As promised, or threatened, here is my ‘recipe’ for Chocolate Chip Cookie Waffles.

1 tube Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough

1 waffle iron

I set the waffle iron at medium heat, because I was guessing. I assumed the innards of the cookie wouldn’t cook if the iron was set at high so we went for medium heat.

Take about a handful of dough and place in a ziploc bag so you can soften it. The idea was to make it pliable enough so it would spread out on the waffle iron. The bag idea didn’t work very well as scraping it out of the bag proved to be rather messy. I should have take pictures of this part but my hands were too messy to handle the camera.

After abandoning the ziploc bag we took a plate and mushed the cookie dough on it. We spread the dough out to about an inch less than the size of the waffle iron in case it expanded.

Gently peel the cookie dough off the plate and place on the waffle iron. Close the waffle iron.

When cooking waffles the rule of thumb is that the waffles are ready when the iron stops steaming. This wasn’t the case with the chocolate chip cookie waffles as they put out a huge amount of steam. The cookie waffles smelled amazing and we kept checking them but no one had any idea if they were ready. After about five minutes of cooking time we decided they were ready.

Getting them out of the waffle iron was challenging at best. The cookie waffle was not unlike a regular cookie fresh out of the oven, it needs to cool before being removed.We couldn’t turn the iron off and wait for it to cool down because we had more cookie dough and there were at least three teenage boys waiting for the cookies.

I tried lifting them out with a fork but that just proved to be a mess. Eventually I just unplugged the waffle iron, donned some oven mitts and flipped the whole thing over while my son tried to coax them out with a fork.

I wouldn’t recommend making Chocolate Chip Cookies in the waffle iron. We couldn’t make them fast enough for everyone and the risk of getting burned was pretty high. The cookies were very good since the outer part was crunchy and the inner part was soft. Of course that could mean it wasn’t entirely cooked but since no one got sick I am pretty sure it was okay.

If there had been any cookie dough left our next experiment for alternative cooking would have been to cook them on the grill. Thankfully the boys ate all the cookie dough and it never came to that. We’d had fish the night before and they would have been nasty.

Our next waffle iron experiment will be to cook scrambled eggs with bacon in the waffle iron. The idea being that if we made two regular waffles and then the scrambled egg waffle they could be layered and served kinda like an Egg McMuffin, a rather large Egg McMuffin.

Do you have any waffle iron experiments?

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Day 1 without carbohydrates.

***The contest has been changed since only two people were willing to bet against me.

New Contest For Happy Goat Soap***

This sucks.

I’m only 12 and a half hours into this and I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

The hard part isn’t avoiding the foods I am giving up. The hard part is the fact that the foods I am giving up are already prepared. Food that has a shelf life for years. Food that needs no refrigeration. Food that comes in a box or bag.

The hard part is that now I have to actually prepare my food.

Do you know how long it takes to prepare food at least three times a day?

A long time.

I have a massive headache and I pee every 20 minutes.

This must be good, right?

So who thinks I can’t do this?

C’mon, I know there are some out there who don’t think I have it in me.

I’m willing to put my mouth where the money is. Or something like that.

I have three bars of rich goats milk soap, compliments of Happy Goat Soap, for whomever can guess how long I will last on this no carb diet.

My goal was to do this for a week. If I didn’t murder anyone after that week I would continue for as long as it takes to establish better eating habits.  I’ve done this before but usually fail because something stressful happens and I fall back on comfort food. This time I’m doing it in front of an audience who, for the most part (not you Surfie or Nancy), are being really supportive so that could make all the difference.

What do you have to do to win three bars of the best soap in the world?

Leave a comment with the date you think I will succumb to sugar or bread or anything processed and delicious. I’m going to announce the winner next Monday so make the date for this week. In the event that I actually succeed in getting the sugar monkey off my back I will choose a winner from random from all entrants.

If you want to earn more chances to win you can do the following

Subscribe to my newsletter.

Follow me on Twitter.

Follow me on Google Friend Connect (the widget is way down at the bottom)

Follow Redhead Ranting on Facebook

Stumble any of my recent posts

Digg any of my recent posts

How will you know if I cheated? I have told my son and my daughter to keep me on track. If I cheat my son knows how to tell on me using any of the social media sites as well as hacking my blog.

If I cheat and they aren’t home you can bet the guilt will get to me and I will tell on myself.

Let’s get a couple of things clear however. I am not going completely carbohydrate free. That isn’t possible. I’m giving up processed food, sugar, bread, breading, pasta, candy, cookies, ice cream, anything that is really good. I am getting carbs in fruits and veggies as well as milk and what few carbs there are in meat and fish. I can eat pasta if it is Dreamfields which does something to make it really low carb and high fiber. The problem is it’s hard to find in the stores.

Let the wagers begin!

** I forgot to mention, this contest IS open to international contestants so all you Canadians can get in on the good clean fun!

