Butter & Eggs

For as long as I can remember I have been loath to use large quantities of butter and eggs in anything I cook or bake. By "large quantities" I mean more than 2 or 3 eggs and more than half a cup of butter. Not because of fat and calories. Because, for some reason, I think of butter and eggs as being "expensive". And that is just plain crazy talk!

Butter is 2 pounds for $4 at my grocery right this minute. The good stuff. And eggs. Three bucks for a dozen organic eggs. Practically free. But do these economic facts change my ways? No.

I just now made cake mix cookies for my husband's packed lunch. The recipe on the side of the box asked me to add brown sugar, vanilla, 2 large eggs and 1 stick of melted butter. I happened to have two sticks of butter in the freezer. If I had only one--- no cookies. But I melted that stick of butter and mixed it into the cake mix and stirred and mixed in chocolate chips and nuts. I licked my fingers and the bowl (as clean as the dog's bowl after his lunch). Boy, did it taste GOOD.

I used BUTTER! A WHOLE STICK OF BUTTER! This is BIG!

The cookies look GOOD too, but I won't eat them, as they contain chocolate chips and I can't stand chocolate chips. I used the Duncan Hines Deluxe Moist Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix and added dark chips and white chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. Baked them for 13 minutes so they are halfway between chewy and crisp. Let them cool a bit on the sheet before off loading to the cooling rack. I use a liner on my cookie sheets so nothing sticks.

But back to the butter and eggs thriftiness. Anyone else have this affliction? I have to say, that when I watch the television cooking shows, I have been know to gasp at the flagrant use of butter and egg parts. Barefoot Contessa uses POUNDS of butter to make CUPCAKES. And Paula Deen puts "a stick of butter" in everything she makes.

I did make cookies ONCE with a Gourmet Magazine recipe that called for a POUND of BUTTER. It made lots of cookies. It was one of those basic recipes that you can add things to to change the cookies so it seems like you made lots of different recipes. I made a big cake box full of cookies and tied it with string and carried it on the airplane (remember when you could do that?) to Florida. The other three or four couples sharing the vacation house on the ocean ate all the cookies immediately. I guess they were good-- I never got one.

What's Good Today: Buttery cookie dough. Life changing butter experience. I may just go out and purchase MORE butter and eggs. Great dog walk. Great breakfast red grapefruit. Survivor tonight.

What's Not: Snow. Enough already!!!!! My heart feels like it's clogging up from the butter I just ate.