Nighttime adventures in baking

I made cookies!  Huzzah!  Here's the recipe.

I have no idea when or where we got this recipe, or if the story is true, but we've had it for my entire extended life of 20 years.

It's really, really easy to follow, and plays in with my not loving to meticulously measure things.  You can put a little more or less of pretty much any of these ingredients and they'll still turn out delicious.

So, for the sake of having a few more words, I'll describe the process.  

I usually half the recipe.  Cause I don't know about you, but I do not need 112 cookies.

That is far too much temptation, right there.  

Maybe if you're having a party, or giving the away as gifts.

Start out by getting two large mixing bowls.  One for dry ingredients, one for wet.  

Grab your oatmeal and blend it up to really small, basically powderifying it.  It calls for 5 cups, so I make 3 1/2.  

It has to be 3 1/2 of blended oatmeal, not just normal oatmeal.  That's important.

Once that's blended and the correct amount is in your dry mixing bowl, put in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Halfing it, so 2 cups of flour, half a tsp of salt, and one tsp each of baking powder and baking soda.

Have all those?  great.  Now grab a spoon and roughly stir those together.  And no, I do not mean be really rough (as in violent), I mean you don't have to stir so perfectly that every single thing is mixed to amazing perfection..  Not a huge deal if it gets perfectly mixed, you just want them mostly mixed.

Now on to the wet ingredients bowl.  Toss in your butter, Halfing would be 1 cup, which is usually two sticks of butter.  16 oz.

I suppose if you're trying to be healthy you could sort of skimp on that, but if you're trying to be healthy, why are you making cookies?

Halfing it, add one cup each of brown and normal white sugar.  Grab your mixer, and start mixing!

Got that pretty well mixed?

What's half of 2 tsp's vanilla extract?  1 tsp?  Good job!  Add that.

And grab two chicken babies to put in, too.  Again, if you want to be healthier you could take out the yolks, but this is seriously not a healthy recipe, so why are you here?

Got that all mixed up?  Now slowly add some dry mix into your wet mix, half a cup at a time is easiest, if you put more than that it tends to puff up in your face and you're breathing flour/oatmeal/baking soda/powder/salt air.  Less pleasant than normal air, so I'd avoid that.  Small amounts at a time.

Now just mix all that up until you've combined both of them.  

Once it's all mixed, toss in your chocolate chips and ground up Hershey bar.  I don't usually add nuts, but that's up to you, you nutty people.

Preheat your oven, that helps speed things up a bit.  It's easiest to have two cookie sheets, that way you can be rolling cookie balls while the others are cooking.  It says 6 minutes, and that is usually what I start at, but in order to get that slightly crunchy crust and soft gooey inside, I usually have to cook it for 2-4 more minutes.  Depends on how you like your cookies, though.  You could do more, you could do less.

Now take'em out, let'em cool, put'em away, and eat'em!  Not all at the same time, though.  That might be unhealthy.

This is one out of four plates of cookies, all equally as full.  I didn't count, but even halfing the recipe, you end up with a lot of cookies.

Congratulations!  You now have cookies!  Share them with your friends, for they are amazing and delicious, and your friends will love you forever.

Or at least, until you run out of cookies.  Then you're no your own.

Ciao

SheWhoMustWearHats

Hair experiments

So, I donated my hair at the beginning of the year, and have since been trying to grow it back as fast as possible.

My hair used to be down below my butt, and it's now just barely touching my shoulders.

I love having long hair, I really do.  

My sister thinks it's a hassle.  

It makes showers take longer, it gets everywhere when you sleep, just generally troublesome.  

I don't mind.  

I get to take longer showers, what could be bad about that?  

I braid it at night, so it doesn't get in the way, and I get nice waves when I take the braid out in the morning.

My mom and my sister donate basically as often as they can.  

As soon as their hair is long enough to donate, they do.

Normally, I don't.  

But they had been pressuring me to do it for a really, really long time, and it was starting to get to me.

Big mistake.  

I have come to the decision that I am not cutting my hair like that ever again.  

Trims are fine, but I love my long hair, and right now, I don't have it.

So because of this, I've been looking for all sorts of different ways to grow it out again.

I take biotin every night because it's supposed to promote healthy hair, nails, and skin.

I use coconut oil to deep moisturizer my hair about once a week.

I learned that the chemicals in shampoo strip the natural oils that help have healthy growth, so I'm trying to find alternatives to shampoo.

For a little while I tried baking soda.  

You're supposed to do baking soda to wash, and apple cider vinegar to condition.  

The acidity and stuff balances out if you do both, but I read that apple cider vinegar can fade dyed hair, and I use henna, so I didn't want to do that.

I learned shortly after that baking soda can also fade dyed color, so I quit doing that and moved on to trying castile soap.

Now, I like castile soap.  My family uses it whenever we go camping down the Grand Canyon, so we have it on hand.

It's not the best for washing hair, though.  We have concentrated castile soap, so in order to use it, I have to thin it out with water, and it just never feels like my hair likes it.  My hair is always kind of strange feeling after.  Not quite dry, not quite oily, just..strange.

So what I'm going to try next is something I read on a random person's blog.  They do a lot of this kind of natural beauty stuff.

I'll try to remember to put the link.

http://www.healthyvegasvegan.com/2014/02/01/simple-diy-herbal-hair-cleanser-conditioner/

Anyway, what she says she does is mix equal parts yucca root powder, fenugreek powder, and amla berry powder, with hot water, and just lather that on.  I think I'm going to add a few drops of rosemary oil to the mixture, cause it's supposed to promote hair growth.  

Maybe a little bit of coconut oil, too, depending on how it turns out the first couple times.

I'm trying to find some local herb shops to find those, but if I can't, I'm going to order them online.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I also read about the inversion method.  

http://hairdiary.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-inversion-method-for-hair-grow-an-inch-of-hair-in-7-days/

You massage your scalp, with or without oil, to get better circulation, then put yourself upside down for 4 minutes, and you do this for one week straight, once a month.  Supposedly if you do it any more than that, your body will become accustomed to it, and it will no longer have any effect.

Apparently you can get up to an inch of growth in that week of doing the inversion method, and you can do it once a month.

That's 12 possible inches of growth, if you do it religiously.  An entire foot of hair.  I'm hopeful.  

I put it in my calendar so I'll remember to do it every month.

I'm also looking into some different methods of curling or straightening hair without heat.  

I'll do a separate post about that.

Been lovely chatting with you~

SheWhoMustWearHats