Article

Chocolate Tahini Shortbread Cookies

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Illustration: Tram Nguyen

 

I try not to post too many cookie recipes on here, because cookie recipes = cookie testing = cookies lying around the house, and frankly I have no willpower in the face of freshly baked cookies. I am not one to deprive myself of treats, but I suspect it is less than healthy to eat a full batch of butter/flour/sugar/chocolate in a single sitting by oneself more than, say, once a month, and recipe testing usually requires making lots of batches of something in relatively short order. Because my version of restraint is by most standards, uh, pretty modest, I do my best to not tempt fate too often.

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Article

No-Snow Day Cookies

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Illustration: Tram Nguyen

 

When I was growing up, my family had a term for food so junky it was not technically allowed in our house: Nut Googies. This phrase was apparently coined during my mom’s childhood—something about my grandfather misunderstanding “Nut Goodies”—but by the time I rolled around it was used as a place-holder for any dessert that was just disgusting enough my siblings and I were all dying to try it: ice cream blasted with several types of candy; brownie bars with crushed-up Oreos in them; anything involving marshmallows. My parents were pretty health-conscious, so this kind of “food” made only the rarest appearances in our household. Among these special occasions, however, were snow days.

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Aside

Consumer Report: Icelandic Candy

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A week or so ago, Rob and I were heading back to New York on the connecting leg of an 8-hour flight, and I started to worry about being hungry. I have this thing on long flights where I get really, really famished exactly at the moment when all the flight attendants mysteriously disappear, so for hours I sit there starving, and obsessing over how starving I am, because of course I’m too nervous to push the summon-a-flight-attendant button to be like, “hi I’m a little piglet, can you bring me more snacks?” So this time around, thinking ahead, Rob and I decided to order a boatload of food during the flight attendant’s initial pass through the cabin.

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