Frosted Sugar Cookies.

My beautiful wife has been tobacco free since her 44th birthday this past May. Since she didn't really eat like Kate Moss before, asking her to drop calories along with nicotine would have landed one of us in stripes waiting on a very special IV treatment. So instead she has put on a couple of pounds, nothing like me, she still has a waist measurement that is considerably smaller than her inseam. She has had an ongoing addiction to the frosted sugar cookies that you see lined up along the bakery counter at any Wal-Mart. A couple of days ago I sent her on an errand to Woodland Park to pick up a couple of things. Normal "Honey Do" type of things...Milk (since I quit milking goats), Bread (because I never had time to make any), No eggs (chickens are still doing great) and something for dinner (that would be quick and easy because I was in a mood and didn't want to cook.) She came home with ink for the printer, a 12 pack of Pepsi, and some frosted sugar cookies. Nothing for dinner, unless you count the cookies. I can't stand the things, they have more frosting than cookie and I'm not a huge fan of frosting anyway. I do like a bit of icing on a Triscuit or a Saltine, a weird little Dague thing that I got from Pop. I use to think that only Twinkies and Cher would last forever but have since altered my long lasting list to these blasted cookie like things only available from the Wal-Mart bakery. Funny thing is, Wal-Mart ships them in from somewhere, they aren't even baked in the on-site bakery. Must be a real "secret" recipe. I checked out the ingredients and nutrition information on the sticker that keeps the plastic container closed...don't want to let out any freshness! I'm not a baker, in fact I would much rather COOK than BAKE. Baking requires adhering to a recipe. It is kind of like making a bomb, if you add a bit of something here and there, your face could be laying by the toaster directly after "here" and you will never get to "there." Things blow up when you add personal touches. I can bake cookies with ingredients like flour, water, sugar, eggs, baking powder, etc. I can't bake cookies with whey protein concentrate, soy lecithin, or yellow #5. To top it off, as if it is a disclaimer on the very bottom of the package in smaller print is the following, "Contains: wheat, milk, eggs and soybeans." As if these things could cause your stomach to twist or your brain to explode in your skull. I've long since abandoned the idea that Shelly would join me in my quest for eating food that we can actually produce on the ranch or buy organic from a farmer's market somewhere. I'm not sure what exactly Yellow #5 is but I'm pretty sure that it cannot be organically produced. At any rate, I was in need of something to fill a space in my gut. I had the pangs of hunger, and it was too far away from the end of breakfast but alas, too close to lunch. I was going to just suffer through when the orange frosted demons caught my eye. I stared at the package and tried to imagine them tasting good. My imagination has never really been much so that plan didn't work as I had hoped. I ended up scraping off as much frosting as I could and ate the cookie. It tasted a like what I would imagine half a roll of cheap toilet paper rolled up and dunked in sugar water would taste like. Since the cookie didn't fill my need I went in search of something else but ended up just suffering through. I did decide to make real cookies, here is my favorite recipe for cookies--->Snicker-doodles

.


Ingredients

* 1 cup butter
* 1 1/2 cups sugar
* 2 large eggs
* 2 3/4 cups flour
* 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 3 tablespoons sugar
* 3 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Mix butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar and eggs thoroughly in a large bowl.
Combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.
Blend dry ingredients into butter mixture.
Chill dough, and chill an ungreased cookie sheet for about 10-15 minutes in the fridge.
Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons sugar, and 3 teaspoons cinnamon in a small bowl.
Scoop 1 inch globs of dough into the sugar/ cinnamon mixture.
Coat by gently rolling balls of dough in the sugar mixture.
Place on chilled ungreased cookie sheet, and bake 10 minutes.
Remove from pan immediately.