CHOCOLATE diamonds.

That’s right folks, the otherwise worthless, brown diamonds customarily not even graded for their intrinsic value for the purposes of becoming jewelry but utilized instead for industrial purposes (like drill bits), is now the “hot” fashion trend.

CHOCOLATE diamonds.

I like chocolate. I like diamonds. In fact, I REALLY like diamonds (in part from a part-time stint selling them during law school and in part, from a very generous husband). That being said I can’t help but chuckle each time I see an advertisement for “chocolate diamonds” knowing that the only reason anyone knows of the phrase “chocolate diamonds” is because somewhere (in Australia I’m guessing where an inordinate amount of brown diamonds stem from) there’s a team of marketing folks who came up the brilliant idea to “repackage” the otherwise undesirable diamonds with a clever name. Cookies should have clever names.

Diamonds? I’ll take mine colorless and flawless thank you very much.

(Note to self – need to try eggnog and/or stout beer cookie recipes next week).

What makes Fall particularly great is that Fall is when baking becomes fun again. It’s a time when cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger take center stage turning crisp, tart apples and multi-hued pumpkins into tasty pie.  It’s a time for soft, gingerbread cookies and cranberries and pecans. Expensive pecans I might add thanks to China’s recent extraordinary demand for them wiping out the US supply.

Pecan prices aside it bothers me that Fall has become a shortcut to Christmas. Did anyone else notice that the minute that the back-to-school supplies have exited the shelves then no sooner do the Christmas trinkets appear?

Shouldn’t Fall be the time of year to take pause, to sit back and relish the remaining warm sunny days without counting down the remaining shopping days?

There are 90 days of Fall so use them wisely.

While we were huffing and puffing along I realized that it was one of those sublime moments where I’m genuiniely thankful for the freedom of my new-found profession and my ability to take a scenic walk in mid-afternoon, a luxury I did not have when I practiced law.

Which made me think about the days I practiced law full-time. Which made me think of the highly contested topic that everyone has an opinion on but doesn’t necessarily want to talk about.

THE WORKING MOTHERS vs. THE STAY-AT-HOME-MOTHERS.

Those of you who know me or know of my story know that I spent six years as a full-time working mother commuting 3 hours each way from Pennsylvania to Manhattan so that I could maintain my job as an attorney. There were days where I literally did not see my children because I left before they were awake and returned long after they had gone to bed.  I missed school deadlines and events and sadly some other more significant milestones like when my first-born took her first step.  In 2008 I switched teams and became the proverbial stay-at-home soccer mother and, as a result, I can now fully understand the argument from both sides of the field.

Everyone always wants to know…so which is better?

Isn’t the real issue…why does one group continually persist on trying to persuade the other that they’re “better”?

Better is a subjective term. Who am I to discount someone else’s subjective view of what’s  “better” for her or her family? What’s better for me is not necessarily deemed better for someone else so I simply cannot and will not place a value on “better”.

What I will say is that I miss getting dressed up. I miss the moment you walk out the front door of Port Authority into the frenzied pace of a NYC sidewalk. I miss the thrill of catching a cab. I miss people watching and gleaning their interpretations of the latest season’s fashions. I miss $7.00 manicures and the endless array of food choices available in mere walking distance.

That being said, as I’m ambling along my country road on a crisp, sunny, white puffy cloud afternoon  I’m happy that I get to stay home and bake and that every single day someone invariably stops me someplace to say they’ve enjoyed something I’ve created. I relish the ability to be home each and every evening to witness the exact moment each of my children drift off to sleep and the ability to take a long walk with the dog in the middle of the day.

I don’t think my children have suffered because I wasn’t there to coddle them each and every waking moment or that they’re childhood is enhanced because I’m now home.  I don’t think they’re going to remember or care if our house was less than perfect. In fact, my children’s lives aren’t that much different now that I’m home. I still lose my keys. I still miss appointments and deadlines. I still feed my children macaroni and cheese because I didn’t plan a magazine perfect dinner in advance. I have piles of mementoes and photos and not meticulously fashioned scrapbooks.

NOTE: I always thought it would be an excellent business for someone who does scrap-booking to take someone else’s piles of mementoes and scrap-book them for a fee and if anyone knows someone who does this already please tell them to call me.

In sum, no matter where mommy is or what she’s doing she’s overwhelmed and exhausted.

In fact, the key component to ending THE WORKING MOTHERS vs. THE STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERS debate is admitting that we’re all overwhelmed and exhausted and if THE WORKING MOTHERS and THE STAY-AT-HOME-MOTHERS would get off of their respective soap-boxes and stop trying to prove which group is better and simply acknowledge they’re all overwhelmed and exhausted (and face the fact that professional  chefs prepare those beautiful dinners splayed in all of those magazines) then perhaps the animosity between these two groups would dissipate once and for all.

