Yesterday a friend emailed me and said that a lady had brought in ginger cookies to the office. They were thin and crispy  and she wanted to know why they had spread out so much. Here was my answer.

1. Almost always, the cheaper the butter the more water content. Never use whipped butter or margarine, way too much water content.

2. If you like a “fluffier” cookie to that of a thin crispy cookie, use half butter and half shortening in the recipe.

3. In making chocolate chip cookies from the recipe on the back of the Nestles Semi Sweet CC’s it calls for 2 eggs, I only use 1. If recipe calls for Large Eggs, and you have Extra Large, use only half of the eggs called for in the recipe.

4. Using parchment paper seems to help the dough not spread out so much.

5. Measuring the flour is really important. I never sift the flour. I stir the flour in the canister before I dip the measuring cup into the flour. I do not pack it in. I just dip the measuring cup in the flour and then level it off at the top.

If you like them soft, be sure to begin to watch the cookies in the last 2-3 minutes of baking time. Because all ovens are different, yours might be done in 9 min as opposed to 11. If the cookie just barely creases when you poke your finger in it, that is usually when I take them out. I am assured that they will stay soft that way. I also don’t use cooling racks. I put the hot cookie straight from the cookie sheet to the paper towel that I have placed on the counter. Soaks up some of the grease and seems to keep them softer than the cooling rack.

We haven’t figured out yet why these things always seem to happen to us. I remember Erma Bombeck saying that she felt that God allowed the circumstances in her life so she would write about them and give people the gift of laughter. Maybe that is why these things happen to us. All I know is that if Candid Camera were still being filmed today, Frosty and I would probably be the stars of the show, as we just seem to attract “situations”.

It all began Saturday morning, when, “with visions of sugarplums danced in our heads,”  we set out to storage with our sleigh to pick up our Christmas decorations. After Frosty dropped the first box of “treasures”, and us scrambling around trying to salvage the unbroken nativities and the shattered ornaments,we decided that maybe a flat bed dolly would be good to use. So, in a few minutes, he comes back with a dolly.

We loaded up about 15 boxes on the dolly and we proceed downstairs to the car to load up the first haul. So far so good, (except the boxed “we” dropped). Frosty opens the back gate to start loading the SUV and I go around to the side to put both seats down so we have more room to pack  boxes. When I cannot get the seat to budge, I ask him to come around to help me put the seat down. He does….in doing so, he left the dolly, still filled with the boxes at the back of the car. I happen to look up to see the dolly rolling down the parking lot, still filled with the boxes, headed straight for a “Rent Me for $19/day” van. I take off running and then grab the handle to stop the roll away cart, finally stop it just before it crashed into the van. Frosty said he had never seen me move so fast. I give him a dirty look and proceed to load boxes. We take the dolly upstairs to the storage unit. The hallway is dark. He tells me that the lights are motion detected and I will have to walk to the other end of the hallway to activate the light. I do so, but by the time I walk all the way back, we only have about 5 min before the lights go out again. So another trip back down the hall. I am not singing Christmas Carols by this time. After 3 trips down the hallway to get the lights to come on, we get another load of “treasures” and head to the car.

After we finally get the tree loaded in the back of the car (this is now our 3rd trip back to the storage unit) I told Frosty that instead of bringing the other 15 boxes of Christmas decorations, let’s keep this year simple and just use green and red balls on the big tree. It is then that he reminds me that if we are truly going to keep it simple, we wouldn’t have made 3 trips to the storage unit. But off to WallMart to buy green and red balls for the tree. We enter a crowded store and head to the seasonal section where we find just what we are looking, containers of green and red Christmas balls. 50 green per container and 50 red per container. I pick up just the perfect container and the bottom falls out. Balls are rolling all over the isle with people having to back up their carts because they cannot go down the isle without running over the balls. Randy quickly runs around the corner pretending not to know me. That poor sweet clerk who came to help pick them up. I don’t think he was wishing me a merry Christmas. But off we go to check out. On the way out of the store, Mr. Randy is busy laughing at my fiasco with the ornaments and doesn’t realize that each person going out of the door is being stopped by a “friendly Wallmart Clerk” to check receipts. I was ever so thankful that it wasn’t the same clerk who cleaned up the isle after me a few minutes before. We are trying to hurry out of the store before we can damage anything else when Randy completely runs our cart into the “backsides” of the couple in front of us. Well…I guess I don’t have to tell you the looks we got from them. By this time, we were afraid to go anywhere else. We headed home to begin making our little abode into Frosty and Noel’s Gingerbread house. We both knew that we had had enough fun for one day. It is now truly beginning to “look a lot like Christmas” but we hope that by next weekend, we will have recuperated from loading and unloading boxes to just enjoy our new Christmas decorations. After all, “keeping it simple” is our new Christmas Season motto!