Back in Brooklyn, Stewart showed up at our apartment on a comically small bicycle. I brought a bag of Chocolate Salty Oats by Kayak Cookies back from D.C. for him to try and for us to reverse engineer from the ingredients list, our half batch recipe and the recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies on the Quaker Oats package. Here's what we used:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1 egg
2 capfuls vanilla
Hershey's Cocoa till it seemed right (not enough)
1-1/2 cups oats
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of coconut flakes
3/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Baleine course sea salt to taste

They cook differently than flour-based cookies -- longer -- and they need to be shaped more as they do not settle. They were a little sweeter than the originals (Kayak must use darker chocolate, the package only says "my favorite Belgian chocolate") and were better after cooling than when still warm and gooey (we inadvertently let one cool off before eating it). It's heartening to think we got so close on our first try, I want to try imitating other cookies now, especially since the bag of six cost $12.

It's been a month since we finished painting in Maine and parted in Boston. I returned to Brooklyn and Stewart went out to Ohio. This week he returned east, but we just missed each other in New York -- I left for D.C. yesterday and he arrives in N.Y.C. today.

Last night, with my friends in Washington, I made a half batch, with questionable brown sugar (dried out, we added water and distilled some syrup, don't know how much, not a lot) and only a little, maybe a quarter cup, white sugar, a mugful (no measuring cups) of bleached all-purpose flour, Ghiradelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips and baking soda, no vanilla, no salt, no oats, no nuts. The dough was not very sweet, but I thought tasted good. In the oven, rather than settle, the cookies puffed up and came out cakey -- too much flour to sugar/butter. I like the chips a lot, better than Ghiradelli's semisweet chips, which are among my least favorite. This morning, my friend took two cookies in his lunch to work. All in all: positive results.

Today, I'm going to get the salted chocolate chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I had when I was here last -- expensive and excellent. When Stewart and I next rendezvous, I hope to recreate them.