Project #2: Lemon somethingorother

I realized I was typing this ode to last weekend's project #2 right on the cusp of another weekend and that made feel like something of a slow ass, but the joy of a fresh new weekend is nearly upon me so I decided that I don't care. I think you'll agree this is the best way to go.

As for this project of Lemon Somethingorother, it was not a project I particularly enjoyed.

See, here's the thing, when we got married we got some really awesome cookbooks from people. One awesome one in particular was Luscious Lemon Desserts by Laurie Longbotham (just go ahead and laugh at her name, we always do because we're evils). Over the few years of our maritals, I have made a lot of the recipes from this book. Some more than others. Some at such regular and torturous intervals that I want to rip those recipes from the book and burn them so that I never have to make them again. Other recipes I love and adore so much that they are the first things I want to make when I'm carrying two giant grocery bags of lemons home from our friend's house.

I will let you guess which was on the docket for last weekend's Somethingorother.

The thing is this, we (Bubba and I - the creatures don't get to vote) all have our favorites around here and sadly our favorites aren't only contrary, they sometimes involve name-calling and threats of bodily harm.

I, for one, love very much the lemon meringue pie recipe and lemon shortbread while Bubba loves only the demonic Crisp Lemon Wafers. He turns a mean blind eye to all other recipes in this book.

He is a one cookie man.

And because I buy his love with food, any time I get set to bake I ask him what he wants. And then I wait for the horrible inevitable answer: Lemon Wafers.

It doesn't matter if I'm holding a pound of sirloin and pastry crust and making for the Boulevard cookbook - he wants Lemon Wafers.

At one point in his life he ate 11 dozen lemon wafers (ELEVEN DOZEN - That is 132 cookies) on a long snowy drive to Reno because he didn't want to stop the car and find other food.

If I hadn't pledged to spend my whole life loving this man till death do us part, I'd probably have brained him with the cookbook by now, but I did make that pledge and I do love this man and so even though I hate making these cookies SO FUCKING MUCH, I took to the kitchen with four lemons from the new collection and went to work.

About a hundred tedious years later, I emerged from the kitchen with a plate stacked high with Crisp Lemon Wafers. And Bubba was a happy cookie man.

Now, I am sure you can understand how a person could hate one cookie recipe so much that it would inspire fits of online swearing and rage because obviously all people have irrational emotions like this, but I'll explain for those of you well-balanced people with normal lives who don't do bizarre things like ban recipes from your kitchen and hide crucial ingredients so as to make recipes "impossible because I am out of lemon oil, sorry!".

I am a fan of drop cookies. Those cookies that get their batter mixed up in the KitchenAid and then spooned haphazardly onto sheets and slammed in the oven for 8-10 minutes. These cookies are fast, fabulous and easy.

I am not a fan of cookies that have any of the following attributes included in their preparation:

• the food processor
• rolling of dough
  
• chilling of dough
• thin slicing of dough
• rechilling of dough
• re-thin slicing of dough

and so on.

And wouldn't you know that these Crisp Lemon Shitheads have all of the above.

They take forever, are totally touchy and I don't have a cutting apparatus thin enough or magic enough to slice them properly (read: to my satisfaction) so that I'm able to bake the whole batch at once. This means I get to rechill all the dough and bake the rest later.

YIPPEE!

No.

Anyway, I'm sure you can now see why these inspire spitting hatred on my part. However, I do try to set aside my attitude long enough to enjoy how happy Bubba gets when they're out of the oven and free for munching.

And this time it took him two whole days to go through the batch.

Much like other painful recurring events in life, the joy comes when you've finally completed the terrible task and are farthest from having to repeat it. Like going to the gyno or paying taxes, it's that "Phew! Now I'm off the hook for a while and can stop trying to inadvertently drive my car off the road!" feeling that makes it all worth it.

Plus he looks so happy covered in little yellow crumbs and I get to go do something else like pull all the weeds in the backyard.

My life is so glam.