walking into a gas station hungry during a long trip. Those chocolate chunks looked so welcoming! I caved in pretty quickly and bought the cookie. But, like before, the experience of eating it was less than awesome.

At first, its performance on the crumble test did nothing to endear it to me. It broke into big chunks and was harder to break than I prefer. A few larger crumbs fell off, so it passed the test, but without flying colors. As far as my mouth was concerned, it appreciated the crunch around the middle of the cookie—it was balanced out nicely with chewiness, but towards the edges, it was too pronounced.

The flavor, on the other hand, was good and buttery, and the chocolatey bits were generous in size and tasty.

Since I did not pay for this cookie myself, I'm going to assume that prices for Prairie City cookies are pretty much the same across the country and haven't changed in value since my last review.

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Falling in and out of art

I used to pride myself on my creativity. When I was younger, I was drawing constantly, taking art classes, hand-making all sorts of eclectic gifts, and doing crafts just because I wanted to. Lately, though, I haven't been doing much of that at all. The craftiest thing I've accomplished – or even attempted – in about a year was preparing several batches of artisanal soap at the end of December—and that was really only because I needed some Christmas gifts and wanted to scale down my massive collection of soap-making supplies since its only function over the last two years has been to take up a lot of space. Thinking on this uninspired existence of mine, I started feeling a little down—worrying that I had simply lost my creative touch.

But after Christmas, I suddenly had the muse fall upon me. Random moments were punctuated by bursts of weird creativity.

"If I was an artist," I told my boyfriend while we were driving, "I'd create a giant wire sculpture of a tree, and put it on top of a car, with the roots draping down over the sides and growing into the windows." "If I was an artist, I'd make tiny little scenes of fairies all over these rocks and take pictures of them!" "If I was an artist, I would crochet a cap for that round river stone and make it into an acorn."

Aside from my repetitive use of the same opener, "If I was an artist," it was clear that I hadn't lost my creative touch. I was on a roll, and I had to wonder, what made it happen? And in a similar vein, if I hadn't lost lost it, why had it temporarily disappeared?

It didn't take long for me to figure out the answer to both questions: Time!

Yes, that miraculous substance that rules our lives had asserted itself again. For the past few years, I've been working 8.5 hours a day and doing work-related prep and cleanup tasks for another hour at least, and by the end of all that, there's been little time or brainpower left for non-essential pursuits. But the entire week after Christmas, I'd basically just been home all day, free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Without the enormous drain of working, I suddenly had the liberty to let my mind wander—and it was fun!

I've learned two valuable (and reassuring) lessons from this: 1) it's not that I've ever stopped being creative, it's just that I've been forced to let the mundane requirements of everyday life take precedence. 2) My fashion fixation is not a vice as I sometimes worry it is—it's merely a pragmatic outlet for the creative energy I still have. When you don't have the time (or the studio) to construct massive sculptures and spend hours photographing tableaus, you work art into your life however you can. For me, that's assembling thematic outfits, salvaging unwearable clothing, and occasionally embarking on an epic embellishment experiment. In this way, I get to see the fruits of my labor and display my creations in the environments where I actually spend my time.

So, I'm not going to feel guilty about ordering another eBay dress on the same day I receive a shipment of 5 pairs of shoes, just 3 days after buying not one but two sequined shirts along with a package of false eyelashes (which I recently claimed I would never even try)—that's just how I express myself!

I feel much better now, but I'm still wondering if other people out there are confusing a lack of time or a lack of energy for a lack of talent. We all have creative bones in our bodies, but I think many people's are burdened with the weight of too many responsibilities. Here is the moral of this story: Don't let burnout happen to you! Let your light shine, however dimly, and never doubt your own abilities. And just wait until retirement...you'll be building trees on top of cars in no time!

Toledo Zoo Oatmeal Scotchie

 
It's been a while since my last giant cookie review, but when I went home for Christmas, I picked up a couple of confections to blog about. The day after Christmas, I was at the Toledo Zoo gift shop, staring into the cookie case and trying to decide on a giant cookie to review, when my eyes lit on an oatmeal scotchie. It is not often that you find oatmeal scotchies for sale, so I was delighted at the late Christmas gift! It was an easy choice to decide which cookie would get my review.

A few days after purchase, I ate it for breakfast, and I was hungry, so I accidentally scarfed it down without paying much attention to the experience, but this is what I remember:

The flavor was a little more buttery than I'm used to, perhaps even a tad more buttery than i prefer.

In spite of being very thin, and thus running the risk of becoming too crispy, this scotchie stayed soft and chewy, just how I like it. The oats, as oats always do, added a pleasant texture. And don't get me started on the butterscotch. I looooove butterscotch! A cookie always gets top taste points when it contains butterscotch.

So all in all, this oatmeal scotchie was quite a winner, except where it came to cost. It weighed only 70 grams but cost $1.60, making it a hefty 2.29¢ per gram!

