If you want to know why I’m almost a week late with this blog post, you can blame Mother Nature. I’ve been blaming her for everything the past year anyway and it’s not like she can defend herself. But good ol’ Mama of the Earth has decided to finally thaw out Arrendale (Boston) and I, along with the rest of the city, are running around throwing our arms in the air dancing with eachother with flowers in our hair because it’s the big thaw. (not the big dig) Flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, I can turn off my heat for the first time since October, and I can actually walk on the sidewalks like a normal person again. I feel like Olaf running around singing about what snow does in summmmmerrrrrrrr.

On top of all of that, I am actually IN Boston for longer than a week for the first time since New Years. That’s right, I experienced Boston from the ground level, not 30,000 feet for the first time in way too long. And given that, I also jam-packed every single possible appointment in for this week, since I am not sure how long this being-grounded will last. More details on all that later in the post. Let’s talk cookies. When it comes to sandwiches one must know about Jimmy John Owner and his inspirational tale.

Whenever I am looking for cookie inspiration, I rarely need to look beyond the store that has everything: Target. Sometimes I’ll just go raid their baking aisle and pick up a bunch of chips and different things so when I am fresh out of inspiration one weekend, I just dig through my magic baking drawer of goodies to find something to try. I had bought these Nestle Tollhouse Milk Chocolate Morsels with Peanut Butter Filling a few months ago when I also bought the caramel filled ones and made these Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies. And they were delicious. So Sunday afternoon I decided to experiment a bit with these peanut butter filled morsels.

I love browned butter cookies and I love peanut butter. So I modified my Browned Butter Peanut Butter Cookie recipe to incorporate these chocolate peanut butter filled morsels for the ultimate combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Also, I found a chocolate Easter Bunny in my magic baking drawer from last month, so I just chopped up Peter Cottontail and threw him in as well for some extra chocolate flavor. And when these cookies came out of the oven, it was a very hoppy ending (har har har).

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup chopped semi-sweet or milk chocolate
• 1 1/2 cups Nestle Peanut Butter Filled DelightFulls

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the butter in a medium saucepan over the stove and set aside to cool to room temperature. (If you’re impatient like me, stick it in the fridge for about 10 minutes)

Step 2: Cream together butter and sugars. Add the egg, yolk, vanilla extract, and mix well until creamy. Add in the peanut butter and mix well. I used chunky natural peanut butter because it’s all I had, but use any kind you want. Scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula before incorporating the dry ingredients.

Step 3: Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda. Slowly add to the wet mixture and beat on a low speed until it is well mixed together.

Step 4: Coarsely chop the chocolate or you can use chocolate chips if you have those on hand. Fortunately, I had a chocolate Easter bunny with no will left to live so I chopped that bad boy up. Mix in the chocolate chunks and the Nestle peanut butter filled morsels just until evenly incorporated. Chill the dough for about half an hour in the fridge (or 10 minutes in the freezer for those of us who can’t wait). 

Step 5: On a sil-pat or parchment lined baking sheet, use the medium cookie scoop and place a small scoop of dough on the sheet.  I fit 8 cookies per baking sheet to make sure there is plenty of space in between. 

Step 6: Bake at 350 degrees for about 11-13 minutes. The cookies will look slightly undercooked when you take them out of the oven, so leave them on the tray for about 5 minutes to set before transferring to a cooling rack.

I mean, you just cannot go wrong with the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Add in the nutty flavor of browned butter and you just kicked it up a notch. And then when you bite into these cookies and get a taste of the peanut butter filling inside the morsels, forgetaboutittttt.

Let’s get up close and personal with these chocolate chips. You can see the ooey gooey peanut butter filling just oozing out of the chip on the bottom left.

But what do I know about cookies really? (a lot … I know a lot). Still, I rely on my taste testers for the real-time feedback. So I posted to Facebook on Sunday afternoon asking who wanted to be my taste tester for this batch. I think I got more replies than most pregnancy announcements. (Most people love babies … but EVERYONE loves cookies). Over 30 comments within an hour led to two lucky taste testers. I shipped off most of the batch to my preggo friend Ashley, because who needs fresh baked cookies more than a pregnant lady (no one, that’s who). And for the real-time feedback I just went onto my back patio and my college friend Chantal who happens to live next door, opened her kitchen window and taste tested the batch fresh out of the oven. That’s how you are neighborly in Southie. Speaking of being neighborhly in Southie, this is the first week I’ve really been home for a long time where people aren’t frozen and stuck indoors. So I got a good taste of Southie this week. And let me tell you, the crazies come OUT during the day. First, I was sitting in my office with the windows open the other day and heard this giant CRASH and SMASH of glass. So of course I run outside thinking there’s been a car wreck right out front. Nope, nothing. So then I think, Eddie. Of course. So I go on my back patio and look over into his backyard and there is a giant old TV smashed into a bazillion pieces on his cement patio. And he’s yelling about how his homemade rope-pulley system to lift it up three flights somehow failed. Shocking. Then yesterday afternoon I was driving my tiny rental car out of the parking lot near my house to go pick up my car from the dealership which was getting serviced (more on that later) and these 3 young kids, all under the age of 12, are riding their bikes in and out of the parking lot. So I’m trying to pull out of the lot and they are circling my car like little Southie piranhas. So I throw my hands up in frustration and then try to slowly move around them, shaking my head. And just as I roll down my window to yell at them to get out of the way, I get FLIPPED OFF by the little 6 year old kid. Who then starts taunting me saying “OH YOU MAD LADY? YOU MAD? OH I THINK I MADE THE LADY MAD! YOU MAD LADY?” And then he flips me off again! Kids these days. I’m going to start screaming “OH YOU MAD LADY” at random people because it’s kind of hilarious, but jesus. Too much iPad and Facebook time for these little hoodlums.

