The day after I made cowboy cookies, eating two of them at my desk in the middle of the afternoon, I told my coworkers that I wasn’t very impressed. The cookies were fine, good maybe, but they weren’t anything that special. A chocolate-chip cookie at heart, they include extras like coconut and nuts and oatmeal, becoming something too complicated and yet fairly simple at the same time. I managed to polish off both cookies, though, commenting aloud that they really were just fine, all while looking down at my plastic baggie, more sad than I’d admit that it was empty.

That was the first batch.

One habit I’ve developed after my experience with the New York Times chocolate-chip cookies is chilling the dough before baking (well, that and forming it all into rounded balls and placing the lot of them on the cookie sheet in the fridge ahead of time, meaning later I can just pull out as many as I want, ready to bake). So the first day I made cowboy cookies was the day I made the batter: I baked about 12 (two sheets).

The second time was a day later, another six cookies. I would have baked more, but I was tired and didn’t want to wait for them in the kitchen. This time, I liked the cookies a little more; maybe they had grown on me or maybe they had changed. It should also be noted, for the record, that the first batch was already gone by this second day.

The final batch I made two (or three? now I’m forgetting) days later, needing to finish baking them all before the dough went bad. The huge benefit of pre-forming the dough is that the baking is SO easy. Literally, I turned on the oven and went to watch TV, then I came back and stuck my cookie sheet with its Silpat and six doughy balls in the oven. Out a batch, in a batch: the kitchen as clean as ever.

This third batch really was the best, less crunchy for some reason and very addicting. For the few days after that they lasted, I got into the habit, unfortunately, of grabbing one every time I would walk through the kitchen, which, truthfully, became more and more often.

These aren’t wow-someone cookies. They’re not especially beautiful or especially hard to make, and, at first bite, you’ll think ho-hum. But wait for the after effects. A few days into these, I swear you’ll wish you still had some left.

Cowboy Cookies
Adapted from the queen of cookies, Martha Stewart

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light-brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
3 ounces (3/4 cup) pecan halves
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you’re not using a Silpat, coat baking sheets with cooking spray, line with parchment, and spray parchment. Sift flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl.

Beat butter and sugars with a mixer on medium-high until pale and creamy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

Reduce speed to low, and slowly add flour mixture, beating until just incorporated. Beat in oats, chocolate, pecans and coconut until combined. (Dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.)

Using a tablespoon, drop dough onto baking sheets, spacing 3 inches apart.

Bake until edges of cookies begin to brown, 11 to 13 minutes. Transfer baking sheets to wire rack, and let cool for 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks. Let cool. (Cookies can be stored up to 3 days.)

When a restaurant sends you a coupon for a free meal, no matter what kind of food or if it’s a chain, you go. No questions asked. That’s how I ended up at FlatTop Grill in Lombard the other night. They send free birthday-meal coupons if you register (so if you’re interested, and near Illinois/Wisconsin/Indiana, go here), which is how my brother got one, and why I went with him for some stir-fry. (Plus, I really didn’t want a certain horrible dining experience to be my latest restaurant memory for too long. I’m nothing if not a try-again eater.)

FlatTop, if you’ve never heard of it, revolves around a concept that’s not especially new: essentially, it’s make-your-own stirfry, where you fill a bowl with your choice of veggies, sauces, meat and give it to the strong men around the grill, who fry it all up for you. It’s a lot like Mongolian Barbeque, if that’s more familiar, but with a few changes.

1) Stir-fry only.
Other menu options, beyond drinks, are just appetizers and desserts. So if you go to FlatTop, you’ll be eating from the create-your-own bar. At the Lombard location, for dinner, this means $12 or $13, depending on if you want seconds/thirds.

2) Go soup/salad, add bread?
The other big difference between FlatTop and Mongolian barbeque is in the additions FlatTop provides. At the end of the buffet, you pick from colored skewers labeled with extras: tofu, scallops, bread (pita). There are even options to turn your mixture into a soup or salad, as well as skewers to signify you have allergies and need your food far away from anything else on the grill. Though it’s not technically required, I’d say you really ought to get the roti prata bread. I loved watching the pitas heat up on the grill, puffing high into doughy, flavorful pillows. And the taste! Flaky, buttery, delicious.





While we were waiting to be seated, I had a clear view of the cooking process, so I watched to see a very organized system at work: bowls on counter, bowls dumped onto grill in rows with their corresponding bowls below, meat/veggie combos poured out, wait—begin with second batch of bowls on other side of grill counter. The guys knew exactly when to turn the pitas and the stir-fry, and they never—not once—burned themselves on the hot surface. That, I’m quite sure, is hard work.



Flat-Top Grill, Lombard
305 Yorktown Center
Lombard, IL 60148
Phone: 630-652-3700
Fax: 630-932-4575
Other locations here

The one good thing about being sick is getting well again, seeing with new eyes all you took for granted. After gingerly eating unbuttered toast, applesauce and chicken noodle soup, you foray back into the world of food, beginning with more substantial soups and buttered rolls, then moving to small portions of meatloaf or candied sweet potatoes, relearning to eat what everyone else is having.

It’s a lot like being a child again, when you’re promoted from milk to pureed vegetables to little bites of normal bread or fruit. Each new food is a taste you’ve not had, a flavor you’ve lived without. And that first bite of banana is so interesting, so different, the feel of it on your tongue, so exciting, that you are thrilled with a world of possibility.





