chocolate chip cookies & thunderstorms

The thunder and lightening are insane here in the southwest. I don't know what it is about the nature of thunder around here, but they're like incredibly loud mini earthquakes. On top of that, my husband warns me tonight, before he retreats to the bedroom, "if you think a tornado is coming, take the dogs and hide in the downstairs bathroom." WTF? How do I know a tornado is approaching?!?! I'm from an island, I know what to do in a hurricane or a tsunami, but a tornado, that's totally a foreign concept to me. If this darn place is such a tornado hazard, why don't we have basements around here? I'm still puzzled over what my snoring husband is going to do for survival if there is a tornado. So, little paranoid me has got the weather page up, I've got an army blanket, a container of water, half a loaf of bread, and a few magazines in our little downstairs bathroom (I don't understand why I can't hide in our more than twice the size master bathroom). I beg of you to laugh at me. I hope I never, ever, have to cuddle up in the downstairs bathroom with two dogs under an army blanket.

These thunder storms compelled me to make something comforting. I needed to ease my mind. I had to make chocolate chip something, my husband had been begging me to use the gourmet chips I picked up on one of my city trips. So, keeping it simple, I made some chocolate chip cookies though I contemplated making muffins for a good hour. I believe that simplicity + top notch ingredients (nielsen-massey vanilla, king arthur flour, etc.) = one pretty darn good cookie. I didn't use my normal amazingly soft chocolate chip recipe, because I was too scared to go to the store for an ingredient (there is also a golf ball size hail warning, I don't know how to drive in hail) so I used this one. Let's just say, that I had a cookie each time I took a batch out. Four or five batches and one glass of iced milk and I'm totally paying for it. To the right, a few of them, straight out of the oven.

Today was apparently a good cooking show day for me. I was watching Throwdown tonight and making puffy tacos is now a priority of mine. They also had a Top Chef marathon while I was doing some housecleaning, and oh man, that Chef Tom Colicchio, I think I'm destined to marry him in my next life, I find him oh so dreamy, don't ask me why. I realize my recipes haven't been gourmet or anything just yet, I'm still easing my way back into cooking but stay tuned, I've got a pile of bon apetit recipes just waiting to be tested. Trust me (like you can really trust a girl who has half a loaf of bread in her bathroom), it's going to get good.