Made with ♥ Monday: Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am both amazed and appalled to learn how much time and energy other people have put into creating the perfect chocolate chip cookies. Okay, if I'm being honest, mostly just amazed. There's a science behind making chewy cookies - melt your butter, skip the baking powder, chill your dough. It takes a frightening degree of dedication and I am so glad that beautiful people like Sally at Sally's Baking Addiction are out there, tirelessly working to defeat the crunchy cookie menace. Yes, people, this is a Real Problem. And there are few things as satisfying as biting into a fresh-from-the-oven, still warm, rich and soft chocolate chip cookie. No amount of sadness or loss is too great for butter and sugar and chocolate chips to temporarily offset.

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 pinch of salt
3/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg & 1 egg yolk (let your eggs sit in a bowl of warm water to bring them to room temperature)
1 splash of vanilla extract
1 handful of chocolate chips

If you're interested in the intricate explanation of how things like cornstarch and melted butter do their magic to make your cookies soft and chewy, check out the original recipe here. Me? I am equal parts interested in reading and eating so I understand completely if you'd like to skip on ahead and start.

First, combine your flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix together your melted butter and sugars until there are no lumps. If you're patient enough, they'll come together into a thick and glossy caramel. If you're just plain hungry, at least try to get out the biggest lumps of sugar. Whisk in the egg and egg yolk, then vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix them together (with your hands, if necessary. I find this is the best way to work out stress, frustration, and doubt. It's impossible to be unsure of oneself while baking cookies. In that moment, with the oven hot and your hands covered in cookie dough, it is inconceivable that anyone could be anywhere but one hundred percent present). Toss in some chocolate chips and figure things out.

This last step is possibly the most heart wrenching: cover and chill the cookie dough for at least two hours. I know. Two hours is an awfully long time, but it will be worth it. Just a side note, "chill" does not mean "put cookie dough in the freezer to save time then forget about it for the next three hours only to pull out a bowl of frozen solid dough when you finally remember." In case you were wondering. Luckily, ovens are an incredible invention that somehow solve everything.

Bake balls of about 3 Tablespoons of dough at 325F degrees for ten minutes. They will be under cooked. You will take them out anyways, leave them on the tray to cook through for a couple more minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool down and you will be glad you did. That soft spot right at the heart of the cookie, that is just joy. That is just absolute joy.

One University: Endings

This Wednesday, I packed my new life into poorly labeled boxes ("Clothes + Tea + Weird Stuff." Future Erika thanks you for your service.) and hit the road. It's been a crazy year. And I am so so grateful for everything that I've been through - but sometimes it can be hard to appreciate the good under a heavy layer of sadness.

I am so grateful for thick fog, 8:30 lecture, black coffee mornings. For dining hall waffle nights and tables full of strangers-turned-most-beautiful-people-you'll-ever-meet. For thick books and dragging myself up seven flights of stairs and covering our mouths, shaking with laughter behind cramped fingers long after quiet hours. This year, first year, has been so so much. I am grateful for everything and everyone, because endings don't mean anything without all that good stuff that comes before.

It's hard when you don't know which direction home is anymore.

Friday Find: Rolly's Diner

Living a mind-numbing, soul-crushing, seventeen hour drive away from the city, road trips have been a staple of my life for as long as I can remember. Summer time meant cramming suitcases and stubborn kids into our mini van, searching desperately for a radio station to break the constant stream of static and complaints, and watching home disappear through the back window.

This year, road trips look a little different: Summertime came early, in mid-April, and my brother showed up outside my dorm with his brand new (to him) car packed to the brim with our new lives. This road trip follows the same route as all my childhood pilgrimage but in reverse. We're headed north, back home but with every kilometre watching it fade from view. It's hard and it's heavy, saying goodbye, and in the midst of all this confusion, we cling to our traditions like children to our parents' shins. And Rolly's diner is absolutely saturated with tradition.

Every summer, stopping at Rolly's marked the end of our journey. Hope, BC is only an hour and a half from Vancouver, which is only a couple hours from my grandparents' house. After a solid 16 hours trapped in a moving vehicle, that is the definition of close enough. We'd pile out of the van, stretch our numb legs in the parking lot, then slide eagerly into a booth and ask the waitress for the same thing, year after year: four massive plates of eggs Benedict, please.

