Slow Chef

Watching J. and I cook is quite a sight. Instead of being my “Su Chef”, we have affectionately dubbed him my “Slow Chef” because if his meticulous nature. He’s always precise and unsure of the cooking task at hand, and usually has trouble comprehending the timing of cooking, so I assign his jobs accordingly.

A little history in my own neuroses is needed here. I like to have everything accessible, especially in the kitchen. I also like aesthetically pleasing containers for all things. Sugar doesn’t stay in the brown bag you bring it home in, it goes in a nice Martha Stewart container… as does the powdered sugar, brown sugar, rice, assorted nuts, chocolate chips… and yes, the flour.

Tonight, J. agreed to help me make chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.

After a quick trip to the store to gather the remaining ingredients, I started mixing the sugar, eggs etc... J. was in charge of dry ingredients, ya can hardly screw that up.

Needless to say, the wet ingredients for these cookies were prepared and waiting for a while as he carefully measured exact proportions of cinnamon, flour, baking soda and salt.

Having made white cream gravy the previous week, I noticed that the flour container J. had out looked a little “different”, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with it. The flour was the correct consistency, but was more brown or grey than I remember flower being. I mentioned a time or two, during his project, that the flour looked weird and asked if he was sure it was flour. He reminded me that he had packed into the container very tightly (understatement) so he was 100% sure it was flour.

As my impatience builds… J. is finally ready to begin sifting his mixture of dry ingredients in with my wet ingredients. I again mention how strange the flour looks.

I start to see the wheels spinning in J,’s head, and then a light bulb goes off!...

“I wonder if it’s Bisquick”? he says…

Holy Crap…!

I stop him immediately from dumping the toxic cookie killing mixture into my perfectly creamed sugar, butter and eggs.

We both keel over laughing as we dump what may have made delicious pancakes into the trash, and begin again, this time with actual flour.

Giddy from laughing and trying to finish baking these dang cookies we get to the part where you add the chocolate chips.

J. dumps over a mason jar 1/3rd full of semi-sweet morsels and a few stick to the bottom of the jar. Being the perfectionist that he is, he tries to tell me that the chips are in fact milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet as he tries to knock those few chips free. I sigh, with the beginning signs of exaspiration for our own personal three ring circus and say "they're semi-sweet"

What he wasn’t thinking about, however, was the fact that he was holding a beater fresh from the cookie dough in the same hand, and batter was flinging all over the place as he is explaining his rationale for believing the chips are milk chocolate, not semi-sweet. I roll my eyes and then squeal with laughter pointing out the globs of cookie dough stuck to various containers, the counter, his face etc.

At this point, looking defeated but with a smile on his face…after the Bisquick and cookie dough fling fest, he gives up his one sided debate of milk chocolate vs. semi-sweet and simply says, “…I clearly don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground tonight… so you are probably right....”