In August, after two decades saying she would quit in the following week, my gorgeous wife Julie retired from her career in human resources. Concern about dealing with the foreseeable problems in the unfolding of Obamacare from a corporate level probably was the final straw, although as it turned out, deferral of the employer mandate for large companies did put off most of the mess for her last employer by a year. Still, she has never looked back.
Her retirement led to her taking over many of my household chores, including planning meals. As you may have noticed, my method of menu preparation usually involved finding something on sale at whatever market I happened to visit on any given day. Lack of the proper ingredients proved to be the mother of invention. Julie has continued the quick-clean cuisine impetus on easy clean-up, but she tends to take more of a Santa Claus approach, making a list and checking it twice to prepare exactly what we had on some prior occasion that she enjoyed.
Between that lifestyle change, a great vacation in Scotland/Northern Ireland in September and other life events like my brother-in-law's heart failure that brought us to San Diego for extended trips, I managed to go over four months without posting a new recipe.
If you've been waiting to know what to cook next, you must be starving.
In a trip to New York City recently, our stay at our daughter Gina's still had someone else preparing most of the meals, but on the last morning, as we were leaving to bid adieu to youngest daughter Amy, who lives a few subways station rides away, Julie suggested we pick up breakfast at Dunkin Donuts to bring to Amy's.
I certainly appreciate a good donut. When Julie lived in Seal Beach during our dating days, I would stop for an apple fritter and coffee at an independent Electric Avenue donut shop on my way to work, but at that age, a donut didn't immediately impact my pant size as it does now.
In addition, the previous evening I had purchased Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies for a special last night in New York for our granddaughter Emma, and most of the Family Sized pack had gone uneaten. Is a donut really a more nutritious breakfast than a cookie? I'd say no. And as cheap as I am, I didn't want to buy a donut when I could eat a free cookie.
However, I didn't want to be frowned upon by the Manhattan elite who might be spying on Amy's apartment kitchen with binoculars from one of the nearby historic Harlem Hamilton Heights rooftops, so I asked myself what I could do to make eating a cookie acceptable to such highbrow snoops?
I thought back to our trip to London, where we were unable to find a crumpet, which the Brits dismissed as nothing to get excited about. Why not call a cookie a crumpet? After all, it is flour and other ingredients in a circular shape, like a crumpet, I presume, although I have never actually seen a real crumpet.
Earlier in the trip, I bought a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter, somewhat intentionally ignoring the fact that Gina's family prefers the "natural" peanut butter where you stir the oil into the peanut putty and then refrigerate it, hoping it will stay mixed and not harden into a form of adobe brick. Don't hate me because I love beautiful Skippy, so smooth, so creamy (except when it is Super Chunky), so aromatic, so perfect from the first knife blade skimming the top to the final remnants scraped off the inner wall of the plastic jar with a spoon. I saw that jar of Skippy next to the Chips Ahoy, and Eureka!
Alabama Crumpets.
George Washington Carver, one of the greatest men in history for convincing farmers in the south to grow peanuts and then coming up with dozens of uses for the product, which had formerly been primarily used for lifestock feed, did not invent the peanut or peanut butter (a widely held misconception), but he did love peanuts, and his groundbreaking research brought international acclaim to the Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama. Who knows if peanut butter would have caught on without him?
The recipe is simple. Spread peanut butter on a cookie and put another cookie on top like a Cool-A-Coo with a think layer of peanut butter where the ice cream would go. Would a Cool-A-Coo for breakfast be the equivalent of a donut and milk? Doubtful, but I digress.
While I used Chips Ahoy and Skippy, you could use all natural peanut butter and granola bars, oatmeal cookies and Jif, or whatever floats your boat.
I have to say that Chips Ahoy and Skippy tastes terrific. Clean up? Wash the plate and knife.
By the way, this is a great "to go" meal, but I'd suggest stacking them inside foil rather than using a Baggie, which ended up getting kind of slimy with peanut butter during our subway ride.
Now you have a quick breakfast alternative to pop tarts on your way to after Christmas sales, but lest we get ahead of ourselves, Merry Christmas!
