Posted by
Sam Heath on Friday, December 08, 2006 3:06:32 PM
The punch line of an old cartoon strip in the funny papers; that while I enjoyed it I was too young to get the point at times. No longer; I’ve now had years to appreciate the fact bachelors are indeed a sorry lot, and having been married am well qualified to distinguish between married and single status. And before critics jump in, I know the dictionary distinguishes between a bachelor and someone divorced. What the dictionary does not tell you is a bachelor is a person that hasn’t made the same mistake once.
Seriously, as though a bad joke isn’t, one of the reasons married men live longer than unmarried is cooking. Despite the hyperbole giving men credit for being the great chefs, it is women who rule in the kitchen. But it is that time of year when the recipe books begin to get a workout for the holidays, and when a friend recently sent me a recipe for chocolate chip cookies it could not but bring to mind my one venture into this mystic domain.
Though not usually funny, I sometimes refer to my bachelor/unmarried way of life that does have its humorous moments. While there are many books about this fascinating subject on the market, there may be room for another. I think I can make a contribution to the body of knowledge. For example, how many married people know why bath towels are rough on one side and smooth on the other? To save on laundry for bachelors, of course. All you have to do is remember which side you used after your last shower and use the other side next. Saves water, detergent, and trips to a Laundromat. For the sake of the delicacy of ladies I must refrain from mentioning some other time and money saving hints of a similar nature.
A visitor to my little cottage in the country might notice the collection of buttons I have on the bookshelf behind my workstation. Simple explanation. I often lose a button on a sweater, coat or shirt and keep them all in a neat pile where sometime after the Rapture or Millennium, whichever occurs first, I might actually get around to sewing them back on. In the meantime, I know exactly where they are.
However, when it comes to cooking even bachelors have to eat occasionally. I'm not really into food as my wiry frame evidences. But I do, on rare occasions, evict the spiders and fire up my stove, an admitted ploy, my approach to the subject attempting to elicit sympathy from the ladies. I know they feel sorry for me and I can use all the sympathy I can get.
I have visions of some lovely woman reading something I have written about my being without feminine influence here in my place and my culinary endeavors and thinking, “That poor man; there must be something I can do to help him?” There is. No, modesty forbids. But aside from cooking, I'm a fairly normal man in some respects and even Batman was constrained to tell Kim Bassinger “There is something else that you have that I want!” And we all know Batman wasn't talking about Kim's attributes in the kitchen. But to return to the subject of cooking (not nearly as interesting as Kim) I wonder if any of you other single men have had the experience of trying to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch?
While the stories are legion about fruitcakes this time of year, some with a shelf life of eons, most people can sympathize with the need for a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie rather than those things in bags at the supermarket filled with objects that make hockey pucks and poker chips seem pliable and tasty by comparison. No, when the craving for a genuine chocolate chip cookie hits you are ready to do anything short of holding up a bakery to get one. The real addict, I suppose, wouldn't even balk at this expedient.
So here I was, faced with the need for the real thing, a cookie fix that could only be satisfied with the genuine article. Being an adventurous and inventive sort, I decided to give this a try.
Well, not having all the exact ingredients, like the lack of chocolate chips, I improvised. A little hard working around the lack of chocolate chips, but hacking up a couple of Hershey Bars and tossing in a few Hershey Kisses with a dusting of Carnation Chocolate Drink seemed to be satisfactory. There were also a few green M&Ms, the gift of a woman with a sense of humor (oh, maybe you haven’t heard of the aphrodisiac effect of green M&Ms?). I tossed them in as well. This might make the batter a tad lumpy, I thought, but I was quite proud of being supplied with chocolate. Very far-sighted on my part.
I'm also used to reading directions and have never joined those pitiful creatures that, after the disaster and all else has failed, read the directions. So I staved off disaster by noticing that the recipe I had scrounged off a bag of candy called for Whole-Wheat flour. What's wrong with the white flour I had on hand, and I'm certain no more than two-years-old at the outside? What have these people got against white flour? Are they prejudiced? What real difference could it make to use white instead of brown flour? Wouldn't the cookies just come out a lighter complexion?
