Day Eight
I’ve been struggling to come up with things to write here lately. So this post may or may not be about love. Maybe it’s just about living.

Love is something that feels so foreign to me these days, not because I don’t feel it, or because I’m in a bad place, or anything negative. Rather, it’s that I feel spent. It’s been hard to do or feel much of anything lately, whether it’s work, or chores, or even watching a drama.

I am existentially exhausted.

So I made cookie dough tonight.

I love baking. Whether it’s a new recipe or one that I can do with my eyes closed, there’s something about baking (and cooking, to a lesser extent) that is calming. I don’t bake as often as I’d like these days, and haven’t really tried anything new in a long time. But there is something about making a familiar recipe that just helps to reset or ground me.

I especially love the science behind baking, learning the tricks and secrets to substituting ingredients. Everything in baking has purpose – baking powder vs. baking soda, brown sugar vs. white sugar, oil vs. butter – these all matter. Even the humidity and the way you measure ingredients matters. I love that you can always figure out what went wrong just by look or taste. Plus, in the end you have something delicious.

I’ve been using the same chocolate chip cookie recipe for years now, tweaking it here and there to suit my moods. Today I didn’t substitute or change anything major in the ingredients, though I’ve varied the things in the past. I mixed by hand because I have no patience for cleaning the hand mixer. I weighed the ingredients rather than measure because that always is more effective, especially given the cold weather. I was too tired to brown the butter tonight – but it seriously ups the flavor game in something as simple as chocolate chip cookies. Plus it smells heavenly when you’re making it.

The dough is resting in the fridge now and I’ll bake it when I’m done with work tomorrow. That step is not in the recipe. It’s resting because that will help hydrate the dough and make the flavors really come together. I’ve also stopped using chocolate chips because chopping up a bar of dark chocolate is way better – you get big chunks of chocolate, but you also get these beautiful little slivers of chocolate throughout. For the finishing touch, tomorrow I’ll sprinkle the cookies with flaky salt before they go in the oven.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor for life in here somewhere, but honestly, I’m too tired to find it today.

I don’t think the cookies will help my existential exhaustion, but they did give me a bit of grounding tonight. They reminded me of something I love doing, and some days that has to be enough to get you through to the next day. I don’t know if it’s self-love, so much as self-preservation, but maybe, in the end, those are one and the same.

Love,
February

P.S. Here’s a song that always makes me happy.

23
13

    This is beautiful Jelly.

    I can relate to the calm feeling when baking something. For me, who tend to overthink things, baking grounded me because everything needed to be precise, so as to make sure that the end product will be similar to what the recipe has promised. At the time of preparing ingredients and baking, I was really there – I was totally conscious and in that moment body and soul. That is what I like about baking besides the deliciousness and its smell that are totally heavenly.

    I don’t bake much nowadays because of work and school work. I do gardening though.

    I wish I could taste your choco chip cookies. I baked chocolate chip cookies too but I used ready-made chocolate chips. Is it better to break a chocolate bar into pieces instead of using the ready-made ones?

    4
    1

      I don’t have a problem with ready made chips, per se, and I definitely use them when I don’t have a bar of chocolate. But if you use a knife to chop a bar you get less uniform pieces and then you also get all the little chocolate slivers throughout the dough and it’s just so great. Also the quality of bar chocolate is usually higher. I usually stock up on good baking chocolate bars when they’re on sale and keep a few in my baking cabinet.

      I also garden, but indoors because I live in an apartment in the city. But my mom has a big beautiful garden and even though I didn’t garden much with her growing up, I have a lot of memories of being around her while she took care of her flowers. I love my indoor jungle, and it really grounds me. In summer I spend my Saturday mornings tending to all my plants. I actually have been having a hard time lately because I lost quite a few plants this winter and it’s been very upsetting. It made me lose a lot of confidence in myself. But I’m working to remember that I have a lot more plants that are thriving and doing well.

