Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!

Yes, that's me. Yes, my love of chocolate chip cookies started early.

Y'all, TODAY is Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. 

If you know me AT ALL, you know this might as well be my birthday. Sure, I have a thing for s'mores, but there is only one dessert that lives in my heart and that dessert is the chocolate chip cookie. It is my favorite food. Period. 

When I was pregnant with Griffin, my blood pressure spiked in the last couple days of my pregnancy. My midwife made it very simple for me. No sugar. No salt. Vegetables and lean meat. Luckily, my blood pressure went down but life without chocolate chip cookies (ESPECIALLY when you are nine months pregnant!) is not really life. Obviously, Griffin agreed because he arrived only a few days after I started the diet. 

I gave birth to my firstborn child. I kissed his sweet face and then I said one thing.

"I want a chocolate chip cookie."

When we completed the Whole30, I felt great. I felt free of sugar and processed food. And yet...the last night of the 30 days I walked into my kitchen and made myself the most perfect, most delicious chocolate chip cookie of all time and felt even better.

My preferred chocolate chip cookie recipe after YEARS of research is Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe adapted by the New York Times. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Jacques Torres

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons

(8 1/2 ounces) cake flour

1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract

1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)

Sea salt. 

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Is this recipe ridiculous? YES. But is it the best? YES!

In a pinch, you can make a skillet cookie. If you’re feeling healthy, you can make these paleo chocolate chip cookies, which I also love. 

Just celebrate Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! Because if chocolate chip cookies aren’t worth celebrating, NOTHING IS.

The Reality of This Moment by Leo Babauta

This was originally published on zenhabits and it was so incredibly beautiful I wanted to share it here. 

As you sit here reading this, pause and expand your awareness beyond your computer/phone … what is the reality of this moment?

You’re reading, and there are a bunch of other tasks you want to do on your computer, yes … but there’s also your body. How does that feel? There’s the area around you, perhaps some people around you. There’s nature nearby.

Take a pause to become aware of the actual reality of this particular moment.

As we go through our day, we’re often stressed because of all the things we have to do, the things we’re not doing. We worry about how things will go in the future, and procrastinate because we’re afraid of an overwhelming task. We feel we’re not good enough, we compare ourselves to others, we fall short of some ideal. We replay a conversation that already happened.

That’s all in our heads, but it’s all fantasy. The reality of this specific moment is that you’re OK. Better than OK, actually: there are so many good things to be grateful for, in this moment.

And there are the particulars of the moment that only exist, right now. The combination of sounds and colors and shapes and smells around you will never exist in this particular combination ever again. The way your body feels, the thought that pops into your head in the next moment, will never exist again, ever.

You yourself are changing all the time. We think of ourselves as one unchanging entity, but the self that you are right now is different than the one you were before you read this article. And that was different than the one who woke up this morning, because various things interacted with you to change you in small (or large) ways.

So the you that exists right now will change in a moment, from interacting with the particulars of the next moment. The you that exists right now will never exist again.

This is the ever-changing, impermanent nature of you. And in truth, every single thing around you is changing all the time, sometimes in less obvious ways. Everyone around you is changing. Each moment is a fluid snapshot of impermanent changing entities, interacting with each other.

That’s the reality of this moment. Don’t miss it.

And this awareness is available to you all the time. Throughout the day, as you start to worry and get lost in your tasks, ask yourself, “What’s the reality of this moment?”

Why I Love the Britax Pioneer 70

I'm psyched to be on Salt & Nectar today reviewing the Britax Pioneer 70. Huge thank you to Curt Stewart at Emerging Media Productions for helping me with my first video review!