When we were in New York City recently, visiting our daughter and her husband, we happened by a cookie store. One of their offerings was a S’mores cookie. It was warm and really delicious, which inspired me to come home and try to come up with a S’mores cookie of my own. Here it is. The marshmallows melt so they are more caramely than marshmallowy, which I like.

Yield:

48

Ingredients:

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate

¾ cup butter

¾ cup sugar

1½ cups brown sugar

¾ cup flour

¼ cup cocoa

1½ teaspoons baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 large eggs, cold

12 ounces milk chocolate chips or chunks*

1 cup miniature marshmallows, 8 ounces

2 cups Golden Graham cereal

 Directions:

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Melt bittersweet chocolate and butter over double boiler or in microwave until just melted. Set aside.

3. Mix together dry ingredients.

4. Stir in eggs and vanilla.

5. Stir in butter/chocolate mixture.

6. Stir in milk chocolate chips and marshmallows.

7. Carefully fold in cereal. The dough will not coat all of the pieces.

8. Scoop dough into 2 tablespoon balls onto parchment-lined baking sheets. It is a bit tricky to scoop since there are so many floaties in them.

9. Bake about 14 minutes.

10. Let cool on sheets for a few minutes before removing to cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes:

*I used Dove Promises. I cut each piece of candy into fourths. It would be easier to just use milk chocolate chips but Dove is hard to pass up!

How Did You Do That?

Several teenagers were brought in for evaluation after a car crash. When I asked the driver what happened, she said they rolled their car while driving in reverse in a parking lot of a shopping mall. When I pressed her to help me understand how in the world someone could possibly roll their car while backing up in a parking lot, she didn’t seem to understand why I was so puzzled.

Where Is It Safe to Park Your Motor Home?

An 18-year-old sober woman was driving about fifty miles per hour on a neighborhood street when she ran into a motor home, which was parked in a driveway.

Luck of the Draw

An 18-year-old man came in by ambulance. The medics reported the car he had been driving was going over 100 miles per hour when it hit a pole, apparently without braking. They said the car was literally cut in half with the two parts approximately 150 feet apart. The patient was very drunk and had cuts and bumps but nothing life threatening. The other occupant of the car had been pronounced dead at the scene.

You might remember that I did a collage of pictures of bags I have made. Well, here is one I made of pictures of cookies I have baked. It will be on the wall in the room where I do my sewing.

Fair warning: not G-rated.

My patient of the week was a sixty-five-year-old man. He was thin and disheveled. Though it was  the middle of the night, he wore  huge sunglasses that covered his regular glasses. He kept peering out over the top of both of them to look at me as we talked. My interaction with him just amazed me. I think the best way I can do it justice is to  reproduce the nurse’s note, exactly as she wrote it:

Presents with complaint of pain under left shoulder blade, coughing up grey sputum, pain in penis and general weakness for six days. States he was seen in clinic a few days ago and given codeine cough syrup that doesn’t feel it’s helping him. States he’s been using Enzyte, the male “natural” enhancement drug ordered from TV for 1½ months and feels it may be causing his issues with his penis. States he went to a “Party Place a few nights ago where they have little holes in the wall and was able to obtain an erection and received oral sex from another guy and maybe that’s where I caught something on my penis.”

This is right out of the nurse’s note. I can’t make up things like this.

Here are six small blue and yellow bags I made at one time, each with a little different approach to the buckle and the tag.

The other night at work, some people were checking out cookie recipes on this website. One of them said, “Not all of the recipes are weird!” I was a bit surprised by that because, though I am drawn to trying recipes that seen different, there are a lot of recipes here that are not weird. This, however, is a very weird recipe. Actually, the cookie recipe itself is standard. The Red Miso and Lemon Verbena Buttercream is very strange. The miso is a bit too much for me but Shari liked it as did several other people.

It was a bit of a pain to get the ingredients for this recipe.  I ordered the red miso online. I guess what I got was authentic since there was not a word of English on the package. The lemon verbena I finally found at a local nursery. I had to let it grow a bit until it was large enough to be able to give me a tablespoon of chopped foliage without killing the plant. Anyway, if you want to try something fun (and weird,) here it is.

