Food Section Fame

Headlining the Record Eagle food section generated much more excitement than I could have imagined. When I walked into the Poker Room on Wednesday, the regulars started bellowing "Where's the cookies!" which degenerated into "Cookies!" hollered so many times that I thought I was dealing poker on Sesame Street.

My husband was ice fishing on Lake Leelanau. There was only one other guy out there, but he walked a quarter mile over to Richard's hole to say "I saw your wife in the paper." My husbands was impressed that they printed one of my recipes next to one of Emeril's.

But the funniest was a former coworker, who stopped off at my blackjack table to tell me how much she loved my No Bake Cookie recipe.

She told me that she hit the kitchen as soon as she read the recipe, to make some cookies for her grandson: "But I saw that they had oatmeal in them, so I threw in some raisins." I had thought of putting raisins into No Bakes. It would be kind of like a Chunky bar.

Sandee had more to tell: "Then I thought that two cups of sugar was too much so I only used a cup and a half." Okay, I do that a lot, but I've never cut down the sugar in No Bakes. I've worried that the texture would be compromised, but Sandee was fearless.

"And the recipe called for a half cup of peanut butter, but I had 3/4 cup in the jar, so I used it all. Boy, those were great cookies! Thanks for printing the recipe!"

I had to laugh. "Well, I'm glad I got you into the kitchen!" Maybe I was trying to take some sort of credit for Sandee's cookies, but I think that cooking, like any form of communication, is only as good as the dialogue. I can't wait to find time to make Low Sugar High Peanut Butter No Bakes with Raisins.