blondies

I’m slowly emerging from the cave. When last I blogged, I had a truly depressing homecoming from a week of travel on business. Since then, I came down with the black plague as a result of that trip. Airplanes are a germ vector, second only to children. I had three days of shivering chills, followed by several days of “merely” a cold with coughing and congestion. There was a four-day span where the smell of food was making me nauseous (or nauseated, for the pedants among my readership), during which I managed to eat some dry toast or ramen noodles with no flavoring. On the plus side, my belt is on its last (first?) notch and still isn’t small enough. I’m sure that won’t last.

The food revulsion finally snapped yesterday. I made a garlic-potato soup from the latest Cook’s Ill. I intentionally halved the amount of garlic, and it was still fairly overwhelming for a weak stomach, but it worked. That’s definitely a keeper recipe, a good autumn/winter soup. Then, just to make a girl happy (since I managed to share my illness with her), I made a pan of blondies. I’ve never had these before, and I made a number of questionable changes to the recipe. Did you know white chocolate is essentially pure cocoa butter (plus sugar)? It’s chocolate, with all of the cocoa extracted. Ick. No wonder I’ve never cared for white chocolate. So, I dropped the white chocolate and replaced it with dark bittersweet chocolate. And I used dark brown sugar instead of light. And I dropped the nuts from the recipe.(1)

Essentially, I ended up with bars of chocolate chip cookies. Which, all things considered, isn’t that bad. More like “brunetties” than blondies. I’m not worried about whether they will all be eaten. 🙂

(1) Did I mention I also had an unplanned dentist visit to deal with a broken tooth? I swear, I’m falling apart at the seams. Or am I just unseemly?