I made a half batch for my friend's birthday but I didn't end up bringing them out and ate most of them myself. I used the Beurremont again and the modified recipe. And I chilled them in the fridge for an hour or so. They were perfect, not too sweet, moist even after cooling.

We watched Obama's speech at a burger joint in my neighborhood; I hope that we are a great nation and not a petty one, Obama said "it's not because John McCain doesn't care; it is because John McCain doesn't get it." But if enough people also don't get it, Obama will be out of luck.

Back in Brooklyn, I made a half batch for friends tonight to eat while watching Project Runway (and during the commercials the DNC). I cooked them in three batches, some came out a little too crunchy and flat, some were just right. A friend brought milk. I like Jerrell and I'm a little nervous about Joe Biden.

I bought a Scharffenberger chocolate chip cookie at Flour, a great bakery and sandwich shop in Boston. Their website claims that "two kinds of chocolate make this cookie doubly good" but there was exactly one chip in the cookie I had which made it singularly atrocious.

We heard this on the radio today: "a decision to mix chocolate chips into some Pillsbury cookie dough rather than sprinkle them on top has saved more than $5 million in annual costs, says [General Mills.]" Stewart is on his way to Budapest for two weeks, I'm moving apartments in New York and then returning to Maine.

Stewart mixed two cookie doughs at the same time in the same bowl, peanut butter and chocolate chip. We ate them while playing Monopoly (I won).

Yesterday while we were sanding and scraping upstairs, Stewart wondered what it would be like to have cookies to snack on while we work. So to test it out we made pea soup, sweet potatoes, a blackberry tart and a double half batch; we still ate about a third of the cookies but we just couldn't finish them before we passed out. Today, we're going to start priming the trim. New experiences.

Last night we were finally able to get cookies to bake evenly in our oven on the island. Here is the modified recipe, which gives new meaning to the name "half batch:"

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 capfuls vanilla
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oats
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

The mixed types of flour, the extra oats and baking powder combined to make 11 (a poor man's dozen) powerful cookies that were gone -- inspired by Usain Bolt of Jamaica -- in record time.

For some reason, don't ask me why, on the mainland today we bought a bag of Chips Ahoy! "Real Chocolate Chip Cookies." Ingredients: Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate {vitamin B1}, riboflavin {vitamin B2}, folic acid), semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, dextrose, soy lecithin - an emulsifier), sugar, soy bean oil and/or partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, high fructose corn syrup, leavening (baking soda and/or ammonium phosphate), salt, whey (from milk), natural and artificial flavor, caramel color.

Our ingredients: Butter (cream, natural flavoring), sugar, brown sugar (sugar and molasses), egg, vanilla (water, organic alcohol, extracts of organic vanilla beans), white flour (unbleached wheat flour, malted barley flour {a natural yeast food}, niacin {a B vitamin}, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate {vitamin B1}, riboflavin {vitamin B2}, folic acid {a B vitamin}), salt, oats, baking soda, semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla extract). A little disturbed, we're making plans to shorten that list.

While we were bleaching an upstairs banister, our friend Terri (who visited for the weekend) made us cookies from a recipe in a book that has drawings of all the ingredients. She commanded the oven, which has been giving us trouble, with ease. They came out perfectly cooked and delicious, but she used baking powder and they came out mealier (Aurora says "crunchier," Stewart says "crumbly and glossier") than usual.

Stewart and I have started going on a run each day, partly inspired by Haruki Murakami's piece in The New Yorker, and so far I feel horrible; I haven't run in five years and I hadn't realized how much my body has changed: I'm heavier, I've filled out more. Besides stiff muscles, I've been sick to my stomach. On a walk to look at the paint jobs on other houses we decided we probably shouldn't be eating so much sugar and butter -- kind of an identity crisis as far as the blog is concerned -- so I made whole wheat bread to go with the homemade rose hip jam. In a similar vein, we made cake last night, don't ask me how this is better than cookies, especially because we made chocolate frosting out of semi-sweet chips, butter and sugar. One step forward, two steps back.

We made a cookie pie last night (half batch, all light brown sugar, chopped walnuts, in a 9" pan), Aurora said it was the biggest cookie she had ever seen. I couldn't finish my slice; I left it in a ziplock bag that ended up on top of the toaster and melted when we made toast this morning. Some cookie was lost but the rest was warmed nicely and Stewart ate it. We started scrubbing the deck with soap but reconsidered and are switching to bleach today.

We are in the house. I am posting from the Island General Store. There is a lot more paint on the shingles than I remembered, which is a little troubling, and the contractor hasn't finished the renovation work. I don't know when we will be able to start. Last night we made a double half batch, one third plain, one third with cashews and one third with raisins (all with chocolate chips). The cashews didn't add much flavor, but a nice crunch. The raisins were delicious.

I made a half batch to take with us on the road to Maine. I left 4 for my mom; I urged her to take more but she refused. They came out cakey and looking great -- mounds not puddles. I used Trader Joe's chips and dark brown sugar. It will be good to finally be inside the house tomorrow, to be able to examine it.

We spent a long time talking on the street, without realizing the whole time we were standing in front of a window filled with cookie cutters of every shape.

Up all night again. With a friend who is visiting from out of town. We discussed the difference between facts and truth in journalism, artists and critics, we wondered if there is anything of which one cannot be stripped: creation, recognition, accomplishment, humanity, life. We gossiped.

I made a cookie in a frying pan like a pancake. It started to burn before it cooked all the way through so I ate it with a runny center -- not very good. I'm going to stick to oven baking from now on (except to experiment with the barbecue in Maine). I realized that I like to make cookies, and to cook in general, because there is a tangible product. I can create something real. Painting the house will be like this, I hope.

Stewart woke me up this afternoon to make a double half batch. It rained. We used Beurremont unsalted butter ("French-style" from Vermont, 83% butter fat), dark brown sugar and no oats. We saved a third of the dough to make a small batch later. We leave in two days to paint the house in Maine.

I did not see or eat a cookie today. I don't know what happened. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

We were up till the wee hours last night discussing how to paint houses and how to live rightly. We made half batch as usual (with more white sugar because we only had a bit of brown) divided into 6 cookies and in a 9" pan made a cookie pie. The latter was a big success.