Twitter Cookie Party

Each month my "Taste Buds" and I have what has been dubbed as a Twitter Food Party. What generally happens is someone decides on a food, or ingredient, and then on the last Monday of the month, we share our interpretation of the topic. Fun stuff! This month's topic is Cookies, and since I have been enjoying baking cookies since I was a little guy, I was definitely all over this one!

As things turned out, during this stint of me trying to eek out a living doing freelance art and design work, I was able to catch an episode of one of Paula Deen's cooking shows. as usual, she just makes everything looks absolutely yummy! This time, I was more focused on the signature dessert. Oatmeal raisin cookies. Now the way these shows do things, they'll tease the most tantalizing parts to make sure the viewers stick around, so I had to wait to see what they were teasing about those cookies.

So, like the show, I'm gonna tease you a bit. Enjoy the process of my Twitter Cookie Party Submission!

Off to a good start

As I stated earlier, I saw this on Paula Deen. For the actual recipe, you can follow this link:

Fluffy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I did take some liberties on the recipe though, nothing too major. Since my all time favorite cookie is an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, A substitution of the chocolate chips for the raisins was called for, and since i just like what ground cloves can do, I added an eighth of a teaspoon to the mix.

Fresh from the oven

Too bad you cant smell how good these are!

Cookies are done!

This whole process was easy and fun. I adjusted the cooking time and oven tempts accordingly since our oven's thermometer had a mind of its own, and voila! Step one was done. At this point in the show, we would break for commercial, and leave you wondering what the other things in this picture have to do with this plate of golden brown deliciousness. I won't hold you in suspense that long, I'll just let your imagination do that for you as I put in a little production note: Place Commercial Here

 

Pre Production, Production, Post Production

Now here is where everything just gets all kinds of good. As I watched the show return from commercial break I saw something that was so simple, yet so awesome. The addition of chocolate sauce, nuts, and marshmallow fluff! My inner fat man was jumping for joy! So you can imagine my excitement as I set about to put it all together. It was all I could do to keep from eating the marshmallow fluff and chocolate by themselves! On the episode, Paula used a mixture of nuts, but I just stuck with my favorite, pecans.

Finished product

Beautiful production color contrast

I had to break out my big camera to take these photos. Though I love the camera on my Blackberry Tour, it just wasn't gonna do the job today!

This cookie sandwich turned out absolutely delicious! Even if you only go for the cookies themselves, this is definitely a delicious end of a meal, or just something to feed your inner fat man or your inner fat gal. It's an easy recipe, and there is a lot of room to get all kinds of crazy adding things to it. I saw some caramel chips in the store that I may have to try out on the next go round... *wink* 

Thanks for reading, and drooling!

The Original Food Adventure

 So I can't say that today began like any other, because it most certainly didn't. Plans that were made last week necessitated that I spend the night at my god mother's house, and I had no idea what today would hold. After SKYPE-ing my god sis in the ATL, chatting the night away with my god bro, and trying to beat the "cooties" (Ah-CHOO!), I called it a night, and went to bed not really thinking about anything other than how good it felt to finally relax and get some sleep.
Awakened by someone knocking on the front door, I started my morning rituals, when my bro came in and suggested we get some pancakes from one of his favorite local spots in Redondo Beach. Not a bad idea right there! I was recently talking to two of my Twitter friends, Shirley and Chantale, about pancakes and crepes, and developed a huge craving for the fluffy breakfast staple, so to hear that I could satiate that desire was definitely some good news!

I had driven by The Original Pancake House a few times, and every time I would wonder what the food was like. I would always take an extra look at this old school architecture style business that boasted originality in pancakes, but because I was usually on my way somewhere ELSE, I could only dream as I watched the edifice wane in my rear view mirror. Not so this time! We pulled up into, what I was informed, a relatively empty parking lot, and proceeded inside.
For me, as for most of you I'm sure, service really make a difference in my overall eating experience. An establishment may have "The Bomb-Diggedy" food, but if the service is sub par, I won't be back. I don't have to be catered to or treated like royalty (If you want to do that, I'm not gonna stop you at all!), but the basics need to be handled. A friendly greeting, promptness, and communication. Those are the things that matter to me service wise. So, as soon as we entered we were immediately greeted by a very cute hostess with enchantingly icy blue eyes who efficiently got our dining information and sat us in a nice booth across the spacious dining area. Thirty seconds after we sit, our sever (cute as well!) comes over to take our drink order and leaves us to continue scan the menu.

Bacon Pancakes

They had quite a few pancakes, buttermilk, whole wheat, and even buckwheat, and their variations, crepes, waffles, omelets, the usual breakfast accompaniments. After taking a long, hard, steely eyed look at the chocolate chip and the blueberry pancakes, I caught sight of a pancake that I had been dying to try for some time. The Bacon Pancake! I've seen one version of this made while watching "Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives", and was blown away that I hadn't come up with this idea before!
I went ahead and ordered the pancakes, bacon and braised eggs, and upgraded the regular pancakes to the bacon pancakes. Now, though the menu said braised, our server told us, with her very alluring Spanish accent, that we could get the eggs any way we liked, so I decided on scrambled this time around. she also told us that the bacon pancake was "very popular" and "very good", just before she left to place the order.

A Rare "during" shot. I love the glistening syrup!

The Bacon Pancake is just as the name implies. Bacon IN a pancake. What comes when you order the meal are three saturated, yet well proportioned, bacon filled cakes. (The cakes by themselves come six per order.) The bacon appeared to have been cooked, then sliced and sprinkled in to the pancake batter as they cooked. Again, simplicity in the technique and I still can't believe I didn't think to do it myself, especially since it makes so much sense! The pancakes definitely exceeded my expectations as I really was thinking the bacon was going to be sparsely placed throughout, but to my delight, I got one meaty pancake! Woo! The combination of sweet and savory is perfect here, especially since I already like to put syrup on my bacon anyway! This definitely does not disappoint.
This surely was not my last visit to The Original Pancake House, especially after seeing our server bring another patron one of the house specialties, a HUGE Apple Pancake.There are just so many things on the menu to try, and, since this post, I've had several people want to come back here with me. So I guess this will be The Original Pancake House run part one!
Oh, and for all my Twitter followers who are in the "Know" Happy Twitter Food Party!