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I don’t know if it was the Holiday on Monday or if it is because I have had sick kids but this week is fucked up. I don’t have any idea what day it is. Which means I will probably miss the garbage man this week.

Where the hell is everyone? No one seems to be online. My stats are way down. Has anyone else noticed this?

Have any of you (if there is anyone out there) tried Trader Joe’s Oreo type cookies? I think they are called Joe Joes. They are awesome! A million times better than Oreos and less expensive too. The cream filling isn’t all hard and chalky, it actually oozes out a little if you squish the cookie. (Trader Joe’s has not offered to pay me for this glowing review of their awesomely yummy cookie but if they did I’d be happy to accept).

From the Department of No Duh, John Edwards finally admits that baby Quinn is his child. She was conceived after Elizabeth Edwards announced she had cancer again and that it was terminal. What an absolute butthead John Edwards is.

Conan O’Brien’s last Tonight Show will be tomorrow night. NBC is paying him $32 million to go away. His staff was given $12 million in severance pay. I didn’t really watch the Tonight Show until all this mess broke out and then I started watching it because the guests and Conan just let it all loose. I think they were drunk most of the time. I have no plans to watch Leno. Now that Conan has all that money wouldn’t it be nice if he donated a million or two to the relief efforts in Haiti? Or to me, that would work too.

I have moved my Kids of Queers blog to kidsofqueers.com. I still have the old blogspot blog up but if you have it in your bookmarks please change it as I will be taking it down as soon as I find a theme that works for me. Currently I am using the standard WordPress theme and it sucks. I have updated it however so go and take a look. I’ll be moving all the widgets and my blogroll over there as well so if you want to be on that blogroll please leave a comment over there.

I got a bunch of stuff today but not one item is enough to make a full post. I think this might qualify as Random Thoughts Tuesday.

I finally have a delivery system for my eBook. I’m using E-Junkie. So far so good. It’s cheap and really easy to use. And no one has to wait, while I finish up in the bathroom, to get their copy. My son designed the cover which I think is pretty neat. The cost of the eBook has increased to $7 but all the goodies and freebies are still there, including the free week long trial on Adgitize and a free week of advertising on my site. So go ahead and order it, you don’t have to wait for me to deliver it, it’s automatic!

I took Stanley to the groomers today to get a bath and to get his nails clipped. He was a big wuss at the groomers and cried the whole time. He’s back now and because he had his nails clipped I can’t hear him walking around anymore. It’s really nice but is freaking him out. He really is a stupid dog.

I have a bazillion clocks in my house. Most of them antique wind up kind of clocks. I have a grandfather clock which surprisingly still works even though it has made the trip to Seattle and back from St. Paul. Usually they don’t move very well. I also have a few other that belonged to my father. They usually just sit there but last week I decided to see if I couldn’t bug the kids by winding all the clocks. I hadn’t bothered winding the other two because neither one of them seemed to keep time for more than a day. When I opened them up to wind them I learned why they don’t work for very long. One of them is a 24 hour clock and the other is a three day clock. All three were ticking in sync for a whole 24 hours. After that I said fuck it and stopped winding the other two.

I want to thank everyone for writing posts about my cookies, I had lots of buyers and shipped them all out yesterday. If anyone would like to order cookies, today is the last day for orders if you want them before Christmas.

As for my holiday depression, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one. And actually I am feeling a little better about the whole thing, at least for right now. I’d still like some gorgeous guy to come knocking on my door baring a Mercedes and a diamond necklace but if he doesn’t that’s okay too.

My keyboard broke the other day. The space key stopped working which made reading my sentences really difficult. I grabbed the spare keyboard that has been tucked in my closet for about two years. I hate this keyboard. It’s smaller and the buttons don’t have to be hit so hard to make a letter appear on the screen. It doesn’t make the same noise either. It also isn’t filled with crumbs and spilled coffee that has dried on it. It is clean, I can identify the keys because the letters are still clearly printed on them. The last one I had I managed to wear most of the letters off which would probably make my typing teacher from 7th grade happy to know.

I have spent the whole weekend baking. I have been so busy baking that I was only able to listen to Armageddon on the TV. Except when I was rolling out the Bourbon Balls, I could do that in front of the television.

I seriously need to get a life. I can recite almost all the dialog for that movie. It’s pathetic really.

My son mentioned this as he was trying to steal the fudge and the cookies. I had to beat him off with a stick.

I am sending out the sample packs tomorrow so everyone who offered to sample the treats and write a post for me should get them by Wednesday at the latest. I’m shipping them priority mail.

If you don’t want to wait you can order your treats now.

They are absolutely wonderful and baked with extra love,  you will not be disappointed. I take no responsibility for holiday weight gain however.

