Giorgio stewmari

I keep forgetting ingredients.  Last week, I made mint chocolate chocolate chip cookies for a friend in Somerville but first I forgot to add the melted chocolate when I mixed in the flour — I was able to mix it in after and it was OK — then I baked the first twelve cookies without adding chocolate chips!  I was talking a lot, I guess I was distracted, it was disconcerting BUT it reminded me of two performance pieces I did in college, the first in which I had my classmates assist me in the modification of a memorial to my grandfather in Harvard Square and the second in which I brought them to my messy dorm room (made more messy for the purposes of this project) and tried to watch Sweetie on my broken VCR (I had just had surgery and called the piece Messy room for convalescing with movies — before and after photos below).  In both pieces I led a group of people through an absurd personal ritual and both times things went wrong and it felt a little bit like stand-up comedy.  Making cookies in front of people feels like this, if that makes any sense… 

Anyway, it doesn’t make much sense to me either, but yesterday in New York I went to the Whitney Biennial and saw Aki Sasamoto perform her piece Strange Attractors which included the distribution of a doughnut from Doughnut Plant, of which I got a piece, and I had some more though(nu)ts, more specific, about what kind of event making cookies is.  I am again staying with my gluten-free and lactose intolerant (but otherwise tolerant) friends in Brooklyn.  I brought GF flour with me and dairy-free chocolate NOT made on equipment that also processes wheat.  I have not liked using Earth Balance in the past because it gives the cookies a funny taste but I found some Earth Balance “For Baking” which is disconcertingly translucent but has no added flavors or coloring (I wanted to use Earth Balance instead of Canola oil because I was afraid with the melted chocolate the cookies wouldn’t have enough solid ingredients to hold together).  A bunch of people came over and I went to work.  We were out of eggs but were able to buy four for a dollar from Fat Cheng, the Chinese restaurant on the corner.  I whipped up two simultaneous batches, both dairy- and gluten-free, coconut cranberry chocolate chip and what was supposed to be chocolate cayenne cacao nib chip but I forgot the cayenne!  And I started too late because people started leaving and going to bed before the first dozen were out of the oven.  And I had to keep baking for a long time by myself.  The chocolate cookies were a little too crumbly but tasted good and the cranberry cookies were perfect but there was no one to eat them all.  Once upon a time, I made cookies by and for myself, to satisfy my sweet tooth.  Now, the end product (and as a result the exact ingredients) are less important than the process of making and sharing cookies with friends.  Maybe the next step is to move away from developing recipes, to “forget” everything that is inessential, and to focus on that process as performance and shared/group experience.