Cookies in 10 Minutes Flat!

"C is for cookie, that's good enough for me." - Cookie Monster

Freshly made cookies, ready to be devoured!

You deserve some cookies... strike that... we all deserve some cookies!!!  Perhaps it's a Friday night, you just got home after a tough week of work.  Or maybe you just finished a strenuous workout.  Or maybe you just got back from an extreme mountain climbing trip.  Or perhaps you have no reason at all, you just really want some delicious cookies.  You don't need a reason but you do need a way of making cookies... FAST!

Never-ending Remembrance

 "Can you still hear raging guns, ending dreams of precious ones?"

- Lyrics from the song

"Friend of Mine (Columbine)"

by Jonathan and Stephen Cohen

Columbine flower bringing joy to the world.

23 years later, that is still a very valid question to ask as I listen to the song that was written 23 years ago by two students of Columbine High School whom survived the massacre.  A realization fell upon me recently that it is by no means "normal" for people to know what happens in communities following a tragic event, such as the shooting at Columbine, which occurred on April 20th, 1999.  For myself and many others across the country, this has been our reality from a very early age, it's all we've ever known.  We're amongst the first generation for these tragic events to become normalized and integrated with our everyday life.  It didn't even occur to me until this year that there are quite a lot of people in the world whom have no idea what it's like to watch these events unfold at places you have been to or to watch normal people in your direct community go through an extremely sudden and public loss.  There's a lot more to these events than what the media shows for a few days before the cameras disappear and they move on to the next story.

Sprout it Up! Cheap, Easy and Delicious Food

Sprouts be sprouting - 4 different jars at various stages!

A funny thing happened at the end of the summer, I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across a video by Mike Posner showing everybody who will listen, how to grow sprouts themselves.  This led me to looking at some other videos by Doug Evans as well as looking up some general sprouting information and scientific research.

For the past eight years or so I've been thinking about two specific aspects of growing food myself:  Microgreens and Sprouts.  I very much enjoy both of these but they're fairly expensive at the store so I generally stay away from them unless I'm able to buy them directly from a local farm since then I know they'll be as fresh and as tasty as possible.  I've always had it in the back of my mind that I want to try growing them myself.  With microgreens having always been at the front of my mind for this since that's what I've always been the most familiar with and I quite simply never realized the utter simplicity of growing sprouts.

Eat the Greens Raw

Eating the delicious lettuce as-is (and having fun)!

Why must we make things so complicated?

We're so used to everything in our world being very, very complicated that we rarely take the time to take a few steps back and ponder, "Is there an easier way?"