The rain is pelting here; it has been for days.  I can hear it, morning noon and night, though the gray cloudy sky obscures any and all sense of time. 

Pitter patter. Pitter patter. Thrap thrap thrap.

The rain keeps coming.

And then the wind.

Whooooo.  Whooooo  whooooo hooooo.

Through our thin walls. 

The Roomie’s room bears the brunt of the howling wind.  Insidiously, it leaks through invisible cracks and seeps into her room.  At night the thrap thrap thrapping and the whoo hooo whoooing make sleep fitful.

Restless sleep.  Not awakened by the commotion, but constantly tapping at our quiet minds. 

What to do in a storm like this?  The inevitable moment of marvel at the giant pieces of hail, piled like snow on our window pane.  The gusting clouds, wooshing through the sky.  For a moment, a hint of blue just peeking through the clouds.  But it’s gone in an instant and the pelting starts again.

What to do?

Bundle.  Huddle.  Keep warm.

Now’s the time for comfort food.  Now’s the time for stewed lentils for lunch and glasses of red wine with pizza for dinner.  Now’s the time for overpriced jars of salsa and corn tortilla chips from the international section to satiate a palate starved for home. 

Now’s the time to wait it out.  ‘Cause vacation is almost here.  And so is California.

I kind of did something embarrassing, guys.  

You know how you’ll do something embarrassing, but by some sort of miracle no one sees it?  You know how it is – you’ll be walking down the street, catch your toe on something and completely face plant on the sidewalk.  You survive - no scratches, no obvious marking to indicate the shockingly high level of your innate clumsiness – and no one even saw.  You could, technically ride it out and never let anyone know what happened.  The universe is totally allowing you this one, amazing out.  But then you see your friend a half an hour later and the overwhelming desire to relate your story completely overtakes you and you find yourself describing, in detail, just exactly how you feel and just exactly how embarrassing the embarrassing thing was. 

Soo, I’m kind of going to do that right now.  Check it.

You know I like cookies, right?  ‘Cause I really like a cookies.  Let’s face it.  I write a blog about cookies.  (ok, and some other stuff, too)

Making cookies in my kitchen is hard.  Cookies are such fickle little fiends anyway.  The ratios have to be right.  The temperature has to be right.  There’s really not much leeway with ingredient modification.  You can’t over mix. 

Like I said, fickle.

I’d say very confidently that I am not a perfectionist in life.  I don’t really mind if my hair isn’t falling just right.  Don’t really care if my outfit is perfectly matched.  Definitely don’t mind going a couple of days with a messy apartment.  I can spend the day in my pajamas without feeling guilty about my extreme laziness. 

But when it comes to baking, all of that goes completely out the window.  Not the pajama thing.  I’m totally cool with baking in my PJs.  But, when I’m baking, I find myself completely committed to perfect results.  I don’t want to make something that’s simply yummy.  I mean, when you combine flour, sugar, butter and chocolate, you can’t really make it taste all that bad.  No, I want my stuff to be excellent.  And beautiful.  I want it to be the kind of thing you’d pay money for. (even though I’m not charging… yet ;))

Point being, I’m a total, freaky baking perfectionist.

Which, essentially means that, here in France, I’m going a little bit crazy.

Here are a few reasons why:

All Purpose flour is not All Purpose flour.  The level of gluten and proteins are not the same.  Everyday flour here in France is closer to say, cake flour.  Therefore the results are unpredictable.

My oven runs hot.  And is not very accurate.

My oven isn’t really an oven at all.  It’s a toaster oven.  The heat circulates inappropriately and sporadically.  Things cook unevenly.

There is no brown sugar in France.  Ok, apparently someone saw a bag once at some store, but for me, let’s face it, there’s no brown sugar.  No lovely caramelization.  No subtlety and depth of flavor.  Every cookie is a sugar cookie. 

Now, if I were a normal person, I’d certainly be able to let these things go.  I’d bake something else.  I’d just eat the non-perfect (but still yummy) cookies.  I’d, you know, buy some disgustingly beautiful and delicious French pastry and call it a day. 

But we all know I’m not that normal. 

So, in my attempts (there’s been more than one) to make perfect cookies, I’ve gone through a few recipes.

This time around, I decided to stop fighting the chocolate chip cookie battle.  Let’s face it, good chocolate chip cookies need brown sugar, and by golly, that just isn’t happening any time soon.  I decided instead to go for an interesting looking lemon cookie recipe that required minimal ingredients and one lemon.  Easy peasy. 

I whipped up the dough (I don’t have a mixer, so I do it by hand).  Popped those lemony babies in the oven and waited.

Like you might expect, they weren’t perfect.  The texture, although chewy and lemony, wasn’t quite what I expected, though I shouldn’t have been surprised, what with all the elements working against me.  But still, they tasted pretty good.

And here’s the embarrassing part of the story. 

I kind of maybe ate more cookies than I should have.

I kind of maybe ate a lot of cookies.

I kind of maybe made myself sick from eating too many lemon cookies.

At first, the logical adult part of me thought that it was food poisoning.  Because surely, I couldn’t have eaten so many cookies as to have made myself unable to move and writhing in pain – could I?  But alas, as the sugar coma set in, I realized that yes, indeed, my pain was the direct result of my own personal gluttony.  Fat Kid to the extreme.  Childish behaviors galore.  Totally embarrassing.

Now I could have suffered in silence and never spoken of it, but I figured it’s more exciting to share.

Like I said, the cookie recipe was just ok.  Maybe I’ll try it when I’m back in California next week (!!!) for the holidays.  Or maybe I’ll just let this whole cookie thing go.

Nah, probably not.

I got this recipe here.  I can't really say how I feel about this recipe in terms of measuring up to my standards, though I can imagine that under better conditions, it's pretty darn good.  I won't even tell you how annoying I find the rest of this website.  Just letting. it. go.

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

Sometimes I eat weird stuff. 

You know how there are classic combinations of foods that go together?   The kinds of foods that you just see togther because they just taste so darn good?  You know,  like... pears and roquefort or turkey and cranberries or green eggs and ham.  Those kinds of foods.  Well, I totally throw those ideas out the window sometimes.  Oh yes, I do.  It's because I'm kind of a rebel.  Don't doubt it.

It's also because I tend to buy vegetables without a strong plan.  So I just need to eat them.  Like this.  I don't know what's going on here, but it's good.  Oh yes it is.

 
Sauteed Zucchini and Tomatoes

(Again, I just eye ball this recipe.  Cook it how you like.)

1 tsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, medium dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 medium tomato (or a handful of cherry tomatoes), diced
1 tsp. dried oregano

In a pan, heat the oil.  Add onion and sautee on medium heat until translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.  Add zucchini, about a tablespoon of water, cover and cook until the zucchini gets tender.  When the zucchini has reached the consistency you like, remove the lid and allow water to cook off.   Add the tomato and oregano and cook until heated through and soft, about 3 minutes.