I was bored, sitting around waiting for an op to be scheduled. Something had to be done, so I decided to make some cookies. For those of you who have done this before, you'll just have to bear with me, because I have never made a cookie in my life. My Grandma in the States used to make them and taught my mother as well. Other than that, the things are simply bought and dealt with in my mouth.

One thing about living in England is everything's incredibly sweet. These people eat sugar with stuff around it and for the most part they taste terrible. I want to cut down on sugar and rarely use it, honey is much better for you because it is not refined (or recolored). For instance, brown sugar is white sugar with a brown dye in it. If it was truly brown, then it would stay brown when crushed—it doesn't. I'm not into 'recipes', so other than the Shakshuka I did, this'll be it.

Carob cookies

I've almost dumped chocolate and have begun using Carob powder. Cocoa has almost as much caffeine as coffee and that too has been dumped in favor of Decadent Decaf, It is produced using the Swiss water method and is 99.9% caffiene free, retaining a lot of flavor. So chocolate chip cookies are eaten in very small quantities as I can also get Carob chips instead if I want them. Looking around the web on how to make softish cookies I came across sites with so much image overload it was ridiculous. Decided to minimize that here.

I remember my Grandma making her cookies and she didn't use a mixer, just a big fork or one of the funny wirey things that look like a light bulb with a handle. She'd stand in her kitchen with the bowl in one arm and her other hand moving rapidly around as she mixed everything up. I did try a mixer and stuff flew all over the place, so abandoned the idea very quickly.

It's pretty simple really: a couple of cups of Bisquik, 1-2 tablespoons of carob, an egg, about a quarter of a cup of melted butter, milk as needed and I spent around 5-6 minutes mixing it all together until thick enough that it was not runny.

Then using a steel pizza pan thingamabob, I slapped the 6 blobs onto it, keeping them seperate. I wasn't looking to have small hard cookies, but soft ones (which is why I used Bisquik). Shapewise was as it happened—my mouth and stomach could care less what shape a cookie is. The oven was set at 375 degrees or if you're in England gas mark 5 (don't ask). Seeing as the things are pretty thick I left them in the oven for about 12 minutes while I did the image of the bowl and fork in Photoshop.

Once out of the oven, the whole thing sat on a board for about 15 minutes. I wanted them to really set after removing them from the pizza pan, with a very thin spatula, and stuck them on a plate to 'cure'.

Back in Photoshop I did the cookies image, wondering how they would taste and if they were cooked all the way through. Finally I made me a cup of coffee, grabbed one of the things and it turned out fine, though I could have put a bit more honey in.

So there we are people, Carob cookies on a shoestring.

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