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This week I fell into a dark hole of oatmeal cookies. My kitchen is overflowing from the batches I made. I have bags of baked cookies on the counter and bags of frozen scoops of cookie dough in the freezer. I had so much that I left a full bag of cookie dough scoops in my neighbor’s freezer when I went over to water their plants. All versions have been good but I can’t land on the one I like best. I keep going back and forth between a traditional doughy oatmeal cookie and a thin crispy cookie. The thin crispy cookies are what I like to call cookie brittle. Super thin with high sugar content that caramelizes when baked. This leaves the cookie extra crispy and they snap when crunched into.
I’ll eat a freshly baked thin cookie and love it. Then I eat the more traditional version and love it too. Both have toasted oats and pecans but one is soft and one is crunchy. Soft and crunchy are both great. How do I decide on one cookie?! This is all I have thought about this week. SOS!
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Wing It Recipe
We lost power for half a day this week after a tree branch broke some wires in our neighborhood. It’s amazing how much we rely on electricity. I couldn’t work on my newsletter, the Peloton needs power, and my stove actually needs electricity. So I took a trip to our neighborhood store to charge my phone and kill some time. I picked up a few limes and a melon. When I got home I realized I already had a melon but that wasn't a problem. I used both cantaloupe and honeydew to make a Melon Salad. This is a no-recipe recipe that is fantastic any way you make it. Don’t leave out the fish sauce. I know it may sound weird but it brings necessary flavors to the dish. Enjoy!
Melon Salad
Honeydew, cantaloupe, and/or any other soft flesh summer melon
Basil, mint, and/or cilantro
Lime juice (a lot)
Fish sauce (A little, I mean it. A tiny splash.)
Olive oil
Chili flakes (Gochugaru are my fav)
Flakey salt
Add lime juice, fish sauce, and chili flakes into a large bowl. Scoop pieces of melon into the bowl and toss. You could cube the melon or get fancy and use a melon baller but it doesn’t really matter. I like the organic look of irregular scoops and they will get eaten in five seconds anyway. Let the melon chill for 5 minutes.
Add a bunch of torn fresh herbs. Any kind you have! Toss to evenly distribute them and transfer melon salad to a plate.
Drizzle with good olive oil, more chili flakes, and flakey salt. Enjoy!
Stuff to Read
If you eat eel (unagi) this is a fascinating article about illegal eel smuggling and the crazy global black market eel business.
Young Salmon Are Traveling by Truck Instead of Swimming, Due to Deadly Water Temperatures 😢
Recipe Inspo
Listen To This
If you don’t want to read the article above about eels, you should listen to Extra Spicy covering the article.
Thing Everybody Needs
The Gray Kunz Spoon. Okay, this is a spoon…an amazing spoon. It is deep, holds 2.5T, and has the perfect size handle. I grab it for everything. Spooning a sauce, plating, stirring, serving, etc. It really is the perfect spoon.
You can see it in the Melon Salad above.
Animal Cuteness
My favorite neighborhood cat, Banjo.
The trauma from this cookie development makes me never want to work on a cookie recipe again. Besides a carrot cake cookie. That I absolutely need to make.
See you next week, M.