Original Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Thrift Finds

It's been raining practically all day yesterday, and I have not had the desire to go outside in the rain, to do any errands, except just to chill out inside my condo apartment, open the windows in my living room and listen to the rain. I just love watching summer rain, and listen to the rain drops. Sounds corny, but it's one of the sounds of nature that I love so much. In the early morning, I love to open my back windows in the bedroom, just to hear the cricket sounds, and watch the lush greenery of the enormous grape leave trees. The clean fresh air, even if it's 79 to 81 degrees F. in the morning, I love to open my windows and get the nice cross breeze from the ocean, which is only about 100 ft. away.

I'm linking this to:

 Full Plate Thursday 8-11-11 @ Miz Helen's Country Cottage

I decided to bake cookies last night, and I always refer to the Original Nestle Toll House Cookies recipe.

The only adaptation I use for the full recipe, is instead of 2 sticks of butter, I substitute 1 cup of Crisco all vegetable shortening, which equals to the 1 stick of butter. The reason for that is...my cookies always come out so perfect and just the right amount of crispiness. It never flattens down, as it would with the full amount of the butter. So that's my little secret "tip!"

Now, do you see what I mean?...Perfect cookies every time! Later, I plan to make enchiladas, which I have not made in ages...one filled with leftover rotisserie chicken, and the other vegetarian.

In the meantime, here's the link to the Chocolate Chip cookie recipe. Yeayy!!! saves me from typing it all out! Trust me on this one. Perfect cookies every time!

 Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cross Country- Oatmeal Cookies and Blog Award

This morning was a cloudy, and gloomy morning that turned into a half way decent looking day, here in South Florida, but temperature only at about 68 degrees F. My daughter dropped off my little grandson at my place for a couple hours so she could go take care of errands, son-in-law had his only 1 day off, and he had to take care of things, as well. My little sweetheart came all set with his "Finding Nemo" CDVD, as he calls it, and I knew I didn't have his favorite little "Goldfish" crackers snack for him, so I thought, I better start making something real quick and yummy for him. Sure enough I had Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolates, but no chocolate chips. Found some quick cooking oats, and I knew I had the rest of the ingredients...so why not, some chocolate chunk cookies, instead of chocolate chip cookies?

Ready to jump into action, and in less than 30 minutes, warm cookies were waiting for my little guy, with a big smile on his face. For some reason, every time I'm looking for a recipe, that I have just about all the ingredients for, is the "Best Recipes" book, the latest copyright, 1982, that have a compiled great list from backs of boxes, cans, jars, but you really have to do some adaptation to make it up to date by switching, and adding ingredients, which I love to do, and adapt it my way. Interesting, about the Mazola corn oil, which the original recipe calls for 3/4 cups? and no butter?...well, I quickly narrowed the amount down to 1/3 cup of vegetable oil, instead, and I knew it would need at least a little butter, so I added 1/2 unsalted butter, and had to confidence of knowing it will turn out better, than with all oil, which would make it too wet, as well!...The result, was a light, perfect, chocolaty goodness with healthy oats!

Cookbook Sundays-Cream Cheese Brownies

For someone who rarely bakes, I must say this decadent brownie turned out super great. When I decide to bake, it has to be either very simple, like chocolate chip cookies, or banana bread, but I couldn't resist making these brownies, because I love chocolate, and so does just about every one else in the family, except my daughter, who can live without it. She's an apple-anything, with apples lover. I found this wonderful book  called, How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman...where else?...but at Goodwill, for $.79. This bright gold color, caught my attention, and I immediately delved into it, grabbing it off the book shelf. This is a paperback, it was and I say, seriously, brand new. I know for a fact that the hard cover book costs $29.99, so the paperback must cost about $10.00 less. What a bargain! I am so happy that I joined Brenda at Brenda's Canadian Kitchen for the Cookbooks Sundays, except, 75% of my cookbooks are collected from my thrift finds, that I should be feeling "guilty" about for finding such treasures, but maybe not so guilty...after all those people that got rid of them had their own reasons. Just like to know what reasons?

So sorry for the inconvenience...I will post the recipe ASAP, just a lot of things going on here!