Happy Birthday, the Boyfriend!

Yesterday was the Boyfriend's birthday. For his birthday dinner I made baked salmon, glazed carrots, and steamed broccoli. The Roomie and her Other Half made cupcakes. We sang to the Boyfriend, he made a wish, then we all enjoyed the cupcakes together.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: So did you two have a nice weekend?
Roomie: I was kicked in the face at the football game.
Other Half: My house was broken into and burglarized while I was inside it.
Me and the Boyfriend: Oh.
Roomie: What did you two do this weekend?
Me: We set up Skype.

The cooking fever seems to be catching on. The Boyfriend and his Roommate are interested in boiling a lobster. Sometimes I never know.

The Great Cookie Competition: Peanut Butter Cup Bars

I’m writing this entry in the midst of the carnival-like atmosphere that accompanies game days at Notre Dame. The Roomie is rushing around and yelling into her phone (“a gas grill will NOT fit in my car!”).

“Are you blogging about me?” she yells. She is pivoting in front of the mirror.
“I’m blogging about the bars!” I yell back.
“The bars?” Her face appears around the corner. A freshly-applied ND logo glistens on her cheek.
There is a shrill whistle from the kitchen.
“That’s the water for my coffee,” says the Roomie, startled.
I am trapped under my laptop. The Roomie moves her hands as though she is being attacked by a bee. The Boyfriend gets up. He will make the coffee. Magically the French press will be cleaned.
The Roomie turns back to me. “I went to Finnegan’s last night.”
I blink.
“It was really lame, though,” she concludes.
I stare at her for awhile. She stares at me. Realization dawns.
“Different kind of bars.”

Anyway.

The cookie baking contest happens every December. Two years ago, my white chocolate almond cookies didn’t place at all. Last year my lemon cookies came in second. This is my year!

Despite my momentum, I am taking nothing for granted. I am going to test out many new cookie recipes and perfect some old favorites. I will try to do one batch every weekend, until my school work gets in the way.

Yesterday I made Peanut Butter Cup Bars from the “College Cookbook” given to me by my mom. This book yielded the award-winning lemon cookie recipe. The commentary accompanying the recipe glibly announced, “They are super-easy to make.”

Super-easy.

I must have done something wrong. Incorporating all of the ingredients was a workout. Having achieved my target heart rate just mixing everything together, I wasn’t going to let my fickle, apartment oven ruin my hard work, so my Roomie and I stood guard over the bars, checking them often.

Reader, I burned them.

I won’t blame the deluge of girl talk going on as Roomie and I gossiped in the heat seeping from the oven, because we are proficient in both girl talk and baking. So I blame the oven, the heat-seeping, eavesdropping oven.

I may try this recipe again. The bars taste pretty good, as the Boyfriend kindly pointed out, if you scrape the burned bottom layer off.

It's still my year.



(Photo reproduced without permission from stylishcusine.com).