      3
      1

        You should be proud of yourself jelly! I’m an absolute novice when it comes to gardening, and we all have to accept a piece of truth in the world that sometimes plants just die! 😊☘️ It’s only normal and natural that they do and you should definitely not blame yourself.

        2
        1

          I know, and usually I can deal. I feel like the disappointment is in part because I’m stuck inside, so I can’t replace the holes on my plant shelves and also because all the dead plants are sitting in the corner of my dining area like some kind of morbid plant graveyard. There hasn’t really been a way or time to cleanly get rid of them right now. It seems like at least another two will be joining them, including one that I nursed back to health from a spider mite infestation a year ago. I just keep looking at my successes and reminding myself that this is life, and also, I have A LOT of plants a few deaths won’t be the end of it.

          0
          0

    How soothing this sounds. Cooking always stresses me out. Probably because I have a long, long, long history of forgetting that Im cooking, wandering off to do something else and setting the kitchen on fire. Just last night I made a beautiful pot roast with onions and carrots and sweet potatos in the slow cooker and I SWEAR i turned it off only to return to a burned to a crisp roast, mush potatos and disappeared onions amd carrots. What happened? Ill never know.
    It made me laugh a little when you mentioned the lovely smell of the butter. I hate the smell of melted and melting butter so much! I used to put it as my something personal in dating profiles!
    But as always, you have excellent taste in music. Standing Egg is great!

    3
    1

      This is why I don’t like cooking as much as baking. Cooking requires too much attention. You need to be standing by whatever you’re making and there are so many timing things when it comes to cooking veggies and adding spices. It’s not even that I can’t do it, but more that I just really need to be in the mood. I feel like 90% of the time I spend making a really good dish I don’t want to eat it in the end. Plus, I hate the feeling of raw meat. Though this reminds me I have no food left in my fridge and I will have to cook this week, since my mother (who, being Asian, cannot help but fill my fridge) can’t give me stuff now. Maybe I’ll make fried chicken because that is one of the few things worth standing over the stove for.

      That’s hilarious about the butter. To each their own. But, I will say, the taste is great, it’s all nutty and caramel-y which is worth the pain. I haven’t used brown butter in my brownie recipe yet because that is already super decadent, but I may try in a different brownie recipe one day.

      Standing Egg is seriously one of my favorite groups and never disappoint me. Plus, their videos tend to be super cute too. The one for “Because You’re Pretty” is the most adorable thing ever.

      1
      1

        Oh I love the taste of melted and browned butter. I just hate the smell when its happening!

        I dont really watch music videos much these days Im realizing. But I have a vromance, standing egg, melomance playlist that is one of my work go-tos when I need to focus. I read somewhere once that listening to music in a different language is a great study method. You like it so youre paying closer attention and your brain wants to interpret what its hearing so its open and receptice. And again since you like it your brain associates what youre studying with happy.

        I probably remember that somewhat wrong but it mostly nakes sense! And when I need to focus it gets the job done!

        Brown butter brownies sounds seriously delicious.

        1
        1

          This is true! I am pretty sure I read it somewhere as well.

          I used to listen to Bollywood songs (which I kind of understand) when I was doing my philosophy reading in university, and I started listening to kpop in law school. But dance music is usually my go-to for writing first drafts because it gets me pumped.

          0
          1

            Oh I could never! Damce music makes me want to move! Get up dance and shake it all around. Im writing a proposal for a DIY literacy library to help parents who were supposed to send their kids to preschool this school year and couldn’t because of the pandemic. I get excited thinking about it snd how useful it the potential to be but when its time to sit down and actually write it I need something happy that will keep that excited energy up but smooth that wont make me want to dance.

            0
            0

    Standing Egg!!! And appropriate to have a baking theme with it!

    1
    1

    There’s always time for cookies.

    2
    0

    There is something so very beautiful about making chocolate chip cookies. And yours sound so very delicious.

    Thank you for sharing ~

    1
    0