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Music's biggest letdown of the year

So there's this song called "Blank Space." You might have heard it—it gets played on the radio approximately every 5 minutes on every station. All the time that this song has been blowing up the airwaves, I've been convinced I was hearing something like, "Got a lonely Starbucks lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane...I got a blank space, baby, and I'll write your name!"

I thought this lyric was some kind of play on the phrase, "star-crossed" lovers, and I found it very clever. I envisioned a sad barista, leaning on a desolate counter, just waiting for her favorite customer to come in so she can write his name on his cup! Although my version didn't quite take the form of coherent sentences, I was convinced that I had the spirit of it right, and if I just listened harder and actually paid attention to the lyrics (something I rarely do), I would not only learn the correct words, but I would hear the entire story of a tragic coffee-shop love affair.

Alas, yesterday, a Buzzfeed article someone posted to Facebook set my starry-eyed mind straight. In this article, I learned that the verse I (and apparently lots of other people) thought referred to Starbucks lovers actually goes "Got a long list of ex-lovers"—a typical and played out Taylor-Swiftism. It was also through this article that I learned Taylor Swift was indeed the artist, but it's the first revelation that really hurts. Why is it that the real lyrics of a song never quite stand up to the lyrics I imagine in my selective deafness? Who else out there thinks this song would have been better if it were about doomed romance in a coffee shop?

Say it again, Sam (or don't)

Since my last (non-food) post was about stupid questions, it seems a reasonable progression to have my next post be about stupid phrases. Yes, today I'll be taking on the persona of Li'l Language Lady and sharing my thoughts on superfluous verbiage!

I am not at all a fan of saying the same thing twice (you should hear the hostile "nothing" I have perfected for when my boyfriend has asked "what?" too many times in a conversation!). And I get just slightly, almost imperceptibly, annoyed by sentences which could be several words shorter and still say the same thing (you'd think that someone who's so fond of rambling asides would have a little more tolerance for the inefficient sentences of the world, but life is full of inconsistencies, eh?).

Take, for example, double self-referencing. People love to stick the word self in front of other verbs as a way of indicating that the action is directed towards the actor—a prime example: self-diagnose, which is common in this age of Internet medical reference and accessible hypochondria. There's nothing wrong with using self- as a prefix, but I do take issue when it is also used as a suffix, as in, "Self-diagnose oneself." Almost as bad as the dreaded double negative, the second "self" in this phrase is just dead weight and should be jettisoned. Think of it as a practical impossibility—one can not have two selves. Unless, maybe, one is part of a sci-fi story.

One particular circumstance in which duplication of words seems to happen a lot is when using acronyms in a sentence. People don't always seem to know the words behind the letters they speak, resulting in superfluous meanings like "Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus gear" or "Automatic teller machine machine" or "Personal identification number number."

One of my favorite misused acronyms to rag on is RSVP. Commonly seen at the bottom of invitations, asking the recipient to note whether he or she will be coming, RSVP comes from the French "Répondez s'il vous plaît," or, "please reply." Somehow, in common English, RSVP became a verb for "tell us whether you're coming," and so gets commonly used in phrases like, "Please RSVP." Translated literally, this means, "Please, please, reply," which sounds just a bit desperate. When used as a noun meaning "an indication of whether you're coming," RSVP becomes even more weird—e.g. "Indicate your meal preference on your please reply." I try not to use this abbreviation in such a corrupted way, but I'll admit that even I have trouble avoiding it—there's just no good alternative word that packs in all that commonly accepted meaning in such short four letters!

Maybe we should just reduce the conclusion by using our own English language. From now on, maybe I'll start closing my invitations with TUWYC (Tell us whether you're coming.)

Costco Macaroni and Cheese

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was shopping at Costco and called me on the phone. "Should I get some macaroni and cheese?" he asked. I thought about it. We've been to Costco many times in the past couple months (I still believe it's not worth the cost of membership, but when you're borrowing someone else's card, it makes all the difference!), and many times, I have looked over the giant pan of ready-to-bake macaroni and cheese, wondering the same thing. This time, I decided why not?

I'm sure glad I did. Though the Costco ("Kirkland signature," if you want to be totally accurate) macaroni and cheese takes an agonizing hour to cook, it is one of my favorite macaroni and cheese dishes out there.

It has plenty of flavor, plenty of salt, nicely substantial noodles, and is an all-around crowd pleaser. I don't really have anything bad to say about it, although I guess it can be improved by adding more shredded cheese to the top, which we've done every time we've had it.

All in all, I rate it a good 2 Happy Noodles, because why not?

The Mood Noodle rating system is not based on a fixed scale, but is a much more subjective system based on what makes me happy and what makes me sad.
Any number of happy noodles and comparatively few sad noodles constitute a good rating.

Ask a stupid question

All my working life, I have been dealing with stupid questions. They mostly come from people who are too lazy to follow directions.