That being said…maybe tomorrow I’ll get dressed-up to bake and then make a trip to the grocery store because I used up the last box of macaroni and cheese today.

That being said, I did grow up eating A LOT of instant oatmeal, specifically Quaker Instant Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal and, on mornings when I’m barely awake and trying to get three children fed, dressed, and out the door, I am secretly glad when that at least one of them will consent to eating instant oatmeal for breakfast. Charlotte is the ”one” for the record.

If you’ve been following prior posts you’ll know that there was a bottle of maple extract that spilled in my ingredient cabinet so that the smell of maple permeated it to the point of being overwhelming. I still don’t remember when or where I bought it nor do I remember what I was thinking at the time and I’m guessing that it has, in fact, been there since the Black Buggy Baking Company began. Come to think of it if that is the case kudos to the McCormick company that makes some very potent and long-lasting extract which I finally put to use today.

Today was Taste Tester Tuesday, or, more specifically “Oh, no, is it Tuesday already?”

Since the chocolate mint cookies still don’t have a clever name (although there’s a few people on Yahoo Answers! who have had some good ideas), I needed to come up with an idea, and fast, and thus, it was time to break out the maple and if I was using maple my thoughts turned to Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal.

I didn’t know how brown sugar would work in a cookie and I hoped that they weren’t a flat mess when they came out of the oven. Perhaps they would have been but for the oatmeal giving it a nice, cakey texture.

As to the maple flavor I’m relived that it isn’t as overbearing as it was the day it spilled in the cabinet. It’s there, just a nice welcome surprise – sort of when children who need to be fed, dressed, and out the door in the morning actually cooperate.

I hate ordering ingredients for the bakery in part because it means that I incur a huge bill and in part because it is time-consuming to order, find space for and unpack ingredients in large, heavy quantities and, as a result, I simply don’t do it very often.  As to the cost of ingredients, sometimes I pay attention to the commodity markets and how the political unrest/drought in some regions of the world will subsequently effect prices on things I need (i.e., cocoa) but, for the most part, I simply order and pay.  Nevertheless, this week I had sticker shock when it came time to order pecans.

Although pecan pie isn’t one that is in large demand this time of year (nor is pumpkin for that matter) since I was placing an order I thought I’d stock up for Fall and that’s when I  discovered that the wholesale prices of pecans have tripled in price. TRIPLED?

“Was there a drought or bug infestation? Fire? Pecan price-fixing? What did I miss?”

And then, I wondered,

“How in the world am I going to bake a pecan pie that isn’t going to cost and arm and a leg?”

Granted there are pie outfits in cities like New York that can “get away” with charging $15. a pie but Oley, Pennsylvania is NOT New York (on so many levels…let’s save that topic for future blogs) and, as much as people love my pie, I don’t expect them to pay $15. for it.

While we’re on the subject of nuts I will digress to our friends in Washington. If you had a friend in debt who was about to default on their current obligations you wouldn’t encourage them to take out a new mortgage or credit card to incur more debt, would you? No, you’d tell them they needed to find new ways to live within their means, to cut expenses and to find ways to earn more money. At least I would. The uncertainty of the budget situation in Washington is not just uncomfortable, it’s simply depressing.

Back to pie and cookies. Pie and cookies are a happy topic.

Washington politics aside, the prices of ingredients have been creeping up since I started this venture although most of the spikes have been temporary ones. For instance, when there was a nationwide salmonella egg scare last summer the price of eggs doubled but since that time they’ve come down to very reasonable rates.

This time, I’m not so certain and it’s the uncertainty (both with pecans and politics and, come to think of it, the ridiculously hot weather) that’s made life uncomfortable.

While trying to come up with a clever name for a new cookie variety this week it occurred to me how the use of semantics in my prior career as an attorney overlaps with my current career as a baker.

I could have simply called the cookies “Coffee Chocolate Chip” to convey their contents. However, to me, while the name “Coffee Chocolate Chip” was in fact accurate, it was not a very clever and what is the point of baking a clever cookie and giving it a dull name?

I’ll spare you the roundabout details on my thought process leading up to the resulting name – Choco Latte Chip – but surprisingly enough it had nothing to do with my caffeine intake as is customary and was the result of eating watermelon and staring out the kitchen window daydreaming of synonyms for the phrase coffee.

While I love the moniker “Choco Latte Chip” so much I’m considering filing a trademark application for it, sadly, I have been unable to come up with an equally clever name for the rich chocolate cookie laced with after-dinner mints I plan on baking up next. They’re going to be soft and rich like my Brownie Chocolate Chip cookies (named by Charlotte for their brownie-like quality) and yet have a cool, creamy refreshing mint component to them.

