I am not a cook. There was a period where I tried, and by tried I don’t mean I just made pasta and called it a day, but that I found seafood recipes that sounded simple and delicious, bought the ingredients ahead of time and prepared meals for me and the man I would come to call my spouse. He was polite about it at first (though there was more than one occasion where we had to throw the meal out and order in), but he finally politely asked me to please stop.

That said, I always thought I could bake a mean chocolate chip cookie. I did it with my mom as a kid, and I did it (decades later) with my own kids.  So all in all, I’ve probably baked cookies 10 times in my life. Maybe 12.

Tomorrow is older kid’s birthday and I decided that I would do what 98% of other people do and bake (and not buy) her cookies to take in to school to celebrate. (Note: Spent $30 on chocolate chip cookies for younger kid’s class on his birthday. Even I thought that was kind of lame and I will throw money at any potential difficulty I see heading my way.)

Here are the things that have happened since this home-ec decision:

After making sure I had all the ingredients, I discovered that our brown sugar was hard as a rock. There is a store on our corner that sells brown sugar, but I was determined to use *this* brown sugar. I googled it and what do you know? There are ways to soften the sugar/ Mt. Everest of granules I was dealing with. Also, I am clearly not the first person to encounter this situation which is often the case when I cook. The solution to rock-hard sugar involves microwaving it with a moist paper towel for 20 seconds. Except in my case, it was more like 100 seconds, but lo and behold, it worked! Or it kind of worked. I did notice there were some hard chunks left, but I thought – so what?

Here’s what: Making cookies with pebbles in the mixture is not a good idea. I learned that the hard way.  Feeling smug about knowing exactly where the beaters were despite not having used them in possibly the year we have lived in this apartment, I attacked the sugar/butter/salt mixture. I admit that almost right away, I heard some weird sounds (like something inappropriate slash terrible going into a vacuum cleaner), but I ignored and persevered with the task at hand. Realizing their sound effects were not enough, the beaters started to protest further by coming out of their sockets. I ignored that attitude problem and shoved them back in. Nine year-olds do this, I told myself.  Then the sugar and beaters worked together and decided that they didn’t really care that 9 year-olds can make cookies. This was me, and things were different. Moments after being pushed back into their rightful location, the beaters said “fuck it” and just gave up altogether. As in, they stopped working. Completely. Together, in cahoots.

I was not going to let the stupid, attitudinal beaters defeat my mission, so I decided to use sheer manpower. I work out, people. So I used a spoon and my biceps/forearms and maybe triceps and pecs to mix in the eggs and flour/baking powder.  As a PSA of sorts, this gets four all over your entire kitchen/apartment and involves using your abdominals.

But the ab/arm work paid off. The mixture was (mostly) smooth. I looked around pleased, making sure the beaters knew I was the boss. Then I saw the chocolate chips which still needed to be mixed in. That was not pleasant as I was already stretching post work-out.

In conclusion:

I still won –  the cookies got did.

If anyone complains in any shape or form about any of the above – state of kitchen/taste of cookies OR insists the beaters still work (and gets them to function again), I will go crazy Rambo/Shining style on their heads.

People better compliment the hell out of these cookies.

The batter still tasted fabulous.