Oatmeal raisin cookies

Mmm, a delicious golden-brown cookie, studded with scrumptuous bits and pieces. Just what the sweet tooth ordered. I reach for the treat, sink my teeth into its chewy goodness, and FREAK MY SHIT OUT.

Goddamn raisins.

As far as I’m concerned, a raisin is a poor man’s chocolate chip when it comes to an oatmeal cookie (and maybe everything else). I grew up eating my grandma’s cowboy cookie recipe, which my mother invariably burnt every time. However, dunked in ice-cold 2-percent, crispy chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies became sublimely soggy and the Hershey’s bittersweet chips made my little heart beat a little faster.

I have since perfected the recipe and it’s pretty much the only cookie I make. When I’m at a café or friend’s house, I am drawn to the plate of oatmeal cookies. Obviously, those little brown specs are chocolate chips. Why would you use anything else? More often than I’d like to admit, I feel betrayed by the baker, tricked by the bait-and-switch.

Chocolate always bests raisins in the Rochambeau of baked goods.

(photo: levainbakery.com)

Caricatures

Where do I even start?

First of all, a giant bobblehead on a tiny, wizened body is never a good look (just ask Lara Flynn Boyle). Our least-favorite features are blown up like a bad allergic reaction to shellfish, and the person sketching you is often wearing suspenders. Don’t let the sugar rush from the cotton candy cloud your judgment when you are walking down the midway. Your money would be better spent on Whac-a-mole. Do I have to draw you a picture? The only thing that looks worse than your caricature is your caricature after I punch it in its bulbous, pen-and-ink face.

(artwork: created by someone named Emet during lunch when I was an intern in Washington, DC. Clearly, I was bitchy even in 1988.)