May! With Cookies!

My office is a forest of seedlings. Tomatoes, regular broccoli, broccoli romanescu, kale, onions, beans, morning glories, moonflowers, marshmallow, and horehound surround me. The garlic and rhubarb outside the window are growing enormous. I am absurdly pleased. The first outdoor farmer's market, with produce from local greenhouses and the Annapolis Valley, is just a week and a half away.

I, of course, am celebrating with cookies. This fabulous recipe is a rip-off of a Martha Stewart recipe (that I tore out of a magazine at the bank whilst waiting for an appointment). I have always liked soft chocolate chip cookies but have never found any at the store made with natural ingredients. These will stay soft at least a couple days (and if there are any left after that, it means you didn't make 'em right!) As always, ingredient quality is key--especially the chocolate. Life is simply too short for bad chocolate.

Ingredients
1 1/4 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
7 Tbs unsalted butter at room temp
1/4 C white sugar
1/4 C packed brown sugar
1 large egg at room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract (or so; I always add a little extra)
3 Tbs creme fraiche (make your own! I explain how here)
3/4 C dark chocolate chips or chunks
3/4 C semisweet chocolate chips or chunks (I used a couple Scharffen Berger chocolate bars I got at the dollar store--I put them in a ziplock and beat them with a hammer until I like the size range of the shards. Diversity = yum.)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Beat butter and sugars together, then add egg and vanilla. Combine until fully integrated, then add dry ingredients and creme fraiche. Stir in chocolate bits. Grease a cookie sheet and drop balls of dough on it, sizing to suit (I like little cookies), about 2 inches apart. Bake until the centers are set and the cookies are a pale golden brown, about 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of your cookies.

Enjoy! And you're welcome in advance.

Green Living: One Car Lane Closer

I'm participating in Adbuster's Digital Detox Challenge this week and am therefore not hooked it to my usual news sources (I am naughty to be blogging, btw) but I couldn't resist sharing this article in the New York Times about a new concept for electric cars--one in which a robot removes and replaces the battery at a pit stop similar to a gas station--a not-gas station, I suppose. This out-of-the-chassis solution is so elegant and useful, it gave me chills.

Now if I could just find a robot to re-energize me in 45 seconds, we'd be made in the shade.

Easter Beans

Ping Post

Sexy new hybrid battery! (Yes, I just like hybrids) http://ping.fm/AiEU0

Something Old is New Again

I've long been a fan of the simple solar cooker, so I was gratified to see that one won the Forum of the Future's Climate Challenge Competition (the runner-up evaporating tiles are pretty sexy, as well).

I'm digging on Garden Rant this morning, too. Growing your own vegetables? Easy? Yes. While I myself am going for a slightly more structured garden this year by building attractive raised beds(at least in the front yard, where people can see it) I warmly urge beginning gardeners to just dump a pile of dirt in a sunny spot, throw in a variety of seeds, and see what grows.

It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be organized. It doesn't have to be well-planned. It just has to be a garden. Once you've eaten something delicious from your very own dirt pile, you'll have the confidence to go from there. I promise.

Testing ping... oddly popular with Canadian UUs!

Springy Thingy

Very exciting! The last of the snow (hopefully) melted out of the yard yesterday and some brave early folks are peeking up (see below). Inside I've got pumpkins, broccoli, basil, beans, tomatoes, peppers, and kale started. I've been indulging in my favorite early spring hobby--pinching back excess seedlings and eating them. It's not even proper to call them baby vegetables. Fetal vegetables, perhaps. There's nothing to bring me into myself like the freshest, tiniest tidbits of spring. It's like I'm the cruel demigod of my own 1/4 acre.

Chives
Garlic
Rhubarb