Musings - Hairy Cookies

As a young child, while other kids were watching Sesame Street, I sat in front of Julia Child.  Don't get me wrong, I loved my share of children's programming, it's just that cooking and baking held special places in my young heart.  I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that my mom was always making something delicious in the kitchen.

Not only did I like cooking, I was also quite independent.  As a kid I preferred to make my own mistakes along the way instead of having someone tell me how I should do something.  As you can imagine this made for a fun childhood, albeit one full of mishaps along the way.  Baking on my own was something I really, really wanted to do.  

Many times I begged my mom to make something by myself.  So she would let me make jello and other simple things.  I also helped her with the things she was cooking and baking.  But I really wanted to do something totally without parental supervision, something more difficult than jello. At last my mom relented and I she said I could make a batch of cookies.  My neighbor, Kate, helped me with the task.   So, technically it wasn't on my own, but in my defense no parental intervention was involved.

Image found here.

We got the ingredients out and made our cookies.  They were a classic chocolate chip if I remember correctly.  We were proud and they were delicious.  We had followed the directions and were successful.  

Later on that day, my mom's friend came over.  Kate and I were friends with her son.  When he came in the kitchen, I proudly offered him a cookie.  Success, I thought, as he took a bite from the cookie.  Then…yuck!  He pulled a long hair out of his mouth and held it up.  Kate and I had not been careful while mixing the cookies and hair (apparently multiple hairs as we would find out later) had gotten into the batter.  I'm not sure about you, but even when something tastes exceptionally good, the presence of a hair makes it simply disgusting.

We all laughed and joked about cafeteria lady hair nets.

When I stopped laughing the wheels began to turn.  I had a solution.

The next time my mom let me bake I was not going to let a little hair deter me.  Weeks later as I got ready to make my next batch of cookies I employed my new idea.  It was simple and effective and took me through my next couple years of baking.  I took a pair of panty hose, cut off the leg and put it on my head.  It might have looked funny, but my cookies didn't have any hair!


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