Almond butter and chocolate cookies

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A few days ago, I was in an unfamiliar grocery store, in Canada, looking for peanut butter to combine, in some half-conceived way, with chocolate. I was intrigued by a jar of almond butter. My plans became even more vague, and the almond butter went into the cart.

Later, I resolved to make almond butter and chocolate cookies. The simplest variations seem to be these two, which are without and with oatmeal, respectively; neither contains wheat flour. I don’t know if this is because they’re best this way, or because they’re good enough like that and fit in the gluten-free niche. My searches for almond butter recipes threw up mostly recipes with labels like “vegan” and “gluten-free.” I’m neither vegetarian nor gluten-intolerant, but I’m all for cutting out the middleman between me and my most flavourful calories, so I suspended my misgivings.

I went for the simplest recipe, without oats – simplest, that is, once I’d looked up what “Sucanat” was (turns out it’s a brand name for evaporated sugar cane juice) and determined that I could swap in an equivalent amount of brown sugar.

I had bought baker’s chocolate, in individually-wrapped one-ounce squares, but now I wanted chips. The baby was sleeping, so I decided to smash the chocolate outside on the brick patio. I wrapped my chocolate squares in some paper towels and brought them, and a meat tenderizer, outside. Then I noticed it was raining pretty hard, so I went back in and put on some shoes.  I bashed away (quickly, since the paper towels were beginning to soak through), then went inside and carefully unwrapped the chocolate, discarding a few stray spruce needles. Hey, they were only on the outside of the towels, and I’m not cooking for the public here. Maybe the mud helped to replace the minerals I supposedly lost by using refined sugar.

I discovered that, not only was the chocolate not very broken, but the teeth on the tenderizer had driven bits of the paper wrappers into it. I left those in, for their vitamin content. Just kidding, sheesh. You must think I know nothing about food preparation. Where was I? Oh yes. After cutting the first chocolate square up some more with scissors, I retrieved a promotional combination pliers/hammer from Torode Precision Components and pounded at the remaining two squares. This worked very well. I don’t know how I survived up till now without a combination pliers/hammer tool in my kitchen.

Instead of mixing everything else first, like I was supposed to, then adding the chocolate chips, I put the chocolate in the bowl first (since it was ready first). This, and the powdery residue from smashing the chocolate, resulted in some chocolate getting mixed in, and the cookies came out a bit extra-brown. The only problem with this is that it’s a little harder to decide when they look done. It’s not that I don’t read directions, exactly. It’s more that they go in one eye and out the other, which is for some reason a less compelling metaphor than “in one ear and out the other.”

F laughed when he saw me composing this picture. I know my still-life composition skills are not great, but laughable? Cut me some slack, eh? I’m under some time constraints.

If you look closely, there are dents on the side of the meat tenderizer head; evidence of prior tool-misapplication. I don’t remember anything, but my mom has had this thing since I was a kid…

Here’s what I did in the end:

  • one cup almond butter
  • one egg
  • a bit more than 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • tiny pinch baking soda (I don’t like the taste)
  • even tinier pinch sea or kosher salt (not sure which it was)
  • 3 one-ounce pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, smashed

Mix it all together. Roll into balls, place on baking parchment on a cookie sheet, squash with a fork. Bake at 350F (when in Rome, use whatever units the Romans use) for 12-14min (or less; some of mine were a bit dark on the bottom).

I squashed mine partway into baking because I had expected them to flatten by themselves and they didn’t seem to be about to.

I’m thinking of trying a flourless version next time I make peanut butter cookies. Maybe. My mom’s recipe for peanut butter cookies is pretty high-octane as it is.

Ruminations on the launch of the Google Galaxy Nexus

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Warning: the following is not even remotely entertaining.

I was very tempted to preorder the new Samsung/Google Galaxy Nexus smartphone. I managed to talk myself down from that very expensive precipice, but I did a fair amount of reading and thinking about it. Now that I’ve done all that thinking, I’ll put some of the product up here, just to pretend it wasn’t a total waste of time.

It’s natural to compare the new flagship Google phone with the latest iPhone, but when I came across a post casting the “launch” of the Galaxy Nexus (i.e. the first day’s sales at the first shop to have the GN available in the UK), as a pathetic failure (citing a lack of queues out the door), it (despite striking me as disingenuous) set me thinking.

If Google had intended the launch to really be an event, they’d have made sure there was stock in a lot of locations, that everybody knew where to go and when, and that it would be a fun place to be. As it was, one shop in London had the thing on the announced launch date, and it was difficult to have confidence that even that was going to happen, until it actually did.

I don’t think Google are really trying for blockbuster phone sales – not blockbuster Galaxy Nexus sales, in any case, not right out of the gate.

Apple offers a couple of options (colour and storage) on a standard device. If you want the latest phone running iOS, you know what to buy, and it’s the one phone Apple wants you to buy. Making an event of the launch is absolutely the right thing to do to help capitalize on the pent-up desire for a new iPhone, and to fuel continuing interest in Apple products.

The Android device market is different. There are multiple manufacturers, each with several devices aimed at different user niches. Here, it’s all about choice, and the latest and greatest is regularly knocked off its pedestal by a new, more powerful device.

Maximizing the number of users interfacing with the net via Android, regardless of whose hardware it’s on, prevents other software makers from getting a stranglehold on how content (and what content) is allowed to be consumed on mobile platforms, and using Android fosters a sense of allegiance to Google as a brand. Blowing away the other manufacturers’ Android market share with “THE Android phone” wouldn’t necessarily benefit Google .

In fact, huge initial sales of the Galaxy Nexus could be counterproductive. If masses of people had been inspired to line up and spend iPhone quantities of cash on the Galaxy Nexus on its release, many would now be wondering what life would have been like with an iPhone, while they wait for their favourite apps to all be compatible with ICS, and for Adobe Flash support, and for the volume bug to be sorted. While the volume problem may have been unanticipated, Google would have been perfectly well aware that a lot of software, including Flash, won’t be compatible with the new version of the OS at first.

The Galaxy Nexus is a publicity vehicle and reference device for the thing Google really wants people to care about: shiny new Android 4.0, “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS for short), the unification of Google’s phone and tablet operating systems (OS). Google wants the thing first in the hands of the technically-minded; specifically, early adopters who don’t hold a grudge over a few rough edges, and developers who will release apps for ICS.

These two (overlapping) groups will perform the two major services of squashing bugs that would leave a bad taste in the mouth (now there’s a metaphor) of a mainstream consumer, and of developing and adapting apps to work with ICS. This prepares the ground for the manufacturers to release their own devices with a polished ICS on board, and people’s favourite apps ready to go when they upgrade.

OK, that’s all fine. But all that thinking didn’t answer the one really important question: not being a developer, and having plenty of things to spend money on besides a phone, how do I justify getting myself one of these?

Indie kids’ books by Secret Agent Josephine

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Baby-Without-an-Internet-Handle and I are a dynamic spy duo on a not-so-stealthy mission.

Our cyber-friend Brenda Ponnay has asked for help to spread the word about her Secret Agent Josephine kids’ books. I’m not exactly well-positioned to raise her profile, but I’m happy to take a stab at it from my too-cleverly-hidden lair. Brenda, aka SAJ, is an illustrator and longtime blogger, who’s launching a series of books for young children on the classic subjects of letters, numbers, and colours (aka “colors”). Her design sense is, well, designer-y: uncluttered and clean, but with a vibrance and energy that should appeal to kids as well as adults.

Secret Agent Josephine’s ABC’s, Numbers, and Colors are available as ebooks on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iBooks, and at least two of the books can also be had in physical form.

Brenda’s Amazon.com author page