How to make cookies in 9 hours

At 9AM one morning this week I compiled dry ingredients for my new cookie recipe which I quickly downloaded from my recipe software. Hoping my new software would save me tons of time this was definitely the day to try it out because I had three hours of teaching in the afternoon and three hours of symphony rehearsal that night.

I noticed one unusual ingredient I didn’t have: Northern Beans. “What in the world”, I thought. “OK. I’ll go to the store…no better yet, my son and I will walk to the store. (about a 1-1/2 mile round trip) We both needed to get some exercise and so we enjoyed the beautiful 65 degree California sunny weather. 

 At 12PM I returned to continue my new recipe while eating lunch standing up in the kitchen. The recipe said to puree the beans so I stuck the dry beans in a blender. I soon learned that dry beans don’t  didn’t grind into a flour-like powder, but rather something you could break a tooth on!! So, I decided the recipe must mean cooked beans.

I set my dried bean fragments on the stove at high and went to practice flute while Matthew watched a movie. About 30-minutes later my nose reminded my brain that something was on the stove and my brain sent a quick signal back saying that by now my kitchen was probably on fire! I ran downstairs to see white foam and bean-mush oozing over the top of the pan and smoke billowing up around the stove-top.

 I cleaned up the burnt remains and aired out the house for the next hour. It was time to put son down for a nap anyway and begin teaching lessons. I did manage to start another pot of whole dried beans on the stove before teaching though.  Each parent that walked in my house asked me if I my stove was suppose to be on so I was in no danger of forgetting again either.

When I was done teaching at 5PM I pureed the beans and it looked like white fluff. I revisited my recipe and noticed another problem. It read, “1/2 teaspoon             ” and there was no ingredient to follow the measurement. I decided I had worked too hard for these cookies and I was not giving up. I called the recipe company and asked them what the ingredient was. The man who answered the phone said he was just the software manager for the recipe company, but put me on hold for 10 minutes and then returned to tell me it was cloves. I was starting to get excited about my cookies now.

At 6PM my 4 1/2 dozen cookie recipe yielded 24 small cookies. (Operative word here is small.) If I had made them twice as small it would be a misnomer to call them cookies. Anyway, my son gave me great reviews by gobbling up four cookies in a row. My husband on the other hand said those cookies reminded him of fruitcake. (The last time he had fruitcake was when he was in elementary school and it evidently left a lasting impression because he’s never touched the stuff since.) Anyway, Matthew and I are getting lots of good protein eating our cookies this week, and now you know how to make cookies in nine hours!

So who says being a stay-at-home mom gets boring? I never lack a good story to tell when my husband comes home from work, and even the simplest of tasks can take on a whole new dimension of challenge!