Mama Conners's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies...with Bacon!

Chocolate chip oatmeal cookie, I love you. I love you so much that I kissed you with bacon and golden raisins. Crunch and Melt in our mouths, Koudou eats at least two, three, sometimes even four cookies every day... the recipe makes several dozen. Mama Conners, mama of my dear friend, Brian, was feeding several children. I believe that they all grew big and strong from these cookies! I dream of making these cookies for my baby/ies someday, too.
Brian and I printed this recipe in a dingy little computer lab at the University of Bonn, Germany, way back in 1994. We longed for these cookies, and his mama emailed us the goods... so now I sit here with this frail little piece of old computer reel paper, folded, oily and having traveled across the big pond with us when we moved back to the States. I cherish you, my dear little note.

And now, to the golden nugget, to be held with love and visited often in your ovens, on your kitchen tables, in the bellies of those you love and those you don't!

4.5 c sifted flour
3 tsp baking soda
3 tsp salt
3 c shortening (2 sticks unsalted butter)
1.5 c refined sugar
2 c brown sugar
6 eggs, unbeaten
1 Tbl hot water
24 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 c rolled oats
1 Tbl vanilla extract
1 c (or more) raisins (optional)
1 c chopped nuts (optional)
1 c (approx. 8 pcs.) crumbled bacon of your choice (optional)...Smithfield rocks!

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. In mixing bowl, sift flour, add baking soda and salt. Blend thoroughly. In separate bowl, cream fat until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla extract and cream well. Beat in eggs, add hot water. Fold in sifted (dry) ingedients. Add chocolate chips, rolled oats, raisins and bacon and mix well. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool or not! Enjoy!
Cookies remain crisp in air tight container depending on season. Excellent with a glass of milk or deliciously strong cup of coffee!

Thank you, Mama Conners!

I love bright yellow cornbread

my very first cornbread...EVER. it was an exercise in connecting with my EasternKentuckySkaggs self, and ohso tasty! valentine's day, last saturday, i decided to "bring Cracker Barrel home" and cooked up a big southern food storm in our kitchen. for koudou, mama and me. i wanted a cornbread that was moist but crisp and crumbly all at once. i had a little baggie of Martha White brand yellow cornmeal mix (hot rize). I looked on the side at her "Tex-Mex Cornbread" recipe and decided I would base my batch on her inspiration...

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups hot rize cornmeal mix

1 15 oz. can creamed corn

1 cup milk (I used buttermilk)

4 T canola oil

1/2 t sugar

1/2 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese

a pinch of salt and smoked spanish paprika

baked her at 425F in mama jo ann's well-greased 9-in. skillet, approximately 30 minutes or so until golden cracked on top. Cooled her down and enjoyed with mama's fried chicken, homesmashed buttermilk taters w/ mushroom brown gravy. fresh cabbage-carrot salad and my slow-cooked shell beans/field peas/yellow squash. damn, that was good!

Octopus Oktapodi Tintenfisch Krake

give me octopus anyday. aegean octopus. caught by baba yianni, lingering briefly in a plastic shopping bag with seawater, eventually tenderized with forty beatings on a nearby rock formation, rubbed, frothed and beaten again. grilled, boiled, stifado (stewed with onion). we children would sit on the beach, sand literally "everywhere," meaning in our ears, noseholes, on eyelashes, skin, bumcrevice, you name it... stickysaltysweaty sand. we played with the lingering octopi in the plastic seawater bags, watched them cling to us with hundreds of tentacle-hickies on our arms. i wonder now if they tasted the salt and sand on us, desperately attaching to what they believed was a step back into home... we screeched and giggled at their stickiness, watching baba prepare their finicky flesh for our meal out next to the water. i remember that was the summer i was wearing my all-time favorite (yes, to this day...) swimsuit, a bright blue onesie adidas, white strips up the sides, burned shoulders and slowly sunbleaching long hair, skinny little swissgreekamerican girl. i wasn't even interested in food at the time, but octopus and fresh figs somehow rest happy in my mind. climbing fig trees on thassos... but i digress, we'll leave the figs for another time,... and the fish that the sea caught for me in my lost and tossed fishing line wound around a little cork board...

ode to an octopus

sticky salty

long and clingy

regal in the sea

loving living under

between behind the rocks

frothy kissy hicky clingy

tender meaty lemon

olive vinegar oniony

m m m!