Chocolate Salty Jos Cookies

Have you ever had a Salty Oats cookie?   I don't know if the just local to me.  They're made where I live but I get the feeling they sell in fine grocery stores everywhere.   They come in a few flavors.

They cost a fortune.  

I rarely will pay a fortune for desserts but one day, I stumbled upon a package and they sounded like something I'd like.  I had a moment of weakness.

And they were amazing.  The chocolate was my favorite.

I don't think I've ever reversed engineered a recipe, but a few years ago, I was determined to figure out how they were so good and make them at home.  I found a knock off recipe but it wasn't quite there.

Then, I discovered that it needed coconut.  And maybe more of some things and less of others.

A little tinkering and BEHOLD:

The Chocolate Salty Jos  Recipe:

2 eggs
3 T. cocoa powder
1 stick (1/2 c.) melted butter
1/3 c. coconut
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. flour
3 c. oats
1/2 t. baking soda
Up to a half cup of milk
Small amount of coarse salt
Chocolate chips are optional.  (I've stopped using them because I find they interfere with the flavor.)

Combine the eggs, cocoa powder and butter first because the cocoa powder needs to be brough under control immediately.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Depending on how stiff they are, you might want to add some milk.  I don't want them to turn into granola, so I always add milk for a little moisture but it's never an exact amount.  You want enough that it will form a shape and hold it.

Scoop out a tennis ball size amount and press down to flatten it to about 1/2 inch.  Repeat until you've used all the dough.  Sprinkle a couple of grains of salt onto each cookie and gently press down.

Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes.   You want them to be firm to the touch but not burned, so check at 15 minutes and go from there.

They take a boat load of ingredients and don't make many, so treasure each one.  Around here, you'll get a beating if you eat more than 2 in one sitting.

A Letter From the Sewing Community To That A-hole Autocorrect

 Dear Autocorrect,

We hope this email finds you well (in fact, many of us hope this email finds you under the front wheel of the 513 bus).  Those of us who sew would like you to know some things and perhaps update your files.  

We sew.  While seeing is extremely important in the sewing process, we are not looking for seeing machines, we don’t seek advice from other seers, and we don’t generally sit around and see things together.  We sew.  We using sewing machines.  We look for other sewers (we know this is easily confused with sewer, which we never want to seek advice from but that’s above your pay grade).  We sew things together.

We use sergers.  Not servers.  While we indeed use servers to get the pdfs we need and to come and complain about you on Facebook, we do not surge or serve what we make.  We are serging on sergers.

We are not treading or retreading anything.  While those  in the carpet installation business do indeed tread and retread, we are over here threading and rethreading these machines.  Spoiler alert: we don’t enjoy threading our machines and tensions are usually high, so when you  “help”, you make us rage.

We raise and lower the presser foot.  While we usually put ourselves under a great deal of pressure, the foot is not a place where we exert any force.  

While there are exceptions, most of us are not over here making Muslims.  We make muslins so we know how the pattern looks and don’t walk around wearing trash.  We sometimes sew on muslin, too.  Not sure how anyone could sew a Muslim, but surely that’s a very small number of people who do not need your service.

While you’re looking for your latest software update, perhaps you could have a chat with the Emojis?  Maybe they could create some sewing machine emojis?  Not everything is done with that one blue spool of thread a a hand needle.  

Maybe some embroidery emojis too?  More quilt options?

And don’t give us one Emoji that’s a cheery old lady with grey hair in a bun sitting at a sewing machine.  All kinds of people sew.  

And sometimes, we are not cheery.

We know you take your job very seriously and you do not give up.  It’s your job, after all.  But when we correct you 8 times on the same word, in the same minute, and you still go back and “correct” us just as we publish, you might see why we think you’re an a-hole.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and we look forward to you getting your act together,

The sewing, crafting, costume making, leather crafting and anyone else who touches a sewing machine community.