Browsing Category

damn delicious

damn delicious

Damn Delicious: Vanishing Trauma Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

April 10, 2020

I’m knee deep in the therapeutic process these days. Every Friday, I Facetime with a wonderful therapist who is helping me retrace the script of my life. We’ve been doing visualization exercises where I travel back in time to revisit certain formative experiences. From there, we start to unwind the thread of my subconscious beliefs to identify where certain patterns took root in my life story. I get it if that sounds a bit mumbo jumbo to you, honestly. If I didn’t see it working in my own life, I might roll my eyes a little at it.

Today, we stumbled upon one of the deepest traumatic experiences in my childhood. It involves a former step-dad beating my mom while I was six years old. I was listening alone in the back bedroom of our house terrified out of my mind. I don’t want to get into anything more specific than that, but I will tell you that I relived that moment again as a 34-year-old woman this afternoon and it felt just as real to me today as it did three decades ago.

My therapist helped me reprogram the trauma today by asking me to visualize going into the situation as an adult. I went back and I held my own childhood hand and I asked that little girl if she wanted to leave the situation. When she told me she wanted out, I marched her down the hallway and out of the house. I took her to the safest place I know in this world and I comforted her and I told her that she was safe now and she didn’t have to live in fear anymore. I told her she was brave and I told her what happened to her wasn’t right and that I was there for her and I was going to protect her from experiencing that pain again in her life. I hugged her and when I did so, I kid you not, I felt the back of my neck tingle as she was absorbed in the cocoon of my love.

Talk about intense, right? When I opened my eyes, I felt a little shocked to see myself Facetiming with my therapist. It was like I was transported into an entirely different situation.

After our session ended, I walked around in a bit of a daze for the rest of the afternoon. I took a nap, I reorganized my kitchen/quarantine office and I watched some tv. In the evening, I pulled out some butter and some eggs to do a little therapeutic baking, too. I decided to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies from My Cooking and Baking Dream List. My current step-dad always makes the ‘Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies’ recipe that’s under the lid of the Quaker Oats quick oats. It’s his signature and it never fails.

As I baked, I listened to Travis Tritt on Spotify. He reminds me of growing up in Arizona. I mixed and measured, thinking about my current stepdad who is so gentle and sweet and who makes my mom happy. I bopped around my kitchen and I just felt a lightness inside. It felt like a weight that has resided in my sternum for so long I didn’t even realize it was there anymore has dissolved. I thought about my current life, the peace I am creating, the path I have blazed. I have made so many mistakes, even repeating the trauma of my childhood by marrying a man who also beat me and made me feel so unsafe and so afraid for my own life.

But my story doesn’t end at my mistakes. I didn’t accept the inevitability that I would replay the trauma of my childhood. I clawed my way out of that life and I rebuilt a new one, brick by brick. I live in a peaceful home now, where I listen to country music and I make cookies and I bravely go to therapy to ask myself the tough questions about my current relationship and the fear I have around marriage. I commit to moving forward always, stubbornly holding onto my belief that I can live a full, happy life with fulfilling relationships and a deep and abiding joy.

I’m still very much on that journey, but days like today give me hope that I’m getting close because I revisited the most painful experience of my life and transmuted it into something beautiful. I released a pain I’ve been carrying around for years, the weight of it just vanishing before my eyes.

Forever more, these are going to be called Vanishing Trauma Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies in my mind. They’ll remind me of this major milestone, where I took my pain and alchemized it into something delicious. I realized tonight as I was baking that I already kept the promise I made today to my six-year-old self. I already did take that little girl out of that painful experience and I rebuilt her world into something safe and secure and beautiful.

Oh, and I’m just getting started. I’m pretty sure she and I are going to make this life even better, cookies and all.

Vanishing Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup (1 stick) plus 6 tablespoons softened butter
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup chocolate chips
  • 3 cups quick oats

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cream together butter and sugars.
  3. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well.
  4. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a separate bowl until they’re all combined.
  5. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and mix until all the flour is integrated.
  6. Stir in oatmeal and chocolate chips.
  7. Drop onto a cookie sheet and bake for about eight minutes, until the edges are brown. Let cool for a minute on the pan and then cool completely on a wire rack.
  8. Enjoy a still-warm cookie and give your inner child a big, huge hug. 🙂

damn delicious

Damn Delicious: Oven Roasted Chicken

April 10, 2020
Roasted chickens taste great, but they aren’t very photogenic, huh?

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Seriously.