Then the recipe threw me another curve. It called for oatmeal as well as flour! What to do? I had oatmeal (no older than the white flour, I think) but I didn't want oatmeal cookies, I wanted chocolate chip cookies! What was this concoction that called for oatmeal in chocolate chip cookies? Well, to heck with that, I knew what I wanted and I simply increased the amount of flour accordingly.
Butter. I was out of butter. Ah, but I had margarine. Just add salt and presto: Okie butter, right? But the recipe called for salt. How much more should I add to compensate the substitution of my salted margarine for butter? Oh, well, about another smidgen, a technical cooking term I had picked up from one of the truly great chefs, my great-grandmother. I utterly disdained the raisins and walnuts the recipe said I could add. Wonder they didn't say to add dandelions in my now thoroughly suspect recipe.
Mix brown sugar with white sugar? Now what? Another conundrum; why did I have to mix the dry ingredients separately from the eggs and butter (margarine)? Why get two different bowls messy? I'm beginning to suspect that like religion, cooking has its mysteries, which remain such in order to intimidate those who are not members of the priesthood.
But I am not a superstitious person, and I am not going to be daunted by such attempts of charlatans who are trying to bamboozle me with mumbo jumbo and incantations, mystic symbols like lb., oz., cp., tsp. and tbsp. Instead, I mix the whole shebang together in one bowl and start stirring the tar out of the mess. Sometime into this procedure, I look inquiringly at my blender. No, on second thought, I have had my share of disasters with that device. And I don't feel like scrubbing down the kitchen walls again.
Preheat oven? Whatever for? Why waste gas?
Cookie trays— I don't have cookie trays. Why in the world would any self-respecting bachelor worth his salt have cookie trays? I go out to my shed. It is well supplied with materials and tools for doing the usual maintenance and repairs on house and car. Ah, hah! I find some sheet aluminum from a job that required cutting and fitting for replacing some steel sheeting that had rusted out. With a couple of pieces approximating the size my oven could handle, I had that problem licked. But my cookies were taking on dimensions of complexity that equaled a shuttle launch. The directions said to deposit the cookie mixture on the trays in the amount of a tbsp. for each cookie. Thought they had me there but, bright lad that I am, I knew what the mystic symbol, tbsp., stood for. Got 'em!
But this heathen and bigoted list of instructions, symbols and incantations now said that I had to grease the trays before depositing the globs of batter! These idiots say I have to grease the trays before baking! Now I've greased many a car. But grease for cookies? What kind of grease? Bacon, wheel-bearing, axle? Nah, I really knew they meant something like Pam or Crisco. I'd read about the old Crisco parties in the past. But I didn’t have any such grease for the pan. How about WD40 or LPS? I wondered; I had that. Electrical contact cleaner? I even had some bacon grease I had saved in case I wanted to have scrambled eggs and no bacon handy.
No sweat. I'm a good metallurgist having been a tool and die maker. Cookies were not going to stick to aluminum. Besides, I suspected the WD might leave some aftertaste and I wasn't partial to bacon-flavored chocolate chip cookies either though they might not be too bad. No, I wasn't about to risk that after my Herculean efforts up to this point.
A final problem. How close should the dollops of batter be in order to avoid having a single cookie measuring 16 by 16 inches? Being a man used to using precision measuring instruments like micrometers and verniers, I guessed.
Cooking time. Another obstacle. The now hated recipe said 8 to 10 minutes. I checked at 8 minutes. Not done. I checked at 10 minutes. Not done. At fifteen minutes they were done.
Now if you are a normal person of normal curiosity, you are probably wondering how the cookies turned out. Rather than make confession, I’ll leave it to the distaff side to figure out and offer their sympathy. After all, they already know bachelors are a sorry lot.