This could be a fairly substantial wrench in the works of my attempt to live here: Portland destroys chocolate-chip cookies. In the two months (as of tomorrow!) that I've lived here, I have made two batches of chocolate-chip cookies and each time had at least half of the batch stolen from my loving arms by an accident of fate. Portland is for many other things -- donuts, cake, really amazing chocolate-maple torte at the new vegan restaurant on Williams Avenue -- but it is fighting me tooth and nail on my favorite dessert and I do not know if I can live with that.
The first time around my roommate and I made cookies but got lazy and kept half of the cookies in dough form in the fridge. There was a whole ridiculous process involving trying to give a cookie to a boy I like -- me, predictable? -- which went horribly wrong and ended with me accidentally leaving the cookie dough in his car instead. Don't even ask. In any case, it made its way into the fridge of a house I don't frequent, and by now it is either eaten or stale and weird. Information on its condition has not been forthcoming from the consignee and I have decided to write off dough, tupperware, and quite possibly boy as a bad job.
Tonight I have the house to myself. I don't like it much when this happens, actually; I've gotten used to having 49 housemates around at all times and find it creepy to be in a two-story house (we are not even going to discuss the basement) by myself all evening. Goblins, you know, the usual. Plus it's just too quiet and lacking the vague comfortable background noise of not being that dude in the Twilight Zone episode who finds himself the only living person in the world. I digress. My solution to the emptiness, naturally, was to make some cookies to keep me company. This time I located a second cookie sheet and made two batches like a normal person... who forgets that the second batch has been in the oven nearly as long as the first and should not stay in an extra ten minutes. Precisely half of my companion pastries are now hanging out in a sad blackened heap in the trash can.
It may not seem remarkable, but that's because you're not thinking about it logically. I love cookies. I passionately love cookies. I love cookies to the point of inappropriateness. They are kind of the first thing on my mind at more or less all times, including times when cookies are really not supposed to be a priority. (Someday I will probably regret announcing this fact on a blog read by at least three of my ex-boyfriends, but sometimes the truth demands sacrifices.) For me to leave my cookie dough behind, or stop thinking "oh my god cookies soon are they done yet?" long enough to let the cookies burn, indicates something more or less unprecedented in my environment. So I blame the city.
Portland, Oregon: leave your cookies at the city limits. You can get them back from the sheriff when you ride out first thing tomorrow.
Posted by dianna at September 11, 2007 09:48 PMI feel as though there could be an entire nature documentary made on "The Cookie-Related Mating Rituals of the Wild Dianna."
"And now the Dianna approaches her selected mate to give him the cookie of her affection. But she is prevented from conveying it. Having failed in her attempt at cookie transfer, the Dianna returns to her kitchen, dismayed but not disheartened."
Most of my cookie-baking attempts in New York have turned out horribly, thanks in large part to the stupid over-sensitive smoke alarm that starts going off within three minutes of anything being placed within the lit stove. This means I associate cookie-baking with futilely waving a broom above my head for 20 minutes in an attempt to keep smoke away from the alarm and prevent an angry visit from my noise-sensitive neighbor.
Posted by: MoltenBoron at September 12, 2007 07:11 AMAt one of my old houses, the finicky smoke alarm could be persuaded to shut up only by opening the front door and swinging it wildly open and shut for five to ten minutes. It worked like a charm but made us look like bloody fools to the neighbors.
Your documentary may have to be one of those mournful ones about environmental change and the alteration of wildlife habits (soft-focus, wistful narrator voice, interspersed shots of smoggy cities with voice-overs about the disruption of the natural order, et cetera). I've decided that baked goods and sexual tension do not mix and that I will no longer go out of my way to combine them.
Saves on buying new tupperwares, anyway.
Posted by: Dianna at September 12, 2007 10:50 AMI knew I had that visual in my head from somewhere.
Posted by: Dianna at September 12, 2007 11:50 AMI never knew how to spell that before. Now it makes perfect phonetic sense.
Posted by: Dianna at September 12, 2007 02:44 PMbaked goods + sexual tension = kingman special dessert
nom nom nom
Posted by: Elliot at September 15, 2007 02:55 AMThe tactical dance party avoidance team was sorely underrepresented, however.
Posted by: Elliot at September 15, 2007 03:02 AMOoh. See, now I have to start making exceptions -- although I did only say I wouldn't go out of my way to combine baked goods and sexual tension, and the thing about dessert and Kingman and sexual tension is that it just happens without anyone apparently doing anything but innocently waving strawberries that happen to accidentally fall in a pot of melted chocolate. It's a sort of mass hysteria; there's no risk of feeling silly later for trying too hard when you're in a herd of people who all mysteriously and deniably have food and sex on the brain.
Anyway, I see from the message board that not all were pleased with the sitting and sleeping arrangements. Perhaps the tactical dance party avoidance team was simply insufficiently organized?
Posted by: Dianna at September 16, 2007 06:04 PM