This is a pretty basic cookie with a soft texture but they hold together pretty well when bags full are taken to the emergency department.

 Recipe By:

San Jose Mercury News and all over the Internet

 Yield:

30

Ingredients:

2 cups Extra Dark Chocolate Chips (divided)

2 tablespoons water

½ cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups unsifted all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sliced almonds

 Directions:

1. Heat over to 350F degrees.

2. Heat one cup of chips and water in microwave for about 1 minute, stirring well until smooth.  Set aside.

3. Cream butter, sugar and salt in large mixer bowl until light.  Beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth.

4. Add melted chocolate, then mix in flour and baking soda just until incorporated. Stir in remaining chocolate chips and almonds.

5. Drop spoonfuls on parchment-lined baking sheet.  Bake for 10-11 minutes.  Tops will look cracked and crusty while centers will be soft and look under baked. Don’t over-cook them!

Here is the bag I made this week.

Think Emergency Department means “emergency?” Check out some of these ED patient complaints.

26 year-old female presented at 6:00 in the morning complaining of being weak and tired after being up all night drinking whiskey at a party.

20-year-old man presented with a chief complaint of uncontrollable farting when he gets nervous.

An adult woman came in complaining of a “virginal infection.”

18-year-old woman smelled blood in her nose for three minutes, fifteen minutes before arriving at the emergency department.

Young female claimed to have complete amnesia for everything in her life up until she saw the “emergency” sign out front.

21-year-old man came in with a self-inflicted laceration in the middle of his forehead, which he caused trying to remove a “computer chip” from his brain.

19-year-old man complained of feeling funny after taking LSD.

Here is the latest bag. My newest design but in blue and yellow and a bit bigger.

Here is a picture of all three I have made in this design.

These are VERY spicy and the ginger could be cut back a lot if you prefer them a bit tamer.

Yield:

60 cookies

Ingredients:

4 cups flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

5 tablespoons ground ginger

4 teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

1½ cups unsalted butter

2 cups light brown sugar, packed

½ cup molasses

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

16 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Granulated sugar

Instructions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large baking sheet or cover with parchment and set aside.

In medium bowl, whisk flour, cocoa powder, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt until thoroughly combined. Set aside.

In large bowl, beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add molasses, egg and vanilla. Beat to combine.

Mix in dry ingredients gently but thoroughly, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. Stir in chopped chocolate until well combined.

Form dough into balls, about 2 tablespoons each. Roll each ball in granulated sugar and place it on the baking sheet.

Bake cookies 5 minutes, turn pan 180 degrees, and bake until just set, about 5 minutes more. Cool on pans 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks. Don’t cook them for longer, even if they don’t look done!

Notes:

The original recipe calls for them to be flattened before baking, which I found to be not necessary.

I used my Sprinkle King kingsblingz diamond crystals sugar crystals, which are large, crunchy and sparkly. I get them at supplyvillage.com.

I cared for a sixty-one-year-old lady who was brought to the emergency department by her daughter and brother. They brought her down from the intensive care unit where her son who was on life support. She was hollering hysterically and was inconsolable. She wailed as she told me her story.

She said her son had suffered from depression for many years. She had grown tired of it and had become angry with him. They had argued earlier in the day. The argument ended with her hollering at him, “Get a hold of yourself and get over this depression!”

The son then went straight out to the back yard and hung himself on a tree. Some time later, she discovered him hanging there. She couldn’t get him down so ran off to find neighbors to help. By the time they cut him down and got the ambulance to bring him to the hospital, he was brain dead.

As she recounted the events to me, she moaned about wanting to turn the back the clock, how she was not there for him when he needed her and how she should be dead instead of him.

Our daughter, McKenzie, was here visiting from New York City this last week. You will recognize her from a prior posting:

While she was here, I made a couple of bags for her to take home.

A big blue one for her

and a big orange one for her boss, Brad.

A forty-year-old man was brought in my medics. They had been called to the Greyhound station to pick up a drunken man. They said he got on the bus in San Francisco with a ticket to Los Angeles. By the time they made the stop in San Jose, he was so drunk the bus driver didn’t feel comfortable going on with him. He was found with a quart of Bacardi rum, about two thirds consumed, on the seat next to him. The medics put the bottle in his backpack and brought him to us.

As is my practice, I examined him and considered whether there might be something more serous the matter with him. Finding no reason to be worried, I decided to closely watch for his expected sobriety.

A few hours later, as the end of my shift approached, he was awake and passed his walk test. He confirmed that he was an alcoholic and had, in deed, consumed too much rum as he started his bus trip. He asked how he could get a cab back to the Greyhound station as family members expected him in Los Angeles. He was directed to the waiting room where there was a phone and information about calling a cab.

About forty-five minutes later, my attention was called to this patient as he was being rolled back in from the waiting room, again unconscious. He had gone to the waiting room and, rather than call for a cab, drank the rest of the Bacardi. I had to turn his care over to the incoming doctor to watch for him to, again, sober up. I wonder if he ever made it to Los Angeles.

“My Jaw is Already Locked”

In the south, people frequently referred to a tetanus shot as a “lockjaw shot.” One night, the nurse told our patient she was going to give him a lockjaw shot.

When he refused to take the shot, the nurse asked him why. He had recently broken his jaw and had his jaw wired closed. He refused to take the shot, because, he said, “My Jaw is already locked.”

“My Marriage is Going Downhill”

A seventy-six-year-old lady was brought in by her daughter who had noted the patient’s prolapsed uterus for the first time. This is a condition where the structures supporting the uterus in the pelvis become lax, allowing it to slide down into and even protrude from the vagina. Though the patient said the condition had been there for years, the daughter was startled by it and wanted to make sure there was nothing that needed to be done.

The patient denied any symptoms but said her “sex life is terrible” and “her “marriage is going downhill” because her uterus was filling and sticking out of her vagina.

Here is an image I plucked off the Internet:

and here is the Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterine_prolapse

This is a standard, small bag made with parallel straps with the ends joined behind the vertical blue strap with the buckle.

This is the basic large bag made with parallel straps, each stap being sewn to itself I sew around in circles.