When Life Gives You Lemons...Make Snickerdoodles

In my estimation, cookies are best when they are still warm from the oven. You know, that stage whereby they are cool enough to hold together when they are handled but warm enough that you can still smell them from the next room. Disregarding all sensibility, I behave as if they impart fewer calories during that small window of time before they become a cool, crisp, forbidden entity. In fact, that is the only time I will partake of chocolate chip cookies; when the brown sugar dough has melded into a chewy goodness that is interspersed with chips that are melted and oozing.

Baking cookies is one of my favorite pastimes. I not only feel a sense of accomplishment from it, but it also serves as a sort of security. When I am bored or anxious, sad or celebratory, preoccupied or reflective, I bake. The physical motions of measuring and mixing are deeply ingrained and mechanical so that I can either focus on what I am doing as a temporary mental diversion or let my hands take over and immerse myself in meditation as I work. Either way, the result is delicious.