Treats for appetites of every size
As you’re reading this, I’m either driving up to New Hampshire or already there, spending four days in the mountains and 100% off the grid to celebrate finishing my second year of law school. So when deciding what to bake this week, I wanted some kind of treat we could bring with us, but still felt hearty enough to eat on the trail. That’s how I landed on spiced oatmeal cookies.
Vacation baking takes creativity. When you find yourself in a condo that lacks anything that could be construed as useful, you have to improvise.
Fact: baking with friends makes Saturday afternoons infinitely more fun. Shout out to the wonderful Laura Bakst for indulging me in my last minute plea for company while I was pretending not to have real responsibilities.
Happy almost Valentine’s Day! In an effort to be festive, I decided to do a themed post before the holiday this week in case you’re not ridiculously busy in the next two days. I realized that I have a bad habit of posting my holiday recipes after the point when they’re useful, so this year I’m pledging to be more proactive.
I don’t think anything wears you out like hiking up a mountain in the snow. Getting up early, layering up, climbing, and slide-walking back down really take it out of you. Though I do think I’m officially a winter hiking convert.
You know you’ve found some great friends when they show up at your apartment, start rooting around in your cabinets, and ask if there’s enough time for them to bake a batch of cookies before taking off on a 6 day vacation sure to be full of kitchen time. That’s what happened on Wednesday when a couple friends from college showed up (Happy Birthday, Marj!).
When your first stop picking up ingredients for baking is the liquor store, you know it’s going to be a good week. And when the recipe calls for a pound of butter (that’s an entire 4 stick box), you know it’s going to be that much better.
Law school exam period is this weird time where days stop having meaning and everything you do is with the goal of simply surviving. I get up, go to the library, come home, sleep, and repeat. It could be Saturday or Tuesday for all I know.
Procrastibaking: the act of baking 4 batches of cookies rather than opening your notes to study for final exams. (Thanks, Pete, for the new word.) That is what I engaged in this weekend.
Everyone needs a recipe that they can make on a moment’s notice with ingredients they always have on hand. That’s not necessarily what I was looking for this week with this recipe, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised when it worked out.