I suspect it’s time to fire up the coffee pot for some caffeine-laden inspiration or, alternatively, to enlist the services of my six year old marketing director who, I am proud to report, is already able to discern both a good cookie as well as a good name.

My love of magazines is fairly non-discriminatory although admittedly, I’m beginning to get the feeling of “been there – done that” with parenting ones and I can’t help but think that gossip ones are intrusive to celebrities’ privacy, and quite frankly, there’s only so many ways I’m going to style my hair or have sex with my husband so there’s a few magazines I’ve grown tired of over the years that focus primarily on those topics, but, that being said, I simply LOVE magazines.

There’s an indescribable feeling of joy when I peel open the crisp glossy pages of a new one and as a result, each month an inordinate amount of glossy paper is piled on my nightstand ready and waiting for me to indulge in a quick escape. In fact, one of the things I DO miss about my 3 hour commute to NYC was the uninterrupted time to get lost in a magazine. Oh, how I’d secretly hope that one of the many subway entrepreneurs would be at my station selling previously viewed ones that I’d stockpile for my bus ride home (for only a $1.00!). I’d pile my arms full of big, thick versions of Architectural Digest, Vogue, Bon Apetit, Conde Nast Travel and on nights like those it was the equivalent of winning the lottery!

With those days of uninterrupted blocks of time behind me, my magazine downtime (and my downtime, in general), is severely limited and it’s the women’s/home magazines that I tend to now gravitate towards.

No matter what the publication, however, when it comes to recipes in magazines, I have mixed thoughts.

Obviously all of the recipes look fabulous but the reality of my schedule didn’t (and, sadly, still doesn’t) permit me to tinker in the kitchen for hours on end in an attempt to recreate a restaurant-worthy creation.

What these recipes provide me, as is the case with magazines in general, is ideas. Bold, fresh, new ideas I can translate not only in new ways to wear the inordinate amount of clothes in my closet but they also provide me with inordinate new possibilities for cookie (and to a lesser extent pie), varieties.

This past Monday was one of those rare days where all three children accompanied by the newest member of our household – a six month old yellow Lab we found at our local animal shelter – were playing together, sans squabbling, so that as a result I could “peacefully” leaf through the pile of my latest magazines while basking in the sunshine in the comfort of my yard (while simply ignoring the fact that there are weeds that need to be pulled and the puppy’s preoccupation with digging is causing havoc in the garden in general and that I should, really, be baking in the bakery right now and not basking in the sun).

As I flipped page by page I was in awe over how each of the desserts looked so beautiful and sounded so delicious. One in particular, a strawberry mousse nestled between chocolate coated wafers started a spiral of thinking as follows….

Thin chocolate wafers, chocolate mint wafers, chocolate mint cookies, Baskin Robbins’ Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, my childhood friend Carolyn who loves Baskin Robbins’ Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (hi Carolyn!)…where was I….Baskin Robbins’ Baseball Nut ice cream (my personal favorite!), working at Baskin Robbins in High School (tough work but great bosses and co-workers – hi to all of you as well!)..where was I….Baseball Nut ice cream having cashews..cashews…haven’t tried cashews in a cookie yet…which variety to add cashews to?…why aren’t lemon cookies more popular when they’re amazing cookies?…Lemon Cashew cookies. Pause. Would people buy Lemon Cashew cookies? Would people give a try to Lemon Cashew cookies? Test taster day…Taste Tester Tuesdays? Done.

And, so, I’m happy to announce that this coming Tuesday will be the Black Buggy Baking Company’s first “Taste Tester Tuesday”.

I’m baking up Lemon Cashew cookies to give to the first 20 ready, willing and able taste testers that come to Fisher’s Produce and proclaim, “I’ll be a guinea pig – I mean taste-tester”. In return for your proclamation you’ll receive a Lemon Cashew cookie and, more importantly, a postcard to send me your thoughts. You can sign your name if you like to and don’t if you don’t.

I’m excited about Taste Tester Tuesday as well as this new combination and while admittedly I’d love to see my Lemon Cashew cookies featured in glossy print (or any of my other varieties for that matter – dropping a hint here to people in the magazine industry – call me) in the interim, I’ll continue to leaf away, looking for inspiration with each turn and continue to bake away (in the bakery and not so much the sun), that is, until I’m interrupted by my children – and/or one adorably naughty puppy.

The fact that there is not one particular individual who can be credited as having “invented” the shoo fly pie leaves its true origins subject to speculation. Rumor has it that resourceful colonists fashioned this dessert out of one of the most basic staples on hand – molasses – which invariably attracted flies.

Admittedly, I never tried shoo fly pie before moving to Pennsylvania and my first – along with several subsequent encounters with it – was that while it had an appealing caramel hue to it – it tasted like cardboard. Despite the fact that it was heralded as an authentic, “Pennsylvania Dutch” specialty, I simply could not understand the attraction to it.

