Cookies, social plans, meeting notsuchastrangr, and thoughts on

[juushika]

I made these yesterday: Salted Chocolate Caramel Cookies.


They're these cookies, with a few modifications (slightly decreased the sugar because I expected the caramels would make them plenty sweet, substituted sour cream + water for the yogurt since that's what we had in the fridge, and cut the caramels in half to make smaller cookies). Next time I'll use a cookie recipe that also contains melted chocolate in the dough, because these could stand to be darker. But I wanted to bake at midnight, so I used what we had and they turned out not half bad. The cookie is crumbly and slightly powdery, which here provides a nice contrast to the thick chewy caramel; halving the cookie size makes for adorable two-bite cookies, with I prefer to the full-sized test cookies I made; the salt on top is what makes them, contrasting and setting off the other flavors. The biggest downside is that they were best about ten minutes after coming out of the oven—and that it's hard to eat just one cute little cookie.

This is the first step in my grand effort to use up all the non-gnawed caramels from Halloween. The blessing and downside of a small batch of half-sized cookies is that there's approximately a billion caramels left. Caramel apple cookies are on the list, and I want to give salted chocolate and caramel another try, but I like sticking to small batches so we aren't buried by dessert.

Tomorrow evening I'm heading to Corvallis for a few days; I'll take some cookies to homemade pizza night with my parents. On the 10th we have out of state company for the day; on the 15th, Express is in town on business (!!!), I'll crash at his hotel room so that we can maximize our time together, and before he leaves down he can meet Dee; I plan to bring quiche and cookies so that we don't have to eat out for every meal. I begrudge this time of year for having all the good food, but to have people so share it with is lovely. These days I find that not only do I have to keep a calendar, as soon as I sit down to hash out the month's plans I find that that calendar has filled up—my only unscheduled week this month is Thanksgiving, which is unscheduled only because I still have so many plans (with my parents, with Devon's grandparents, with Dee's family) still up in the air.

On a similar note: On Wednesday I went into downtown to meet notsuchastrangr. We went to school together but never actually met there, so this was another first-time-in-real-life meeting—I seem awash in them these days. We went to Powell's where I picked up a book with a dodgy cover, and then had coffee at the Starbucks on the corner, and had many hours of surprisingly natural, gratifying conversation.

I find that I am beginning to have the friendships and conversations that I've always wanted to have. I used to envy people with clans/chosen family, and have to remind myself that I still had years to develop those sorts of relationships; now I live with Dee in Portland, and can go to San Francisco and be as at home with Express as if he were a sibling. As an adolescent I envied my parents's social circle, and wished that I could sit with the adults and talk about Big Issues; it disappointed me to find that those conversations didn't interest me (and weren't particularly Big), but now I can talk about everything from poetry to mental health with someone I "just" knew online, and build a meaningful dialog.

We ended up hanging out together for an extra hour or so, and by the time I came back I was in pain and exhausted. I can never overlook the trade-offs, my limitations, and the fact that these things—simple friendships—wouldn't be so remarkable or long in coming to someone else. But these days I can make those trade-offs willingly, say yes I'll stay a little longer and know that then I'll do nothing tomorrow; I schedule as many down days into my calendar as I do busy ones. I won't pretend to be content with who I am, but I am at least satisfied with so much, now.