The Best EVER chocolate chip cookies!

What makes a good chocolate chip cookie? Do you like yours flat and chewy, fat and crisp, or some other combination? Well, I have discovered the perfect blend of a substantial thickness, slightly crisp outer layer, and amazing chewy center...of course, with my own signature doctoring that makes it perfection in my opinion! My friend, Kathy, disagrees (although she has not tried these ones), she maintains that her chocolate chip cookies are the best! So, I'm thinking, maybe a bake-off is in order. I wonder who would volunteer for this important occasion? I picture putting 2 plates of cookies labeled, "A" and "B", and letting our taste-testers vote. Hmmm...maybe I should hold off on posting my recipe here, and wait for the bake-off. Maybe after we have found out what more people prefer I'll post both recipes, and let you decide for yourself.
For now, I'll tempt you with some delicious photos of my cookies!

                              Can you smell it?   

                A glass of milk completes the taste sensation. (Can you tell I like staging photos?)

                    This is a cookie pulled apart, yum!

       Well, until next time, friends! May your day be filled with love, joy, and blessings (and perhaps a cookie or two!).

Fellowship Sunday

Once a month our church has fellowship Sunday. Everyone brings a main dish to share, and either a side dish, or dessert.
It's great to try new meals, ask for recipes (you often hear, "does anyone know who made this?") and eat and visit with old and new friends. Today was one of those Sundays. As we sat talking with friends, a sweet voice piped, "Pam, can we come to your house?"  I used to always think these requests through before I answered, but, the older I get, the more I realize that the house will never be perfect, I will never feel "ready", and that's ok! I answered, "sure! why don't you and your mom come for dinner". Feeling on a roll, she asked, "well, could I spend the night?" So, that is how we ended up with 2 extra places at our dinner table tonight, and the joy of sharing our daily lives with friends that feel more like family. Oh, and yes, the daughter is spending the night! 
I wasted too many years saying,"no" without much thought. Why do we do that? We end up feeling stressed and rushed even when we say "no" to moments like these. Instead, there were more hands helping set the table, fill the fruit dishes, and share in conversation, and it was wonderful! I made a hearty soup that my kids love, the recipe is not my own, but I have lost the original recipe, and while I may be forgetting something-we like how it turns out.
This is the kind of soup that you really can't go wrong on. If you add more or less of something, it is hardly noticeable.
So, here is what I made tonight:
Sausage-Tortellini Soup
I doubled all of the ingredients, and it made a full 16 quarts.
1 28 ounce can of crushed or diced tomatoes.
Chicken broth-1 1/2 large containers
1/2 lb. ground hot sausage
1/2 lb. ground italian or mild sausage
1/2 cup or more of chopped onion
1 frozen bag of cheese tortellini
salt and pepper to taste
Brown the sausage with the onions until no longer pink, drain fat.
Pour the tomatoes and chicken broth in and bring to a boil.
Season to taste.
Add the tortellini, it cooks quickly-only about 6-8 minutes, or according to the package.
We skim any additional fat off, and serve big bowls full. It is great with crusty bread, we didn't have any tonight, and it was still wonderful. We served little dessert dishes of mandarin oranges, and fresh vegetables with dip. 
Home made chocolate chip cookies will be our dessert later, maybe tomorrow I'll give you the recipe for the BEST chocolate chip cookies-EVER! Believe me, I've tried them all!

Pizza Night!

Every Saturday night is pizza night at our house. We plan our weekends around it, our adult children visit for it, and we feel sad if the family has pizza night when one of us is missing! There are 3 components that can not be changed: 
1. Pizza-any kind will do. We have ordered out, made our own, and bought frozen pizza. It all depends on our finances at the time, and how much time we want to take to prepare it.
2. Soda-one of the few times we buy soda, along with birthdays and other celebratory occasions.
3. A movie-usually the sillier the better, always family friendly.
Tonight we had homemade pizza, and watched, "Tangled" for the movie. It's one of our very favorites, and we love to sing along! It would be an amazing Broadway show, don't you think? We made pepperoni, bacon and onion, and pepperoni, bacon, and red pepper pizzas. Yum!

Are you drooling yet? Would you like the recipe for this incredibly easy pizza crust?
O.K., you've got it!


Easy and Amazing Pizza Crust

5 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
2 teaspoons salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 cups room-temperature water

Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon. After you've combined all of the ingredients, set the dough aside to rest for 5 minutes. Stir again for 3 to 5 minutes, adding more water or flour if necessary. Generally speaking, you want the dough to be wetter and stickier than your typical bread dough. It should be dry enough that it holds together and pulls away from the side of the bowl when you mix it, but it doesn't need to be dry enough to knead by hand

I doubled the recipe and let it rise in a stainless steel bowl with plastic wrap covering the dough. I generously splashed olive oil to cover the ball of dough completely.

I let the dough rise until we were ready to bake, about an hour later. You can oil your pizza pans, or dust with cornmeal, whichever you choose. I oiled mine, and they didn't stick. The double recipe was enough to make 3 fairly large pizzas. I used 2 rectangular cookie sheets and one large round one. I probably could have gotten another pizza out of the dough if I spread it thinner. 

Set the oven as high as you dare. I set my convection oven to 500 degrees.  They baked in about 12 minutes, it will probably be shorter if you make a thinner crust.

We watched carefully at the end of cooking-at 500 degrees it won't take long to go from "perfect" to "scorched"!

 Now, get your favorite drink, a funny movie, your kids, your neighbor, your dogs and start a family tradition!