• But Then

    December 18, 2008

    I am opposed to healthy desserts. I am averse to them. I loath them. I am aggressive in my defiance towards them (thank you, Word Perfect Prompt-As-You-Go). Reduced-fat cream cheese? No way. Whole wheat cookies? Blech. Applesauce in place of oil, or yogurt in place of sour cream? I don’t think so.

    Desserts are supposed to be rich and sweet, made from the best of butters and sugars and chocolates and creams. I would much rather eat a small piece of deliciously calorie-laden cheesecake any day, instead of a medium-sized piece of pallid reduced-fat, reduced-sugar cheesecake. (Of course, the “small” piece of cheesecake is for theoretical purposes only.)

    But then I ate these walnut balls, and I’m having to eat my words, along with them.


    These cookies are rich, decadent, and divinely delicious, but they are also, I still can hardly believe this, healthy. As in, their base consists of ground-up walnuts. And there is some whole wheat flour in them. And flax meal.

    Flax meal in cookies? I know! I felt the same way! I could handle the nuts alright, but the whole wheat flour was pushing it, and then to add flax? Good heavens, I thought, Someone has surely gone over the deep end! But, this recipe works. It not only works, it also jives and jitters and does the two-step Mombo-Bombo. (I made that up.)

    And I have yet to even mention the clincher: there is no refined sugar. Instead, the recipe calls for maple syrup. (And dark chocolate chips, but they do not, I repeat, do not, count as a refined sugar.)


    I can not believe how much I love these cookies. If I had to pick just one of the many cookies that are crammed into my freezer to eat, right now, I would choose the walnut balls. The texture is superb—chewy, dense, tender. And the flavor is deep: dark and nutty, with a just a touch of bitter. And then there is the chocolate.

    Now, I will admit that the final cookie looked a little too healthy to suit me. They had a bit of a grayish hue to them, making them look dull and unappetizing (devious little things), but I, brilliant cook that I am, remedied that problem by rolling the little sweets in a some powdered sugar. Then they just looked white and sweet … and totally plain.

    Like I said, devious little buggers.


    I am no longer opposed to healthy desserts—it’s just not possible, after eating these walnut balls. Therefore, I now believe that healthy desserts are fine, as long as they are made from pure ingredients, and as long as the end result is both rich and decadent.

    Walnut Balls
    Recipe gifted to me, via cell phone, by my girlfriend Linell

    2 ½ cups English walnuts
    2/3 cup whole wheat flour
    1/3 cup flax meal
    ½ cup, plus a little drizzle more, maple syrup
    1 teaspoons salt, scant
    2 teaspoons vanilla
    1/3 cup chocolate chips (I used mini chips)
    Powdered sugar, for rolling

    Grind the walnuts to a fine powder in a food processor. Dump the ground nuts into a bowl and add the flour, flax, and salt. Stir well. Add the vanilla and maple syrup and mix until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Shape the cookies into small balls, the size of a large gum ball, and line them up on a cookie sheet. They do not change shape while baking, so you’ll probably be able to fit them all on one cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes, until the bottoms are golden brown and the tops are tinged with brown.

    While the cookies are still warm, roll them in powdered sugar, and then roll them in powdered sugar once more before serving.

    These cookies freeze well, but will need to be rolled in powdered sugar again before serving (they get all blotchy and mottled in the freezer), so only roll them in sugar once before freezing—save the second rolling for when you get them out to eat. Otherwise, you will be rolling them three times, and that would totally defeat the Healthy Cookie Effect.

    Yield: not enough.

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  • Rolls

    December 17, 2008

    I know I’m done with baking bread, for now, but that doesn’t mean I’m done talking about bread. I don’t ever really run out of things to say, bread or otherwise—that’s just not something I struggle with, a lack of words.

    I have been getting brave with my bread baking. I used to make just the boules, but now I’ve broken with tradition and made not only loaves, but also rolls.


