he'll save children, but not the British children

I mentioned back in this post that I needed to make a diaper bag for ourselves. I finally got around to it over the last few days. The plan was to make something with the Dodgers flying baseball thingy on it, but I was out of dark blue vinyl and the place I usually buy it has it on backorder. Instead of being patient and waiting for more vinyl to come in, I came up with a different plan.



I had a big roll of green vinyl that I'd yet to do anything with. A roll of green vinyl that was roughly the color of Washington State highway signs. Hmm.

As you have seen in other posts (here and here and here), I have a faux-fondness for George Washington. Mainly I like this video. Seriously, have you watched it yet? You should. It's funny.

I had my Washington stencil file from the other projects I'd done with it. I'd just need to enlarge it and print it off. Less work than coming up with something new, and I'm quite interested in less work these days. Hmm.

Thus, the George Washington diaper bag was born. We can tell Will that we're all patriotic or something, not that his mom was inspired by a cartoon full of lies about our first president.


He made love like an eagle falling out of the sky.

The fabric I used on the lining was given to me by Nate and Miranda for my birthday a few years ago. I want to use it to make an apron and a few other things, but well...I just haven't gotten around to it yet. But I liked it for the diaper bag. I like George Washington and I also like birds.



Also, I like sleep. I'm going to go get some now.


He'll kick you apart.

NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few weeks ago Nate, my brother-in-law, shared an article from the New York Times about the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie on his Google Reader. A recipe adapted from one of the pastry chefs they interviewed is linked to the article. A few of the baking blogs I read discussed the recipe, and I was craving sweets (as usual), so I decided to try them out.

I only used all purpose flour, as I didn't own and was too lazy/cheap to go buy the two different types of flour listed. Lorne picked up 62% cacao chocolate chips for the recipe. We didn't feel like spending the time (or more money) searching out the fancy disk things used in the recipe either. The most interesting thing about the recipe (and the article) is that they recommend chilling your cookie dough for at least 24 hours, preferably 36. I'm impatient so I started baking as soon as the 24 hours was up. My intention was to bake them all at once, but Will interfered after 12 cookies were done. I didn't get around to baking the rest until it had been almost 72 hours.




I'm terrible at estimation, so when it said to make the cookies the size of "a generous golf ball" I had to get out a golf ball for comparison. The cookie dough tasted amazing. I've eaten a lot of cookie dough and I can honestly say is probably my favorite dough of the chocolate chip variety. I had high hopes when the first six went into the oven.



Unfortunately, I didn't love the first 12 I baked. I mean, they were good, but far from the best chocolate chip cookies I'd ever had. First, they were crispy. Crispy is a good attribute in fried chicken, but I prefer my cookies more on the chewy side. The article and recipe talk about how they'd have three rings - crispy with a chewy interior ring, leading to a soft center - but they were crispy all through. Boo. Second, they were, dare I say, too chocolaty. The dark chocolate is very good, yes, but that's all I could taste. It overpowered the cookie flavor completely.

The good news is that knowing that the first 12 were too crispy for my tastes, when I went to bake the last of the dough a few days later, I turned the oven down a tiny bit and took them out a minute and a half earlier than I had before. The texture on these (the ones I remembered to photograph) was much better. A little crispy on the outside, nice and chewy elsewhere. I also picked some of the excess chocolate chips out of the second 12 cookies as well so I'd be able to taste the cookie better. And the cookie itself was fantastic. So next time I make these I'll probably only use 2/3 the recommended chocolate chips and bake them less time. Also, the salt on the top was yummy.



The recipe: (original recipe is here)

3 2/3 cups minus 2 tablespoons all purpose 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 chips, at least 60 percent cacao content

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 (I did a little less than 18). 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.

The stars at night

Are big and bright
clap clap clap clap
Deep in the heart of Texas!


Lisa wins a coin purse for being in tune with my uterus.

This is Lisa's prize for her freakishly accurate prediction of when Will would be born (seriously, she was off by ten minutes). She and her husband moved to San Diego from Texas a few years before Lorne and I came here, and we met when she befriended me at my last job. Lisa regularly threatens to disembowel anyone that might think about being a jerk to me and is 40 different types of awesome.


An off-center picture of the innards.

I associate Texas with Lisa, then with this clip from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I've trained myself to disassociate it with our current president.

more nursery stuff

Lorne and I bought this rocking chair from an Etsy seller. In keeping with the loose theme of Will's nursery - sports and teams that Lorne and I like - we decided to make it a Husky rocking chair.



Lorne drew the University of Washington's logo W on the seat, and I painted it. Well, I still need to paint the bottom of this and go over the edges of the W so they're more smooth, but who knows when I'll get around to that. =) The purple is a little more purpley and a little less blue looking in real life.



While we both went to UW for our bachelor's degrees, we won't force Will to go there. We'll just force him to watch the Huskies play football for the next 18 years. Hopefully they won't be as terrible as they have been for the last few years.