cookies.

I'm shrinking. It's been unavoidable- the stress of moving, a sudden drop in beer consumption, the only two proximal grocery stores being Whole Foods and Trader Joe's (goodbye Oreos, Pringles, and Breyers Ice Cream, hello organic vegetables), and of course, all this biking. It's gotten to the point at the present rate that I'm going to get bumped down a smaller jeans size, and since I can't handle the trauma of jeans shopping (and being hungry all the time), I have decided that I'm going to bake more regularly. As I already eat a ton of butter and full fat dairy, cookies feel like my only hope.

Interestingly, the unintentional movetoPhillyandwasteaway weight loss moment coincided with the reappearance of the recipe notebook.

I'd lost it after moving from one of my eleven addresses in five years but had given up on seeing it again. Until I randomly ran into a former housemate and he said,"Hey, this isn't my ex-wife's, could it be yours?" and alas, I was reunited was this messy chunk of dreams from a time in my life that I thought my baking skills were going to be my ticket into eternally wedded bliss and a life of deriving spiritual pleasure from cleaning my windows.

Which is all to say, I have this amazing sugar cookie recipe that I would like to share with you. I got it off of Allrecipes.com a million years ago, but it's been modified a little. These are dense little cookies that, in spite of recalling several unrequited loves and the sorrows of one too many singles dances, take the edge off and, combined with that multi-egg fried egg sandwich I just ate, will keep the pants fitting for just a little while longer.

Perfect Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks)

2 cups white sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon (maybe a lil' more) almond extract (vanilla works if that's all you have, but almond will take you to the next dimension) (amaretto would be a dream, but I haven't tried it)

5 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp (or less) salt

1. Cream butter and sugar with your mixer. Add eggs and almond extract.

2. Add in flour, baking powder, and salt gradually. This dough gets pretty dense.

3. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or more.

4. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

5. Roll dough out however you like. This may involve cookie cutters or you can be life me and just use an ice cream scoop to make balls. At this point, I recommend baking 10 and freezing the rest so you can have fresh cookies whenever you want.

6. Depending on your oven, bake 6-10 minutes. Cool, and, if you really want him to marry you, frost.

Frosting

When baking 10 cookies at a time, I quarter this recipe.

4 cups powdered sugar

1/2 butter

5 tbsp milk

1 tsp of whatever kind of extract you used in the cookies

A drop or two of food coloring (I prefer using red or yellow)

Mix it all up.