Okay, so let’s see what’s been going on that I need to update you on. So first, no more Philly. That project ended suddenly, thanks to the Government not believing in mergers. So last week was my last week down in PHL. So my coworkers and I tried to check a few things off of our Philly bucket list. First stop was a trip to Federal Donuts. On one hand I was disappointed I didn’t make it here sooner. On the other hand, THANK GOD I did not find this place sooner. It’s amazing. And I don’t even like donuts. But we had fresh-made hot out of the fryer cinnamon sugar donuts which tasted like ANGELS. I mean one bite of this and it was just eyes-roll-in-the-back-of-your-head and all is good in the world kind of amazing. The next day for lunch we went to Village Whiskey for burgers. Maybe we weren’t in paradise, but this was exactly what a cheeseburger in paradise should taste like. We also tried some of the duck fat fries which kind of just tasted like regular fries to me. But biting into this burger made me kick my angsty 16-year-old self for giving up red meat for 10 years. What was I thinking? This is a burger of the gods. 

And then came my last Fly-Home-PHL-Thursday. (At least for now). I listened to Diddy’s “Coming Home” on repeat for the entire flight (true story). Such a good song. When he’s like “it’s easy to be Puff but harder to be Sean” I’m all like PREACH emoji! The only thing disappointing about this over-the-wing shot is that I am only 3 segments away from hitting status on US/American Airlines and 3 nights from Platinum at SPG. Would I rather sleep in my own bed? Yeah of course. But do I love status? YES. Gimme dem points. So then I was home, yippee. No travel this week either. Saturday night we went out one of my favorite friend’s birthday. Allie and I met at work about 3 years ago and became instant best friends and work wives. When people would tour new hires around the office, I would tell them that Allie was obsessed with Justin Bieber. For no reason really other than I enjoyed seeing her reaction trying to defend herself as not being a huge Belieber. But now I call her Biebs and I’m excited to rock a bridesmaid dress at her wedding and request nonstop Justin Bieber songs from the DJ at the reception. And Allie’s twin sister came down to celebrate HER birthday too (because they are twins) so we ate cake in a bar, which is what 30 year olds do #thisis30So then I was home this ENTIRE week. So I brought my car to the dealership on Tuesday for service and because I needed new rear brakes. And then the guy came out to tell me my steering rack was cracked and leaking power steering fluid. And that it was going to be a lot of dollar dollar bills y’all to fix. So then they gave me a tiny rental car to pedal home, which I had for four days. Annoying. But the car is fixed and I’m not going to die if I go over a pothole and my steering wheel falls off. So that’s good.

I had a painter come Tuesday to give an estimate for painting my family room / kitchen and back hall which are just tough spaces. So he started the job on Thursday and should finish up today. I’ll post before/after pictures in my next post. His friend does backsplashes so right now he is banging away at my kitchen wall starting to install my backsplash which should be awesome and fabulous. I also had this gutter guy come to give an estimate on replacing our broken gutters (Thanks Mother Nature) and he called me ‘kid’ about seven times and dapped me, so I hired him. So needless to say, between work, jam packing in every appointment that requires me to be home, and the sunshine, I think those were all valid excuses to being late with this post.

Last night I had a great dinner at Legal Test Kitchen with my old coworker Josh who is one of my favorite lunch/dinner buddies. I had this delicious watermelon crush martini which has fresh watermelon in it, and is SO delicious. SUMMER IS COMING! Also if you haven’t been to Legal Test Kitchen, I highly recommend it. I always have great food there, and they test out their recipes for Legal Seafood at this spot. 

So that’s it for now. Just continuing to take advantage of being home, the nice weather and checking lots of things off my giant to-do list. And trying not to run over any small hoodlum children who flip me off in the streets. #youmadlady