NOTE: I’ve come to learn that the moniker “Pennsylvania Dutch” is synonymous with boring, bland and tasteless (and not limited to describing food).

That being said, I “took on” shoo fly pie because I knew that I could make it better and while I liked the resulting product, I knew that I had succeeded in creating something better not by the volume sold each summer but by the genuine praise bestowed by some very loyal fans (my favorite of which was an octogenarian who said that it was the best she ever had).

You seldom get praise like that from practicing law.

If you haven’t ever tried shoo fly pie the best description I can provide is that it tastes like a brown sugar pop tart in pie form and, after all, who doesn’t like brown sugar pop tarts?

This summer I’m continuing the Black Buggy tradition of baking up tons of shoo fly pie and I’m hoping that in the not-too-distant-future it will have universal appeal and with it the phrase “Pennsylvania Dutch” will take on a new, and different connotation!

There used to be another – when I was driving – but I would invariably miss my exit or forget where I was going and get lost so I have to resort to the remaining two – showering and rolling pie crust.  The rest of my day is consumed with a level of noise and chaos I never, ever, anticipated when my husband and I decided to have children.

All day I’ve been thinking about a brief, random piece I read in a magazine about cantaloupe tarragon ice pops and how they were heralded as being so innovative and, how quite frankly, simply thinking about that combination makes my stomach turn.

Since I was showering with lavender scented shower gel my thoughts quickly turned to lavender, my love of lavender and how various confections I’ve sampled over the years containing lavender (lavender chocolates in particular), were as nauseating to me as the cantaloupe tarragon combination.

I’ve come to realize that there is a very strong connection with our association with flavors and/or scents, how we perceive scents and our subsequent taste preferences.

As a result of my association of a stark white guest bathroom in my grandparents’ sprawling 1900′s era colonial home with the scent of lavender, my earliest – and continued – association with lavender is in soap form.  To take it and add it to food seems unnatural.

My first sampling of tarragon was in law school while dining at a fondue restaurant that had added it to one of the various dipping sauces. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant to save my life but that first encounter with tarragon (and unkind thoughts towards the thankfully now ex-boyfriend I dined with that evening), have stayed with me over the years.

Please Note: Dislcaimer To The Tarragon Growing Council of America: For the record I absolutely love tarragon so my disdain of adding it to ice pops should not be construed as an assault of the merits of tarragon per se.

Please Also Note: No disclaimer to lousy, un-named ex-boyfriends required.

I suspect that there may be an entire cadre of lavender chocolate and cantaloupe tarragon loving foodies out there who are heralding these “nouveau” combinations.

Admittedly, what really bothers me is the fact that I’ve been baking up unique cookie variations this year (Lemon Rosemary for instance) which despite local acclaim, have not reached the status of having been a random note in a national magazine and, yet, the trying too hard to be over the top ice pops did.

That being said, tomorrow morning’s pie crust rolling presents a new opportunity for me to get lost in thought and, rest assured, the end result will be better suited for your taste-buds than your shower.  If by chance you know any cantaloupe tarragon loving foodies – please tell them to call me. We need to put an end to this food chaos.

Cool sunny days with crisp temperatures in the early morning and late evenings. Lightweight sweaters and blankets. Ocean water that’s still warm enough to enjoy.

I am dreading the pending heat wave that is descending on my area and along with it mornings that no matter how early I wake up I’m still sweltering in the bakery before 9am because the temperature simply didn’t drop the evening before to lend us any reprieve. On miserable days like those I try to take the heat – and my new profession – into perspective. “I BAKE PIE AND COOKIES FOR A LIVING – THERE ARE IN FACT WORSE JOBS OUT THERE”, I tell myself when the alarm goes off at some ungodly hour that was, in fact, the same time I’d be returning home from an evening out on the town once upon a time. “PEOPLE REALLY LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR COOKIES – YOU CAN’T JUST NOT BAKE” I think as I’m laying in bed procrastinating and simultaneously calculating how long I have to hit the snooze feature on my alarm before I’m really behind in my baking schedule.

Invariably tomorrow will be one of those days, days where I wish I started earlier so that I could be finished before the heat finishes me.

Heat aside, each and every day I bake I have an indescribable satisfaction of knowing that someone, somewhere is enjoying the fruits of my labor and that becomes even more apparent in lousy weather because, after all, it is those dedicated individuals who brave the downpours or sweltering heat to purchase a pie and/or cookie that makes my “job” even more worthwhile.

Heat wave be dammed, I’M BAKING TOMORROW NO MATTER WHAT because there’s people counting on me to and, as much as I hate the heat, I’d hate it even more for someone to brave it to purchase a BBBC baked good and suffer disappointment and, after all, a BAD DAY OF BAKING beats a GOOD DAY AT THE OFFICE ANY day.