I’m offering several different packages:

A Dozen Cookies

$10 + shipping ($4.80 Priority)

A Dozen Bourbon Balls

$10 + shipping ($4.80 Priority)

Bourbon Balls

With Nuts $10.00 Without Nuts $10.00

A slab of fudge for 12

$10 + shipping ($4.80 Priority)

Fudge

With Nuts $10.00 Without Nuts $10.00

Mix any two of the above

$20 and free shipping

Mix any Two

Cookies & Bourbon Balls $20.00 Cookies & Bourbon Balls W/O Nuts $20.00 Cookies & Fudge $20.00 Cookies & Fudge W/O nuts $20.00 Bourbon Balls & Fudge $20.00 Bourbon Balls & Fudge W/O nuts $20.00

Mix any three of the above

$30 and free shipping

Mix any Three

Cookies & Bourbon Balls & Fudge $30.00 Cookies & Bourbon Balls & Fudge W/O Nuts $30.00 1 Cookies & 2 Fudge $30.00 1 Cookies & 2 Fudge W/O nuts $30.00 1 Bourbon Balls & 2 Fudge $30.00 1 Bourbon Balls & 2 Fudge W/O nuts $30.00 2 Bourbon Balls & 1 Fudge $30.00 2 Bourbon Balls & 1 Fudge W/O nuts $30.00 1 Cookies & 2 Bourbon Balls $30.00 1 Cookies & 2 Bourbon Balls W/O nuts $30.00

I think I have all the different combinations there but if you want one I missed just choose with or without nuts and let me know which items in the note section.

* I am happy to ship internationally but please contact me first for shipping charges.

I apologize for the layout I was unable to make it sit the way I wanted to and I have no idea how to turn off the ads.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

I had a comedy of errors for mine and even took a picture for you.

My son loves watching the food channels and announced that he wanted to brine the turkey this year. He also wanted to deep fry it but that wasn’t something I was willing to do nor  let him try on his own. We also don’t have a turkey deep fryer or 5 gallons of oil so it was never really considered, at least on my part. He continued to beg.

We did brine the turkey.

I used a recipe my son found from Alton Brown‘s website which involved a pound of salt, 6 quarts of water, five lbs of ice and a bunch of seasonings. The turkey was to go into a five gallon cooler, which we had.

The problem was the recipe called for a 12-14 lb turkey and I had bought a 24 lb turkey because they were  40 cents a pound at Wal*Mart.

It was just the three of us for Thanksgiving but I figured we’d be able to enjoy the leftovers for a while.

I’m already incredibly sick of turkey leftovers.

Anyway, we prepared the brine and unwrapped the turkey,  which was not entirely thawed out even though I had taken it out of the freezer the week before.

Son and I lowered the turkey into the cooler carefully so we didn’t splash out all of the brine mixture. We got the turkey about half way into the cooler (we were using an upright drinking cooler) and the turkey was stuck.

24 lb turkeys are big ass birds that were probably never meant to fit into a 5 gallon Igloo cooler.

Daughter was employed to sit on the turkey to get it in the cooler.

I wish I had taken pictures of this part but I was too busy laughing to think about the camera.

Meanwhile the dog is licking the part of the turkey that had not yet been forced into the cooler.

It briefly occurred to me that we might not be able to get the turkey out but we were committed at this point and pressed on.

I couldn’t fit five pound of ice into the cooler but did manage to fit a couple of trays of ice in there. I figured since the turkey wasn’t completely thawed and I was leaving the cooler outside over night it would be fine. Besides I was going to cook the damn thing so any bacteria that managed to grow would be killed.

We left the turkey outside overnight and Thursday morning I retrieved it to start the cooking process. The bird would take at least 5 hours to cook so I wanted to get it in the oven by 9 so we could eat by 2:30.

I had the oven set and the roasting pan ready to accept the bird when I wedged it out of the cooler.

My roasting pan was not meant for a 24lb bird but I had no other pans that would it would fit into so again I pressed on hoping for the best.

I couldn’t fit the lid on the pan but covered it in tin foil. For reasons I don’t fully understand the bird was finished cooking, indicated by the button that popped up as well as an internal temperature of 165 degrees, after only 2 hours of cooking.

No one was ready to eat at 11 am so I left the bird in the oven on 200 degrees for another three hours.

So we were going to have a dried out bird. I hadn’t cooked the stuffing or mashed potatoes yet. We just weren’t ready for the bird yet.

I had my first glass of wine by noon.

By the time I finished all the other cooking, set the table, showered and dressed it was 2pm. The bird was a little over done since only half of it came out of the pan when I transfered it from the roasting pan to the platter. The drumsticks and wings and whatever part of the bird that is attached to both of those appendages was left in the pan. My son pulled them out and tried his best to arrange the pieces so they looked like a whole bird. He did a pretty good job too.

Surprisingly the bird was not dried out and it tasted wonderful.

There was no arguing at the table for once and daughter spontaneously announced what she was thankful for and even more surprisingly my son followed her lead and listed the things he was thankful for. Both of them were thankful for our little family.

It couldn’t have been a nicer Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone had as nice of a holiday as we did.

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