No Bake Cookies

I made No Bake Cookies tonight. Yum. Haven't had them in f-o-r-e-v-e-r!  As I was stirring (and stirring, sigh) the chocolate, I thought about No Bake Cookies and came up with lots of flashes in my memory banks.

My friend's mom made them all the time. I loved going to her house because she had a kitchen center. Ironic that I liked to play in the kitchen as a little girl. Not so much now!

They had these in the school cafeteria when I was in junior high. You could buy 2 in a sandwich bag (you know the wanna-be ziploc bag) for .25 cents. What would Jamie Oliver have thought of my junior high cafeteria? Scary!

In college we made them all the time. We knew just how the chocolate was supposed to look when it was ready. If it doesn't cook long enough, it doesn't get hard.

Sometime after college we quite making these yummy treats. For the past week I've thought about them every day and couldn't resist the craving any longer! So tonight, I stirred and stirred, and watched for that moment when the chocolate changes ever so slightly, and wah-la, the yumminess begins!

Ok Here's my Resolution! and a Cool Website I found

This morning I made a big breakfast for my family and the extra kids that ended up staying out our house last night.  I don't spend a lot of time cooking, partly because of scheduling, partly because I have some pretty strict parameters around what I like to do when cooking.  And when I say cooking I'm including baking too. 

Many times when I'm in the kitchen my mind drifts to times spent in my Mom's kitchen as a girl.  I watched her and sat on the cabinet talking to her.  She'd let me talk and talk and she'd listen and listen.  She didn't make me do very much to help her other than setting the table and cleaning the kitchen afterwards.  My sweet Mom was sensitive to my dislike for all things cooking then, thus...to this day I can set an incredibly beautiful table, but cooking...not my strong suit!  (I'm totally ok with this, let me say, I am SOO glad that she didn't make me cook!)

But back to this morning, so my husband and I were up before the boys, and ate our breakfast in the family room catching up on TV shows that we'd taped, we finished went back to the kitchen for one last nibble before putting our plates in the dishwasher, and somehow we started talking about pie. 

I tried to make pie one time.  ONE TIME.  It was a Pecan pie.  Someone said it was the easiest pie to make so I tried it.  It was in our first apartment and I remember taking it out of the oven, taking one look at it and turning around and throwing it in the sink and down the garbage disposal.  It was awful!  (Or maybe it just looked awful.)

So in the pie conversation this morning Keith (my hubs) says:  what about making a Pecan pie?
Me:  bleck...remember I tried that once.  But I should learn to make a Chocolate pie like my Mom!
He:  Yep, you should do it!
Me:  If Carmen can do it, I can do it!  (Carmen is my sister-in-law who called me at 11:00pm one night this summer asking me for my Mom's Chocolate pie recipe because she and her husband wanted one!  They ended up calling my Mom and made it that night and it turned out great!)
Me:  That's gonna be my New Year's Resolution!  To learn to make my Mom's Chocolate pie!
He:  Great idea, you should do it!  (He's so supportive...and he loves Chocolate pie!)

This is what it should will look like!

So, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Oh yeah, and I found a cool website reading another blog...this guy works at a used book store and has collected/posted recipes he's found in the pages of books.  Handwritten Recipes