Cookie monsters

"A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand."

Barbara Johnson

Dessert first

Because life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

On having it all

"To me, having it all - if one wants to define it at all - is the magical time when what you want and what you have match up. Like an eclipse. A perfect eclipse is when the moon is at its perigee, the Earth is farthest from the sun, and when the sun is observed near zenith. I have no idea what that means. I got the description off a science website, but one thing is clear: It's rare. This eclipse never lasts more than seven minutes.

"Personally, I believe having it all can last longer than that. It might be a fleeting moment - drinking a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning when the light is especially bright. It might also be... a three-hour lunch with my best friend... Having it all definitely involves an ability to seize the moment... It can be eating in bed when you're living on your own for the first time...

"Having it all are moments in life when you suspend judgment. It's when I attain that elusive thing called peace of mind.

"Not particularly American, unquantifiable, unidentifiable, different for everyone, but you know it when you have it.

"Which is why I love bakeries. Peace descends the second I enter, the second I smell the intoxicating aroma of fresh bread, see apricot cookies with scalloped edges, chocolate dreams, cinnamon and raisin concoctions, flights of a baker's imagination, and I know I am the luckiest person in the world. At that moment, in spite of statistical proof that this is not possible, I have it all. And not only that, I can have more."

Delia Ephron in "Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.)"

Winter white chocolate

White Chocolate-Cherry-Carrot Cookies

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups (packed) light brown sugar
1 Tbsp. mild honey
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup toasted chopped macadamia nuts (optional)
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped into small pieces, or white chocolate chips
1 cup finely grated carrots

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the rack in the center of the oven.

Sift together the flour with the baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter, brown sugar, honey and vanilla until smooth. Add the eggs and mix until well combined. Scrape down the bowl.

On low speed, add the cherries, nuts and chocolate. Scrape down the bowl.

Stop the mixer and add one-third of the flour mixture. Turn to low speed and combine. Stop the mixer again, add the rest of the flour mixture, and combine on low speed.

Add the carrots, and mix on low speed until incorporated. The batter will be stiff.

Using a standard ice cream scoop or a heaped tablespoon, drop batter in mounds, 2 inches apart, onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet. Makes approximately 24 cookies.

Weihachten in Deutschland

"There is no better place in the world to celebrate Christmas than in Germany. No country I know takes it more seriously. And no other place on earth is still able to infuse the holiday with such a sense of solemn tradition and beauty. Weihnachten in Deutschland still retains a sense of the sacred and the divine.

"Maybe it starts with the run-up to Christmas, the four Advent Sundays beforehand filled with endless afternoon teas with friends, crunching through all manners of homemade Christmas cookies or moist Stollen or dense fruit bread. 

"Perhaps it's because tradition here dictates that the Christmas tree not be decorated until the day before Christmas Eve, drawing out the thrill until the very last moment. 

"Maybe it's the brass bands at Christmas markets or the Christmas markets themselves, all lit up and smelling of warm Gluhwein and sausages. 

"Or perhaps it's the candlelight. In Germany, people still put candles, lit candles, with actual flames, on their trees instead of electric lights. (A bucket of water for emergency dousing lurks behind every tree.)"

Luisa Weiss, in "My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes)"

Boo

Because it is Halloween.

Sugar bomb

Would you like a cookie with that frosting?

Cookie coincidence

I could not let the moment in Manhattan Beach pass without a picture.

Sweet Madeleines

I am not certain how it is pronounced, but the kouing aman from Les Madeleines patisserie and cafe in Salt Lake City is interesting. The French pastry is crispy and buttery, sticky and sugary.

Chicks and bunnies

Because it is Easter.

Chocolate-chip forgiveness

"This is my Amelia Bedelia solution. After she had 'drawn' the drapes, 'stolen' home plate, or baked a sponge cake of dish sponges, the naive housemaid of my childhood library visits, when faced with a list of her trespasses, would always produce a surprise plate of perfect chocolate-chip cookies in the end, and all would be forgiven..."

Michelle Maisto, writing in "The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love."

Cake love

"I could kill for cake. Here's the list: 1 carrot cake, 2 cheesecakes, 3 chocolate cakes, 3 slices of fruit bread, 9 slices of fruit cake, 2 slices of birthday cake, 2 slices of Pret a Manger pecan pie, 5 slices lemon cake, 1 apricot tart, half a ricotta tart, 5 fairy cakes (once you start you can't stop), 2 battenburg and a slice of walnut pie. Not bad, until you add it to the 32 biscotti, 8 flapjacks, 4 Jaffa cakes, 500g pan forte, 2 madeleines, 14 double choc chip cookies, 4 meringues, 12 amaretti and a fortune cookie, which I promptly spat out.

"I have separated puddings and cake for obvious reasons (put them together and I sound like Billy Bunter). Anyway: 3 chocolate banana fritters (which I didn't want but Ruth Watson made me eat), half a pannacotta with passion fruit, 2 mouthfuls of zabaglione, 1 apple crumble and custard, 4 plum crumbles and custard, 1 blueberry tart, 1 apricot tart, 1 raspberry tart, 1 lemon tart, 1 fig tart, 1 gooseberry tart, 6 mince pies, 1 prune tart, 1 plum pie, 5 portions of trifle and a summer pudding. On the ice cream front I managed to get by with only 2 tubs of vanilla ice, 2 of orange sorbet, 1 portion of rose, 2 of pear, and 500ml of mango. Oh, and I almost forgot, 2kg of chocolate ice cream."

Nigel Slater, in the article "Last Year I Ate...," anthologized in Bonnie Marranca's "A Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food."

Is it any wonder I love him?

Meeting for lunch

Google might have cut back on afternoon tea for its employees in Mountain View. But during its annual meeting at corporate headquarters, the company still offers an impressive lunch buffet for shareholders who attend.

In addition to items such as salad greens and hard-boiled eggs, we have an orange couscous salad, and a Greek pasta salad with olives and artichoke hearts.

We have bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin, rotisserie chicken, and mini pot roast sandwiches. We have crab cakes with little to no fillers. We have asparagus, macaroni and cheese, and corn and lima bean succotash. We have so-called raw lasagna layered with thin slices of zucchini and "cheese" made from macadamia nuts. We have strawberries and fresh-cut pineapple.

For dessert, we have eclairs, white chocolate chip and cranberry cookies, berry cobbler, and IT'S-ITs packaged with the Google logo.

I'm sorry. Is the CEO talking? Is there investor business to conduct?