On 8-legged neighbors: a digression

The Pacific northwest is a pretty spidery place. We don't really have a mosquito problem, or a lot of other "buggy" issues that seem to plague the rest of the country (at least here in the city, anyway), so we're lucky there. But we have got SPIDERS. Lots of 'em. Which I guess probably is related. But I digress. Around this time every year, these spiders are suddenly ginormous. Like, ridiculous big momma spiders. Prior to living out here, I had a firm conviction that the biggest spiders could be found in Harrisburg - my office was on the 10th floor, and even up there they'd have these whoppers (on the outside of the windows, thankfully). There were urban myths that these spiders were some sort of mutant, a descendant of the spider victims of the Three Mile Island disaster, as TMI isn't that far from Harrisburg. Whether this was true, I don't know, but my first season in Portland trumped all those spiders. I've mostly gotten used to it now, but every so often we have these whoppers a little too close for comfort. This morning, I went out to water my plants (we've had something like .02 inches of rain over the past 53 days or so), and stopped dead in the doorway - the spiders, the big hosses, are here - and they're setting up shop in my bamboo, which a) needs watering and b) is awfully close to my door. This is bad on so many levels. One of them is hanging out on a web that spans both, so it's just chilling in midair and you can't see the web if you don't look carefully. CREEPY. 

This one is currently MIA - the web is still there, though. This was yesterday, from the other side of the plant. [UPDATE: it's back - it wasn't there when I was out watering, but has since returned.] It's worth noting that these are not your little bamboo branch - they're a good 6' high with a decently wide span. Hard to dodge and very thirsty. 

I consider myself pretty comfortable with the outdoors and the life therein...but spiders, man...I saw Arachnophobia at an inappropriately young and impressionable age, and I think I'm still scarred. 

On grandparents and cookies

I've been thinking about my grandparents a lot lately, as I've passed a few anniversaries in the past couple of weeks. August 29 would have been my paternal grandmother's 100th (!) birthday - more about her in a moment - and September 3rd was the anniversary of my maternal grandfather's passing, in 2001. I'll always remember that year, mostly because I lost count of how many people said on the 11th of that month "at least he didn't have to see this." I agree on the one hand...but then again, I'm of the belief that people never really leave us. But, whatever works, I suppose. Anyway, entirely too serious for this blog. Point is: I've been thinking about them, as well as my maternal grandmother, who was my last remaining grandparent, and passed earlier this year.

Of those three, I have fairly stereotypical food-related memories of them. Of my grandfather, I have zero memories of cooking occurring - and assume he never did, outside of frozen meals on various occasions. He was of that generation - no surprise. His wife, my grandmother, also factors into my cooking memories in a limited way: frozen fish sticks, Campbell's Chicken Noodle...which I loved at the age she was making them for me, so not a problem there. But as far as I can remember, her cooking was like what I see by the wives on Mad Men: frozen, canned, etc - the modern miracle of prepared/convenience food, allowing her to get out and about during the day. One huge exception was her pizzelle cookies: amazing, thin, delicately crispy. How she mastered those tricky things while strenuously avoiding other kitchen activity, I don't really understand. At this point, one wonders where my mother learned her cooking skills, which I've referenced here before. Two sources: Mrs. Bacceliere, who lived next door to my mother's family and - despite not being Italian herself - had mastered Italian comfort food like nobody's business; and my father's mother. Two crucial things were passed down by way of these women: my mother's unbeatable red sauce recipe from Mrs. Bacceliere, which I feel I have mastered and don't know if I can bring myself to share here; and - related - the orange dutch oven you see in so many of my pictures: it was a wedding (?) gift from my grandmother to my parents, and was passed to me after many years of use. I think this makes it well loved, and am unconcerned with the small places where enamel has given way to cast iron.

Anyway, my paternal grandmother. Aside from the many culinary bits she taught my mother (and I wouldn't even know where to start with the list), she also was known far and wide (not really exaggerating there) for her Toll House Cookies. These are no ordinary chocolate chip cookie, you understand. Yes, there's a recipe on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag - but Grandmom tweaked it, and then put her own spin on it, and had it down to a science. These tweaks and spins were such that after she passed in the early 1990's, various family members - myself included - spent years - YEARS - trying to match her cookies. Some have mastered it...I never did.

The thing with these cookies, see, is that it's such a simple and short-cooking recipe that little things will completely throw it off. For example, every time I move I have to learn the recipe all over again, as the variations between ovens & climates are enough to render the previous settings useless. That said: I hesitate to say this and throw it off entirely, but I think I've figured it out here in my Seattle apartment with its electric range. I tried last week, on Grandmom's birthday, and made a total mess of them. But I tweaked, and tried again tonight...and it seems to have worked out! There are some who would say not to share a family recipe like this, but the thing is that my version, which was second hand via my aunt to begin with, has now been adjusted again. You will have to retweak it for your oven and will probably adjust other things as you don't have a set taste stuck in your memory like I do.



Important Note: these are different from chocolate chip cookies. They aren't fluffy and floury, and they're a little salty, a little thin, a little chewy. That's how they're supposed to be. That's also why they're tricky.

Grandmom's Toll House Cookies, version 2.4.5.745

Ingredients

• 2 cups + 3 tbsp sifted flour (*note from your blogger: original recipe had 4 tbsp, I changed it to 2, then upped it again.*)
• ~3/4 tsp salt (*note from your blogger: I lowered it from a full tsp with this batch, after EPB noted - accurately - that they were pretty salty. Better now.*)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 sticks margarine (*note from your blogger: this is surprisingly hard to find around here - do your best. Also, I did not use an unsalted version, which may have contributed to the saltiness.*)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed down (*note from your blogger: this is why the saltiness works!*)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 12 oz package Hershey's chocolate chips (*note from your blogger: I know they're called Toll House, but there you go*)

Cream margarine, add white sugar and cream well. (*Note from your blogger: you're going to want to use cold margarine...I'm so used to a room temperature requirement that I did that the first time. It was a mistake.*)
Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda.
Add the dry mixture to the butter/sugar mixture.
Add eggs & beat well.
Add brown sugar. Mix well.
Add vanilla extract; incorporate.
Add chocolate chips and mix. (*note from your blogger: I find that this is way too many chips, so this time reduced it to probably 80% of the package. The cookies spread thin, so the chocolate can be overwhelming.*)

Drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheet (*note from your blogger: greasing failed for me the first time so I switched to parchment...much better.*), do not crowd. They will spread quite a bit and may still bump into each other, but a little of that is okay. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. (*note from your blogger: unless you're in my current apartment, in which case it's 12 minutes 30 seconds. Or my apartment in Harrisburg, where it was 9 minutes. Do a test batch and you'll get there - accept that you'll mangle some of them. It's fine.*)

Recipe Notes: Do not overbake in oven, as they will continue to cook for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before transferring to a cooking rack. Leave them for about 3 minutes before doing so. This recipe can be doubled, and is quite tasty without chips - because not everyone likes chocolate (*note from your blogger: specifically my father and at least one uncle!*)

Good luck, and remember: they're supposed to be thin and chewy...all that brown sugar gives them a molasses-y effect.