View Larger I left Somerville for Providence Friday afternoon and hit traffic so thick that when Stewart called me an hour later from Cambridge I was only just passing the South Bay Mall, 7 miles away. I made a U-turn, got lost in Dorchester for a half hour (saw my landlady’s pear), and met Stew at the basketball courts on Mem Drive with a pint of banana sorbet and Belgian chocolate ice cream from Toscanini’s. I watched him play a game of three-on-three and two full court games before tearing him away and leaving for Providence a second time. David works at a dessert place here; Stewart and I have thus far consumed a strawberry shortcake, lemon poppy seed scone, a cannolo, and slices of lemon mousse cake, chocolate layer cake and banana cream pie.
Perhaps too many sweets because Stewart confronted me about some of the posts on the blog, which I think of as our blog, but to which our readers know he never contributes (well, very rarely). He likes the text posts but does not understand what place the images and quote have here. I am not entirely satisfied with these posts either; I want to diversify the blog, to make it about any and all thoughts I (we?) have about cookies, the place they hold in culture, even the feelings that arise from their absence. But the further I stray from the literal, physical realities of the cookies themselves the more confusing the blog becomes. This troubled Stewart, afraid that the blog will be misunderstood, and I think also that he will be associated with my lesser proclivities for internet nonsense. This soon turned into a discussion of the history and definition of consciousness: inconclusive.
The only way to reconcile was to make a good old-fashioned half batch: an ancient bottle of molasses added to a half cup of white sugar, a half cup coconut flakes, a half cup chopped walnuts and a whole cup of chopped dark chocolate. A dark honey color from the molasses, the toughness of the coconut made them pull apart like tendinous meat and the chocolate was still completely melted when we ate them. We gobbled up a dozen before a nine minute timer went off for the second dozen, which we kept for tomorrow’s journey onward to New York. For a moment I was afraid Stewart and I would be parting ways as far as the blog is concerned but I am writing now with his blessing. Maybe, someday, he’ll write here again. Until then, the cookies keep us together.
