I'd Like a Large Cookie
have two of these instead
NOSTALGIA / BAKING / AFFLUENCE
Here’s a thought experiment inspired by my youth coupled with my developed interests. My Mom loved to bake and was remarkable at creating repeatability. When you make cookies, at the tail-end of a recipe, there is always a sentence fragment akin to “makes about 2 1/2 dozen”. When Mom would make chocolate chip cookies or any other kind, they always came out the same. They were CONSISTENTLY great. They also were CONSISTENTLY the same size! There was never much of a reward for scouring and assessing the cookies when Mom might say you can have two because I don’t want you to spoil your dinner. There was rarely an outlier on the wire rack that your eyes jumped out and screamed, take me I am a BIG COOKIE.
I love to measure things out and hence cookie making is a task built for me. I fret about the actual temperature of the oven, whether the flour should be measured for volume or mass, are the eggs at room temperature, and the butter is soft. While I wasn’t paying that close of attention, I never saw Mom doing those things. I think, for me, they are required because that is what makes me happy.
Unlike Mom, however, I am more prone to measuring everything before starting and having a bunch of cups and bowls full of the components required. Mom seemed to be able to just put them together without the extra drama. Needless to say, my “process” likely ends up leading to more mess. I also believe the sprawl of a modern home has led to a spread-out room that is a two-edged sword. The extra convenience of an island or wrap-around counters can certainly make things easier. In my case, it can also lead to an amazing amount of things to tidy up even after a simple preparation of some cookies. When I think back to the size of our kitchen growing up, and what got accomplished, the productivity number was impressive. Lucky for me, we have an indispensable appliance called a dishwasher which Mom got along without.
I remember reading a very funny story once about affluence. The study in question was that the more you spent on an appliance, especially a range or a refrigerator, the less it would get used. The implication was when someone begins raving about their dual-fuel cooking apparatus with internet connectivity,and dual ovens, it is possible that if you were to open the range you might find the shipping cardboard still wrapped around the shelf while many takeout preferences would be magnetized to the “no-fingerprint” stainless refrigerator.
That story reminds me of another example of the same thing I think. One of my brothers, J, has had a wonderful career in the automobile industry. Work has taken him all over the world and his experiences are fun to talk through. Once, on a phone call, we were talking about off-roading. He worked for a company that made the very best and most capable off-road vehicles. One of the fun takeaways from the conversation was not about how competent a given vehicle was at off-roading but rather, what was the actual percentage of people who EVER took their capable all-terrain vehicle off of the pavement in the first place! If I recall correctly it was in the single digits. It was similar to the dual-fuel range I am afraid. If the manufacturer had included some shipping cardboard around the 4-wheel drive assembly, the second owner might find the component “factory-new”. Following along with that reasoning, while I doubt that capability versus usage is inversely proportional, I can imagine someone in a 2 by 4-foot closet somewhere having built an efficiency station for making cookies with high productivity. Perhaps they might be dressed as elves. Mom managed to make great cookies all the time without much fanfare, in a small space, and with equipment that she was familiar with. In our modern world, a color-coordinated KitchenAid mixer is a pre-requisite on a wedding “gotta have lists”. I wonder how often they are used or are they merely meant to make a statement on the counter?
Tangent complete, back to cookie talk. Our creative writing group is meeting again soon. The last time we all met someone brought caramel apples of the finest quality. I think that I will bring some cookies for no other reason than they are fun to make and it seems to be part of being in this group. If I share this article with them, perhaps they will comment on the uniformity of size and shape. I hope they taste good too. As a diabetic, I have validated that while I of course still like cookies, I like MAKING them even more. Now that it is fall, is there a better smell than ginger cookies? If there is, I imagine it might be some other cookie.
Hope you enjoyed today’s post. Here is a song that’s content-allegiant but did not quite satisfy my need for a song. It will have to do unless someone out there has a better song about cookies.
Who are you more likely to see out on the water, a person with an expensive “fancy” canoe or someone with a more ordinary, less expensive canoe?