For example, when I worked for a recycling nonprofit, I fielded all the inquiries that came through the contact form. At the top of the form, we had posted a list of questions we could not answer. Of course, this did not stop people from asking those same questions on a regular basis. I started compiling a list of the dumbest questions so that I could eventually blog about them, but I always chickened out, afraid it would cost me my job...and sometime since I left the job, I lost the list.

I get a few eye-roller questions here at my current job (though I think I've intimidated most of our users into thinking twice before sending me a question). But by far the stupidest questions I get nowadays are from my potential guests on Airbnb. In my listing, I describe my living situation and the surrounding area in great detail. Almost any question that people could think to ask about my accommodations is answered. I post at the top of my listing a plea (in capital letters!) for people to read the whole listing before asking a question or making a booking request. But almost every day, I receive an inquiry from some lazy oaf who wants to know how close I am to the airport and DC and public transportation (see section "Getting Around") and how much the room costs (see first line of listing). I get complaints from guests who were not expecting me to have pets, even though I have dedicated a whole paragraph to explaining about the dog, the rabbit, and their respective shedding habits, and I include a picture of them both in the photos section.

I list my room at the lowest price in my metropolitan area (It costs approximately as much to stay in my house with a private room, an outfitted bed, a kitchen, free towels, and central heat as it does to rent a campsite and bring your own tent). But just yesterday, I got a singular inquiry from a potential guest from Viet Nam wanting to know "Can you give me more discount for Vietnamese?" This person also wanted to know whether I was close to DC. Well, with two stupidity strikes against them, I didn't even want their money. I declined their inquiry without another word.

The moral of this story is, if you were contemplating asking someone a question today, contemplate this first: When the answer is right under your nose but you refuse to look for it, you're only sending the message that you value your own time more than that of the person you're asking—hardly the right way to begin an interaction. If you can do just one thing to make this world a better place, it's to do your research before you ask a question. Oh, and if your question is about whether you can get a discount for being Vietnamese, better to not ask at all.

Starbucks Redux

Ages ago, early on in my cookie-reviewing career, I did a little piece on the Starbucks chocolate chunk cookie, in which I concluded that Starbucks cookies were good, but no longer worth their price.

Recently, having come into possession of a Starbucks gift card and not being a coffee drinker, I had no choice but to enter a Starbucks and acquire some cookies for a re-review.

I can confidently say now that they are still not worth their price. They have gone up to $2.15 per cookie (including tax, or 1.95$ without) and have actually decreased in size. Now they just barely meet the 10cm diameter threshold necessary to qualify as a "Giant" Cookie. This puts their mass at just 71 g each, and their price at 3¢ per gram—about as high as Giant Cookies go.

As for their eating experience, however, they are still pretty satisfying—definitely better than the last time I reviewed them, which was partly, I think, due to a bad batch. The flavor is delicious, the texture is still pretty close to perfect, and the chunks of chocolate are still huge and wonderful. I conclude this review by saying I still won't be dipping into my pockets for Starbucks cookies on the regular, but I definitely won't mind using up the rest of my gift card on them!

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Macaroni and Cheese from Nelly's

As one of my Facebook friends kindly pointed out in a mass post, I have been attending a lot of sporting events with my boyfriend lately. This is not because I enjoy them—I'll make that perfectly clear—but because everyone must make concessions in the name of a happy relationship. Speaking of concessions, have you ever bought food at a sporting event? You probably shouldn't. Whether at a stadium or at a bar, the choices are fried, fatty, or, well, that's about it. Now I love me some fried pickles, but after eating them every time I set foot into Hard Times Cafe to keep my boyfriend company while he indulged in football, I was ready for a break.

So we went to a different sports bar this Sunday: Nelly's in DC. Their menu was notably lacking in fried pickles, but featured my favorite alternative: macaroni and cheese! I ordered it. Here's a review.

When the plate first arrived in front of me, I was cautiously optimistic. A thick golden layer of what appears to be real cheddar is always a good start. Underneath the top coat, the sauce was suspiciously liquidy, arousing my worst fears of synthetic cheez, but the top coat was so perfect that I really didn't mind.

I loved it. It even had a little greenery to add aesthetic value. Nice, though non-nutritive, touch.

Flavor-wise, it was also pretty tasty. Everything a macaroni connoisseur could ask for.

My one complaint was that the noodles were a little softer than I like, but not inedible.

The really standout thing about this mac & cheese was that it tasted good even as a 4-day old leftover. I microwaved it on a styrofoam plate (hello, cancer!) and then gobbled it up shamelessly.

I rate it one happy noodle for best sports bar macaroni yet, and one happy noodle for cheese overload, and one sad noodle for being a little mushy.

The Mood Noodle rating system is not based on a fixed scale, but is a much more subjective system based on what makes me happy and what makes me sad.
Any number of happy noodles and comparatively few sad noodles constitute a good rating.