    Silverton does have recipes for rolls in her book, of course, but I didn’t even take a peek at those when I started making my own. I just shaped the rolls, set them in a greased pan, did the overnight refrigerator proofing, and then baked them the following day. What makes them so fun, is docking them. I did get this idea from Silverton, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling a sense of ownership in the delightful process.

    To dock rolls, take a pair of kitchen scissors and snip the tops of the rolls, first one way,


    and then the other,


    to make a nice little X.


    You could say the rolls look kind of spiked, scared almost, but I think they look cute. And snip-snipping their tops is kitchen work at its most thrilling. You gotta give it a try.

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  • The Procedure

    December 16, 2008

    Miss Becca Boo was awake, off and on during the night, crying and wailing, cradling her sore hand. Mr. Handsome spent the night with her, and once when I walked over to re-tuck-in The Baby Nickel, I heard him singing to her.

    When she came downstairs this morning, she lay on the sofa and cried from the pain. Nonstop.

    Something clearly had to be done.

    So I got on the computer and googled “relieving pressure to a smashed finger”. Up came several different articles, all of them consistent with each other, so when Mr. Handsome came downstairs, I filled him in (speaking in my hush-hush voice) on what we needed to do. He only slightly raised his eyebrows at me, surprised that I was up to such a plan, and then he quietly went about helping me set up shop:

    First, Mr. Handsome put a DVD (BBC’s Planet Earth) in the computer and arranged the kids on stools in such a way that Miss Becca Boo, who was sitting on her stool at the kitchen table, had a clear shot of the computer screen.

    Second, I laid her hand on a clean rag. She refused to stop holding her sore hand with her good hand, so…

    Third, I gave her a candy cane to hold with her other hand.

    Fourth, Mr. Handsome sterilized the fingernail, using a Q-tip dipped in alcohol.

    Fifth, I fished a metal paper clip out of the Christmas ornament box and straightened it out.

    Sixth, using a pair of pliers, I held the paper clip over the flame of a votive candle.

    We were set to go.

    But then, when Mr. Handsome saw how I was heating up the paper clip, he said, “It will take forever to get red-hot that way. Hold on a minute.” And out the door he dashed, back in a couple seconds with … Oh, good grief! A blowtorch!

    Miss Becca Boo took one look at the evil-looking weapon in Mr. Handsome’s hand and freaked out. I didn’t blame her. My innards were already in a twist. Just the thought of what we were about to do made me feel ill, like how you feel when you get to a bad scene in a movie. I sucked in my tumultuous tummy and played Calm As A Cucumber.

    Mr. Handsome fetched a towel from the bathroom, and I held it up by Miss Becca Boo’s face, creating a shield between her and the Scene of Surgery, just like how they did for me when Yo-Yo was cut out of my tummy.

    Then, Mr. Handsome lit up the blowtorch—Whoooosh! Miss Becca Boo wailed, the kids yelled that they couldn’t hear the movie, and I whispered loudly into her ear, “Look at those bison! Suck your candy cane!”

    More whooshing. Then all was quiet. I could smell burning hair, or rather, fingernail. After a second, Mr. Handsome tapped my arm and told me to look. And there was her purple fingernail, blood oozing out through the hole.

    Mr. Handsome poured some hydrogen peroxide into a bowl and I added warm water, but Miss Becca Boo refused to put her hand in the water.

    “It won’t hurt,” I told her.

    “Did this ever happen to you?” she asked me.

    “No,” I admitted. “But it happened to Shannon when she was little. Would you like to talk to her?”

    So I called Shannon and held the phone to Miss Becca Boo’s ear, and after the phone call, she slowly eased her hand into the water.

    And thus ended the morning’s medical procedure. We put our professional surgical instruments whence ere they came: the alcohol and peroxide to the bathroom cupboard, the dirty rags to the laundry, the votive candle to the center of the table, and the blowtorch to the back of the pick-up truck. I wiped down the table (I think), and we pulled up our stools and dug into our bowls of granola and Corn Chex.

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