One thing you can say for a banana: it sticks with you, even when you’re coming off a horrible, horrible stomach cleansing. This week, I’ve eaten one almost every day. And, for someone who usually finds the texture of bananas rather unappealing, I really mean that bit about them being exciting now. After 24 hours of nothing special, a banana (and for that matter, a saltine cracker) seemed heaven-sent, which got me thinking: Maybe I should give bananas, in other forms, another shot.

So for a little while this week, I’ve let myself think about a fresh, hot-out-of-the-oven banana bread, soft but sturdy, with substantial slices you could hold in your hand. It would be a tender loaf, cake-like, sweet with the strong, unmistakable flavor of bananas.

Then, appropriately with The Joy of Cooking as my guide, I made one. And from the moment it came out of the oven, as perfect as I had imagined it, all was well again.

I ate a thick end slice immediately, then two more for breakfast, then another the next evening. In fact, I liked the bread so much, I just might scratch what I said first in this post. After all, Banana Bread, this illness brought me you.




Banana Bread
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
5 1/3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup mashed, very ripe bananas (about 2)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8.5-by-4.5-inch loaf pan (or, what I did, line it with parchment paper, letting the paper drape over the sides; this makes removing the bread from the pan very easy, as you just lift the paper, bringing the loaf with it).

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together thoroughly the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar, beating it on high speed until the mixture turns lightened in color and texture. Add the flour mixture to the butter/sugar until the consistency of brown sugar.

Gradually beat in the two lightly beaten eggs. Fold in, until just combined, the mashed bananas.

Scrape the mixture into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes (mine took the full hour). Let cool in the pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.

Saturday night, with the best of intentions, I treated my brother to a belated birthday dinner in Lincoln Park, and before leaving the place, I had become so sick, I’d even made an emergency visit to the men’s room when the ladies’ was occupied and things had gotten, well, urgent. (A consoling factor, perhaps, was the look on the face of the man waiting outside when I exited, which, someday I can hope, will seem very funny indeed.)

I haven’t been this sick since last Christmas, when I had similar symptoms after a nasty chicken salad (which, incidentally, I have not eaten since). I can’t look at a cookbook, I’ve been muting all food-related commercials and, when I tried to skim the blogs in my reader, I almost lost whatever remnants were left in my stomach.

You know things have gotten very bad when you finally have a full day of doing nothing but laying beneath a pile of blankets in front of the television, watching one chick flick after another, and you don’t even enjoy it. Everything, from Steve Martin’s being father of the bride to some teenage girls sharing a pair of traveling jeans, made me cry. I even teared up watching Return to Me, a movie I have seen dozens of times, because I just love those little old guys and their Italian-Irish restaurant, and isn’t it sweet that Minnie Driver’s heart found David Duchovony?

I’m a mess, clearly. For the next few days, aside from a big glass of Pedialyte, chicken broth and a few pieces of plain toast, there isn’t much food on the horizon. Even when I can eat again, it will likely take some convincing to want to.

So take this as an I.O.U., would you? When I return, it will be sans bug, and I think we’ll all feel a little happier.

I know it would be easy to think things are all happy and cookies around here. But between you and me, I have a hard time with this time of year, when the days darken an hour before I leave work and we gear up for the long (snowy! icy! bitter cold!) winter. There are those who would say, fairly maybe, that if you declare autumn your favorite set of months, you have to take it with all its flaws, as well as its gorgeous colors and crisp breezes, caramel apples and cider doughnuts, colorful gourds and adorable pumpkins. That you can’t be a fickle lover, using the season for what it gives you and wishing it away when the good things end.

When every work day I walk to my car in pitch-black darkness, when the weather reports threaten a snowfall, when I eat dinner and want nothing more than to curl up on the sofa with a soft blanket, I tell myself these are the small sacrifices. That, in exchange for dense golden forests and carved Jack-O-Lanterns, I give up a little daylight, a little warmth. That, because fall is so wonderful, winter has to follow. It’s the way of things. You can’t have everything you want or you’d be terribly spoiled, right? You can’t have just the beauties of fall year-round or you’d forget to appreciate them, yes?

I want to be mature about all this. I am trying, all right? I’ve been finding what I like about these darker days—sunny mornings, for example, or the fact that I usually wake up before my alarm. This almost-winter thing isn’t so bad. Plus, there is Thanksgiving on the horizon, and after that, Christmas. Meanwhile, I could use a hug, if not a plane ticket to someplace lovely where I can wait out the next few months. Of course, I’d also settle quite happily for a bite of something delicious. Maybe something pumpkin, as another reminder of fall’s virtues?

















Still on the hunt for the perfect pumpkin recipe, I baked these muffins last night, taken from a Gourmet recipe from 2006. They’re not overpoweringly sweet, more savory in fact, with a moist, moist center and flecks of cinnamon and sugar on top. I wouldn’t say they’re THE recipe, but they’re a step in the right direction. They’re also a whisper in my ear that fall hasn’t left entirely and, that I must enjoy it while it lasts.

Pumpkin Muffins
Adapted from Gourmet November 2006, as seen at Muffin Top

Ingredients:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 15-ounce can of pure pumpkin
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice
1.25 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Put liners in muffin cups of a 12-cup muffin pan.

Whisk together flour and baking powder in a small bowl. In the bowl of an electric mixer, stir together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, 1.25 cups of sugar, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture until just combined, always with machine on lowest setting.

Stir together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.

Divide batter among muffin cups (each should be just over 3/4 full), then spinkle tops with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a knife inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.

Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool to warm or room temperature.