Today's Cooking, part 1:

Or: The vagaries of cooking and why I should stop when I'm still ahead...?

So, today's cooking started out well. I made bread. That's normal.
I made pumpkin bread. Again. Because last time Peter complained that he didn't get much. I cut off some of this bundt loaf for some friends, everybody nibbled, I threatened that they'd better LEAVE SOME FOR PETER. And here's what's left. Not bad.
And, on the recommendation of a friend, I bought a butternut squash. I'm going to try this recipe. Click on over and read it. It's short. Plus, I'm too lazy to type it out over here :)
I kind of started to thaw the chicken for supper. Hm. This is usually how the conversation goes:
Me: I got a chicken out of the freezer for supper tonight. I'm happy to cook it (this means bake it in a pot), unless there's something else you'd like to do with it (translated: WON'T YOU COOK THE CHICKEN, DEAR?)
Adam: Well, I guess I could smoke it. When did you get it out of the freezer?
Me: Uh, um. A while ago (translated, maybe an hour?)
And, as usual he comes to the rescue.
Then, VERY unwisely, I decided to bake some cookies that I've been wanting to have again for YEARS. They're "Spice Cookies with Pumpkin Dip." I got this recipe when we lived in Alabama. DeLISH.

So, I looked at the recipe again, after hunting for it half the morning. It yields 20 dozen cookies. And 3 cups of the pumpkin dip! I vaguely recall throwing out some of this dip once, because we just couldn't eat it all. Thinks I, "I shall cut this recipe in half." So I did.
I cut the butter, and the sugar, the eggs, the molasses. Then I got to the spices. Why do they put these little bitty openings on spice bottles that you can't get a teaspoon measure into? Argh! I fussed with the spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves), and -- yep, you guessed it -- forgot to half them. Full doses of zippiness. I was plopping in the baking soda -- Four Teaspoons of it!! -- when I realized my error, to my distress.

I'm not doing 20 dozen cookies. So these will just have to be spicy. I won't tell the fam. Let's see if they notice!
Isn't the dough a lovely brown? That's the molasses.
Oh, and I forgot to remember that this cookie dough is supposed to refrigerate overnight.
OVERNIGHT?
What kind of decent, honest cookie dough ever needed to be refrigerated overnight?

Methinks this is just the vanity of the recipe-writer, who, desiring to impress us poor mortals with the wonder and uniqueness of HIS cookie dough, placed this useless requirement on us. I mean really -- what can 8 hours in the refrigerator do to a cookie dough, that 30 minutes won't do? I ask you!

And that's why this is part one. Because you must return to discover whether Peter gets any pumpkin bread, whether my family will even touch butternut squash, how Adam rescues supper again, and what gonna happen to those cookies :)