Cooking With Heidi

I really always hated cooking when I was younger. Cooking is still not one of my favorite things to do, but it is a lot more tolerable, especially now that fires and small explosions are becoming less and less frequent when I attempt to wield a spatula, or some other cooking tool. I remember that there was not one thing in the kitchen that I could not spoil. One Weekday afternoon I decided to make cookies...not just any cookies, but triple chocolate chunk cookies. Even these wonderful bits of chocolatey goodness I was able to destroy. The worst part is, it was pre-made cookie dough from the fridge--all I had to do was scoop it out and bake it on a cookie sheet for twelve minutes. I went ahead and scooped out all of the little cookie dough balls, taking care in making sure that each one was in a 1 inch sphere and placed in 2 inch intervals on the cookie sheet. With two inch intervals, and one inch diameters, how could I go wrong? I put the cookies in the oven, and all went surprisingly well. When the timer rang telling me that 12 minutes of baking time was up. I went ahead and peered into the oven at the cookies. They looked really good, but not done all the way. My friend (German exchange student who lived with us at the time) disagreed with me. She told me that the cookies definitely looked done, and that I should go ahead and pull them out. Of course, I new best, afterall, these were American style cookies, I would know more about cooking them better than a German would. The cookies looked really good, but they were a little bit crispy on the edges when I finally pulled them out. Not to worry, a good glass of milk would fix that. I passed the cookies out to my family and to the two missionaries who were visiting at the time. Everyone took big bites, and then oh, the transformation that took place on their faces was really something to see! First happy and smiling, then surprise, finally surprise turned into disgust and illness, which obviously gave way to that expression one has when looking for a garbage can...How did this happen? I would never have imagined that a few extra minutes in the oven would have made a batch of cookies so disgusting! Obviously my family had no problem with spitting the cookie bits out of their mouth and teasing me, but oh, those poor missionaries! As much as I insisted that the cookies really were in fact terrible, and that they would not hurt my feelings if they decided to spit them out, they continued eating the cookies stoically, even though I am sure that they really had to be suffereing. I later decided that those boys were extremely polite (almost to the point of stupidity--I am sure those cookies made them sick), or they really were like garbage disposals, no tastebuds and always hungry. I shall never know.