This year the table was smaller - just my brother and I. We split one order and even that was more than enough to put us in a food coma for the rest of the drive. Butter and eggs and hashbrowns and bread are just enough to fill your stomach and ease your mind, for a couple of minutes, at least.

Rolly's Diner is all vinyl booths, rose-patterned tiles, homemade pies sitting in a glass display. It's trying to force ketchup from glass bottles and listening to the light chink of china as you set your mug of coffee down on its saucer, breathe in, breathe out, take another sip. Walking through the door is like walking back in time. The food, the people and the atmosphere are sugar-coated with nostalgia and breeding grounds for tradition. The next time you find yourself itching to just get up and go, make sure to make a pit stop at Rolly's on your long journey home.

On University: First Year

Today I had the last exam of my first year of university. And this crazy thing happened: I got to my seat, opened up the exam booklet, and I actually knew what I was talking about. I had fun writing my essays and talking to my TA and somewhere along the line I realized that none of this would've been possible back in September.

There's no way eager, freshman Erika would've been able to throw out terms like "offensive and defensive consumption" on a communications exam with any degree of confidence - largely because, before taking this course, I didn't know what communications was. More than just what I've learned in books, though, university has taught me so much about the world around me. I've met all sorts of people - some that just threw me off, some that I like, and some I hope will be a part of my life for a very long time. And every new experience taught me something new about myself.

It's been eight solid months of difficult questions like:

Who are you?
What are you doing with your life?
Uh huh, you sure about that?
Are you really going out in public looking like that?

Yes, that last one has been a legitimate concern on more than one occasion. Dorm rooms with full length mirrors are both a blessing and a curse.

I am both so completely different from the girl I was in September, and so much the same. To celebrate the end of exams, I did what I do to mark basically any major life event: I ate pancakes. A group of friends and I - people I only just met this year who have quickly become some of my very favorites - crammed into one boy's tiny Volkswagen and got lost on the way to IHOP. We talked, we laughed, we ate, and the entire time there was a little voice inside my head whispering, "This is it. You've got it good, girl."

I can't believe that this - my new friends, my new home, the entire universe up on my mountain top - is just ending. And people will graduate and transfer and move on with their lives. But I'm crossing my fingers that there will be more pancake dates and celebrations to come.

Nostalgia

Today I was asked to define the word nostalgia. My friend, scrolling through notes for an anthropology class, glancing up quickly to say, "Hey, you like words. What does this mean?" Our common room, flooded with sunshine, textbooks and laptops scattered everywhere, white pages edged with gold. We made iced coffee and sat on the floor, backs pressed against the glass, hot to the touch from the first sunny day in months. Studying for the last exams of my first year of university with the people who have been my neighbours for the past eight months, brows furrowed in concentration only to break out into laughter a moment later.

This, my friend. It's moments like this that breed nostalgia.

I am forever looking backwards. Days like today, hot and lazy afternoons that spill into evenings. Books open, preparing for the final days of something that feels like it's only just beginning. Stress, fear, panic but an overwhelming sense of belonging. Today was sepia toned and bittersweet. In just over a week I'll be back home, miles away from these beautiful people and Sunday afternoons like this one.

Even as I sat there, pouring over notes for a history exam in the morning, I could feel myself remembering. I compressed today into a glimmer of laughter and clinking glasses and shining light and tucked it away in my mind for safe keeping. Months from now, I'll look back and remember today and be filled with light and joy and missing these moments something awful. When something so good happens, I stop experiencing life and start planning ahead to a moment when it will inevitably end.

I am a creature of nostalgia.

My mind is like a catalog of days and names and whispers. My first year of university is almost over and I can already imagine myself, decades from now, pressing this memory fast against my heart. Time passes so quickly and so not at all.

It's been a tough eight months. It's been eight months of constantly questioning: Who are you? What are you doing? Are you making the right decision?

I don't know I don't know I don't

But soon, so soon I can fit it in the palm of my hand, everything will change. The answers will catch the light and float away, like dust in a sunbeam. I am forever remembering, I am forever looking forward to looking back.

Nostalgia seeps in like light through half-closed blinds. I just hope that the future is full of Sunday afternoons like this one.