Chocolate Chip & Pecan Cookies

Recipe: Chocolate Chip & Pecan Cookies

I had this great menu planned out to cook this weekend. I was going to remake (or make for the first time) my Twice-Baked Potatoes, Pork Chops, and for dessert Chocolate Chip & Pecan cookies. But once again, my Time Management curse strikes again! Somehow with not much to do all weekend, my entire weekend flew by and I'm not sure how. And I only completed 33% of what I wanted to accomplish. Dang life and how quickly things go by. :) No complaints, I did good stuff this weekend. I actually de-cluttered my house and unpacked from my recent trip out of town (which is why I didn't cook last weekend). I went to the beauty salon (always a good thing). I did an impromptu bowling outing with some of my work friends. And I had an awesome workout with my trainer. Earlier this month, I started working out with a trainer. And I have to say, I'm liking the results. I could say, I'm liking the way my arms and legs are starting to tone up, or how I'm seeing my waistline slimming down. But seriously, my favorite result so far has been...my bowling score. Bowling for me usually results in a lot of gutter balls until I drink about 2 or 3 beers. Then I can at least hit 6 of the 10 pins. But typically, I don't often break 75 points in a game. But wouldn't you know, I broke 100 twice last night. Yay! I think the muscle I'm building helped me throw a more controlled ball. Now, none of this has to do with cooking, but it does make me happy. And since the blog is not just about my cooking in my happy place, but my journey to finding more happy places, there ya go. My journey is going to find me one buff, tough cooking machine before it's all said and done.

But back to my cooking adventure. After I worked out on Sunday, I went to the store to get groceries. By the time I got home, it was 3:30. I'm thinking, not so bad. I should be able to do 3 recipes in 5ish hours. What was I thinking??? I thought I'd do the cookies first so I could bake them and get them out the way. Then I'd have the oven free for the baked potatoes and I could prep the rest of the meals while the potatoes were baking (and hopefully not exploding). But my first mishap was when I realized I didn't have Vanilla Extract. I always check before I go to the store, and I swore I had Extract. So...back to the store I went, which lost me 30 more minutes. I finally got in a groove though. But the groove was a slow moving one, as usual. One of the things I liked about this cookie recipe, was that I ground the pecans in with my flour, baking soda, and salt. I also put bigger pieces of chopped pecans in with the cookie dough at the end, but grounding them into the flour mixture was a new one. I'm happy with the way my cookies turned out. And they looked just like the cookbook! Usually the picture in the book tends to vary some from my final production. But my cookies looked exactly like the cookbook. I had enough of the cookie dough before they finished cooking to know they were good. Eating cookie dough is my favorite part of baking cookies. I wish I could just make cookies to just eat the dough. But I don't know how healthy that would be. Between all of the cookie dough and the cookies I ate, I think I undid every second of my workout today. But man were they good. Oh and what did the rest of my cooking adventure in for the night was when I got on the phone with my friend Terraun. I actually got on the phone while making my cookies, but while I waited for them to bake we kept talking and reviewing the most recent events of Pop Culture. And a 20 minute conversation turned into 90 minutes. And next thing you know...it was 7:00. And I decided to punt on the potatoes and the pork chops. At least I got my cookies done. :) And they are really good. Maybe I should be nice and take some to work tomorrow. Or maybe, I'll savor them all for myself. Then again, I've already undone one day of working out. Not sure I really want to undo the last month. But then again....