Recipe By:

Food & Wine

Yield:

45 double cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons hot water

3 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups bittersweet chocolate, chopped*

 Directions:

1.  Heat oven to 350°. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Combine flour and salt in medium bowl. Set aside.

3. In a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter until creamy, 1 minute.

4. Add the sugars and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 minutes.

5. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

6. In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda in the hot water.

7. Stir soda mixture into batter.

8. At low speed, beat in the flour and salt until just incorporated.

9. Add the chocolate and beat just to distribute evenly.

10. Scoop 1 tablespoon balls of dough onto the lined baking sheets, spacing them 1½ inches apart. Bake in the center of the oven, one baking sheet at a time, for about 12 minutes, until golden. Rotate the baking sheet halfway through. Let the cookies cool.

11. Spread small amount of Red Miso and Lemon Verbena Buttercream on bottom of one cookie then press the bottom of a second cookie into the icing.

 Notes:

*  I used Ghirardelli bittersweet chips. They are a bit large when you make the cookies small for little whoopie pies. Mini chips would be better.

Red Miso Buttercream

Ingredients:

½ cup unsalted butter, softened

1 tablespoon red miso

½ cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon fresh lemon verbena, very finly chopped

 Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, using a handheld electric mixer, beat the butter with the red miso at medium speed until smooth.

2. Beat in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla extract.

3. Stir in lemon verbena.

Notes:

This is twice as much powdered sugar as called for in the original recipe.

I have been eating the left over buttercream on a huge squash my father-in-law grew in his garden. It makes the squash very tasty and fun.

I had tried to flavor cookies with root beer extract in the past with disappointing results. When I came across this recipe, I decided to try again. I even made the effort to get the Cook’s Root Beer Extract the recipe called for. The molasses and root beer flavor combine with the white chips to make an interesting flavor. As I was baking them, I thought they smelled so much like root beer that anyone would know what the “secret ingredient” was. Though several people in the emergency department guessed the molasses, no one could tell they were made with root beer. When I made them with root beer barrels, there was no doubt they were root beer cookies.

Servings:

60 cookies

Source:

http://cooksvanilla.com

Ingredients:

2½ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/3 cups sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 to 2 teaspoons root beer extract *

2 large eggs

12 ounces white chocolate chunks or chips (about 2¼ cups)**

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Add the butter, sugar, molasses, vanilla and root beer extract to the bowl of a stand mixer or hand-held electric mixer. Beat on medium-low speed until smooth.

Add eggs one at a time, beating to incorporate after each addition.

With the mixer speed on low, slowly add the flour mixture, beating only until the dry ingredients are incorporated.

Add the white chocolate chips or chunks. Mix on low just until evenly distributed.

Form two tablespoons balls of dough and place on the baking sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake 11 to 13 minutes, until the cookie edges just set and the middles of the cookies are soft but not wet.

Cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer the cookies to the wire rack to cool completely.

Notes:

* This recipe called for Cook’s Root Beer Extract which I got from http://cooksvanilla.com .

** Here is what they look like made with 6 ounces of cracked root beer barrels rather than the white chips:

I like them better like this because I think white chips taste like medicine.

Carmen sent me a Tad Bag picture. Can you beat this?

A 31-year-old woman was brought in by police on a psychiatric hold. In such cases, the police officer writes out a document that says why he or she feels the patient is being forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

This is what the police officer wrote on this lady’s hold:

“Subject called 911 and reported that her cat was acting strange and that she had tried to kill it by twisting its neck. Upon police arrival to the subject’s home, there was blood on the sink, floor, tables and all over the cat. The subject told me that the cat was acting strange and not obeying her so she tried to kill it by choking it. When the cat stopped moving, she thought she killed it. Subject said she started to give the cat CPR. When subject started to blow air into the cat’s mouth, the cat came alive and bit her on the hand and lip. Subject was not talking in a coherent manner and she said she had been hearing voices lately.”

The “subject” had cat bites and scratches on her face and fingers. She was given first aid and sent to emergency psychiatry.