I finally roasted my first chicken! All by myself with Keith’s help. And, it was super easy and non-intimidating. It really didn’t even deserve a spot on my Cooking and Baking Dream List because it was just a breeze, but I’m taking all the credit for it anyways. It may not look too pretty, but it tasted delicious.

I followed Ina’s famous Perfect Roasted Chicken recipe, which I highly recommend. Three thousand recipe reviewers can’t be wrong! One thing I will say about this recipe: you gotta really like thyme. You’re stuffing your bird with an entire bunch of thyme, so the flavor is going to be…pronounced.

Here are a few other little things I want to tell you about this recipe:

  • I admit it, Keith cleaned the bird for me. He’s the official meat prepper of our family. It’s not a glamorous job, but he does it and I appreciate him for it. He washed it extremely well and then soaked it overnight in a salt water bath. The brine tenderizes the meat to another level.
  • When Ina says to be liberal with the salt, don’t be afraid to do what she says. I wish that I would’ve gone all in. Turns out the only thing worse than a too-salty bird is an unsalty bird.
  • I subbed lime for lemon and didn’t have the fennel. It’s a forgiving recipe. I also added a few potatoes to the bottom of the pan and I didn’t regret it for even a second.
  • Probably because of the aforementioned lack of saltiness, but I really wish I would’ve rallied and made a gravy to go with our dinner. I just didn’t want to dirty another dish by the time it came out of the oven. If you make this recipe, you should definitely gravy it up!

I used the leftovers to make a homemade napa chicken salad the next day and I think we enjoyed that just as much as the original recipe. The chicken was just so tender and perfect. I’m sure you know how to make a napa chicken salad, but just in case, here’s how I made it: dice up the chicken into really small pieces. Add a full squeeze of yellow mustard, a couple of spoonfuls of mayonnaise, a pinch of salt, a dash of black pepper and a heavy sprinkle of seasoned salt and garlic powder. Mix that up to taste. Chicken salad is all about preferences, so make sure you try it along the way and add more of whatever seasonings take you to your happy place. Top it off with a handful of sliced almonds and about twelve cut grapes. Mix it all up gently to preserve the grapes and be sure to eat it with the softest bread you can get your hands on. Bonus points for a croissant.

Have you ever roasted a chicken? I kept saying to myself: I DID THAT whenever I thought about it over the next few days. It’s these little beautiful moments in life that seem like nothing, but give me the confidence to keep trying new things and growing as a person. If I can roast a chicken, I can do anything!

damn delicious

Damn Delicious: Easy Green Juice for Juicing Newbies

April 9, 2020

I’m about five years late to this party, but MeeshyD is in the juicing house!

I have this weird resistance to jumping on cultural bandwagons. I’ve never read Harry Potter and I won’t watch the Tiger King and I sat idly by for two entire waves of juice frenzy. It started with cleanses and meal replacements in phase 1 and then transitioned to celery juice as the miracle cure in phase 2 and I just watched. It’s not that I think cultural moments are whack. I am NOT a pop culture snob. I watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians religiously, but for some reason I tend to just sit on the sidelines of these movements.

But, I’m into juice. I developed a taste for green juice at this awesome little espresso stand by our house here in Oakland. It’s about $7 for a small cup, which I know isn’t too bad considering labor and the product juicing requires. I can’t get it right now due to the shelter-in-place restrictions and plus, I was always left wanting more than my little cup of juice. I needed a venti, you know what I mean? A quick scan of the Facebook Marketplace let me know that the phase 1 and 2 juicers are trying to unload their dusty, unused machines, so one thing led to another last week and here I am, an official Juicer.

I bought a Breville (Amazon) for $40 via social distancing on the marketplace and I took my first crack at green juice a la casa today at lunch. I tried to approximate my beloved juice recipe and here’s what I did: one entire pineapple, one small head of celery, one medium-sized Fuji apple and about five massive handfuls of greens mix from Costco. The juicer handled it like a pro and the juice was honestly pure heaven. I had a massive canning jar full with ice and I have another smaller jar to drink with breakfast tomorrow morning.

I am, no lie, completely over the moon about juicing. I’m glad I have this space to write about my newfound juicing passion because all the phase 1 and 2 juicers I know have lost their enthusiasm. I gave some of my juice to Keith to try today and all he said was ‘that tastes earthy’ and I didn’t know if it was a compliment or not.

So, that leads me to my question for you: are you a juicer? Phase 1 or Phase 2? What are you favorite recipes? I am ALL ears for all positive juicing commentary. Please don’t tell me that I’m going to lose enthusiasm for my new hobby because I’m in the honeymoon phase and no one wants to hear the truth when they’re newly in love….