There is an exception to all of this, however. Emily’s cookies (or some similar female name beginning with a vowel), sold at Ellwood Thompson’s (a local health food store). It’s not necessarily that they’re delicious for cookies, but more that they’re delicious for granola bars. Crammed full of oats and nuts and bits of chocolate (vegan chocolate, apparently, but I couldn’t tell the difference) and tons of delicious.

Then I attempted trying to make them, based on a recipe I found that seemed to share the same ingredients.

The almost-vegan granola bar-ish cookies were a strong showing in mediocrity. I say ‘almost vegan’ as I totally used regular milk instead of soy milk. Just like I totally used semi-sweet chocolate chips, which probably contain dairy. And I totally buttered the pan with butter, rather then oil. Hmm, come to think of it, I buttered the pan with pseudo-butter, some margarine knock-off, so I might still be good there! In any case, the ’strong showing in mediocrity’ has been stated due to the fact that they’re slightly palatable, but only if there’s nothing better around. Too many peanuts (shoulda used walnuts-d’oh!), a little too burnt, and just not nearly enough flavor.

However, I have a better success story (but, err, not involving vegan food). These babies were awesome:

Did you know that you can make cookies from cake mix? Just leave out the water, and use one less egg then usual! Incredible! Oh, and I dumped in chocolate chips. So soft and squishy! I have fantasized so long for easy access to the softest of chocolate chip cookies. Too often have I been plagued by the cruelty, the sheer mediocrity of hard chocolate chip cookies. And now, the secret to the softness has been revealed. And it tastes much like cake.

Featured today are the salads made of the straggling remnants of chicken from the Cow Appreciation Day debacle of several day’s past. Let’s just say it was good while it lasted.

A box of 4 chicken strips is entirely suitable as well as wholesomely appropriate for festooning the garlands of an otherwise potentially bland salad…or two!

The first of the salads has Ken’s Steak House honey mustard dressing slopped all over it. This is the only honey mustard, in dressing form or honey mustard form really, that you will ever need.

I have a hell of a time finding good salad dressing. Most of it downright sucks. Or it is too tangy. Or too oily. Or too bland. All of which are attributes of ’suck’, come to think of it.

Here is a Venn diagram I have made especially to illustrate this problem:

Mind, you there is a bit of a gap between ’suck’ and ‘not suck’ where many dressings surely lie. There are many dressings I have yet to try, and will probably never try, to save myself from the crushing possibility that with each new dressing I try, and promptly reject, the ’suck’ circle will only expand.

It should be noted, however, that this rule does not seem to apply to restaurant dressings. More often then not, they are comprised of not suck. Maybe my refrigerator has a spoiling effect on dressings, maybe they slip downers into my appetizers at these so-called ‘restaurants’, who knows really?

I don’t give up, though. Oh no. When the going gets tough, the tough seek alternatives.

This baby is seasoned (and quite delightfully, I might add) with pineapple juice, barbecue sauce, and chipotle sauce. Worked much better that I might have expected. I recommend it to all.

The cow regalia in full, along with an obviously much better dressed cow:

Now, the best way to go about this day is to figure out how to hit as many Chick-fil-a restaurants as possible. Unfortunately, this idea did not strike me and Christine, my partner in crime for the night, until about 6:30 pm. So we ended up hitting 5 of them. There was an elusive duo of guys dressed as cows who’d come down from Baltimore, according to rumor at least, and were in the process of going to 30 Chick-fil-as. That’s a serious commitment right there. We never managed to run into them, though, just passing rumors.

And there seems to be a strategy to doing this. First off, after the first meal that wasn’t designed to be eaten that night, I stopped getting any combo that came with lettuce and tomato, as both would surely get wilted and shriveled by the next day. Also, no more sodas. Bottled water was is the way to go. The real problem was the fries. Fries just don’t last well as leftovers. The sides that you don’t have to pay extra for (cole slaw, or carrot and raisin salad) just don’t do much for me. Sadly it never occurred to me until after it all that the $.25 extra to get a fruit cup side might have been covered in the ‘free combo’ price. I’ll have to remember that for next year, as fruit cups can go a long way.

I ended up with about 80% of both of our waffle fries, I compiled them all into this conveniently large container:

All in all, it was quite fun to hit all of those restaurants, next year I may even take the day off just to try to hit as many as I can, for there are few things better in this world then free chicken.

This is maple apple crisp, in all of its ‘not being able to see what’s inside it’-ness:

And it was so dang good, I’m even gonna link to the recipe, courtesy of allrecipes.com.

I like taking closeups of stuff like this, as it really does make it look like delicious walking ground. A walking ground as if it were the delicate soil covering an underground marsh of drippy apple and syrup. Like walking on it, you could fall through at any minute to your delicious and moist death. And if you put ice cream on it, you could totally pretend it’s winter! (Ice cream was really good on it, incidentally). Oh, and I dumped in chocolate chips too. So really, it’s more like delicious terrain covered in the best tasting dog poo around.

You could even be more ridiculous and get all Warhammer with this. Make several batches, and gently lay them out on a table. Use gummy bears instead of lizardmen or wights or whatever the so-called ‘cool kids’ use these days. The key to this game will be the side of rum (lets be honest here, sides of rum) you will consume, so at the end, in your victory sweep, when you eat your opponent’s ruination, your buzz will be strong enough to make you utterly oblivious to your ‘not wiped off in several months’ table. A great win like that won’t be something easily repeated, which won’t be a problem considering the difficulty you’ll have convincing your utterly horrified friends to come back. Enjoy!

Luckily, at some point in all those years my brain took over. Now, part of the joy at eating out at places with portions of eating contest proportions is the fact that you’ll get two meals out of it instead of just one.

For example, take this here cheesesteak, which this rooster lustfully gazes upon. It is indeed the remnant cheesesteak of an earlier meal.

Once upon a time, there were about 3 more inches at the end of that cheesesteak. That, plus eating all of the fries, plus a bonus slice of pizza that came my way, made for a quite filling meal, with this quite large cheesesteak remnant for dinner later on.

The only downside of eating your meals this way, though, is the strategy involved can lead to a bit of an imbalance. See, this cheesesteak came with a quite large serving of fries. Reheated fries are disgusting more often then not, so as far as I was concerned, it was a given that all of the fries would need to be eaten the first go-around. This, of course, left less room for the cheesesteak, which is what I really wanted in the first place. But, such are the sacrifices one must make for efficiency!