Summer Rain Calls for Summer Cookies - No. 344

Remembering COVID + Good Night, and Good Luck

THE IRONY OF JUNE IS THAT IF YOU PLAN a beach vacation or want to work in the garden, and especially if you need to entertain children just out of school, it will rain.

But as the rain poured off my roof in sheets yesterday, I was cozy and dry inside baking cookies. I had saved a recipe for chocolate chip cookies from Caroline Chambers’ wonderful newsletter because of the cookie’s unique ingredient—Rice Krispies.

It’s a twist on the classic chocolate chip and the venerable oatmeal cookie. Caroline says the recipe is her most requested through the years and takes her back to Coronado, California, where her husband was once stationed as a Navy SEAL. She befriended their neighbors, the Hartigans, because of their backyard pool, kindness, chilled rose wine, and this cookie.

What makes the cookie special might be the almond butter, but probably the Rice Krispies cereal inside. The crunch. They strangely reminded me of COVID when I suddenly had a Rice Krispies surplus and was looking for ways to use it.

I’m not sure what I love about this COVID photo more—her little boots, those daffodils that sprang from the cold earth to cheer us up, or how I did not care what I looked like traipsing through the yard in snow boots and my bathrobe! I was overjoyed with a visit from my granddaughter and her parents when they traveled to Nashville to get vaccinated.

The COVID epidemic five years ago had sent all of us running to safe places—back home, to the mountains, to pods, whatever you called your close group who agreed to take precautions so everyone stayed virus-free until a vaccine could be rolled out.

My COVID pod was myself, husband, and son forced to return home from his study abroad overseas. Our daughters were in their own pods—my younger daughter in med school where she and fellow students got real-time experience as they suited up in scrubs, gloves, face shields, and N95 respirators to treat the sick.

My older daughter and her husband were caring for our first grandchild, whom we had met joyously a few months earlier at her birth and got to know briefly that Thanksgiving before the world started shutting down.

That COVID baby now has verbal skills of a linguist, benefitting from her time alone with parents. (Although, yes, I’ve been reminded how hard it was to raise a child on your own without family nearby or the support of good friends.)

My granddaughter and her parents traveled to Nashville in early 2021 so her parents could receive vaccinations. How we qualified for vaccines seems almost dark web now: My friend Debbie had called and said she had heard from a friend at the bank that a shipment of Moderna vaccine was to arrive in a small town west of Nashville. If I went to this website I could sign up myself and other family members.

We were fortunate.

I do love the versatility of Sara Franco’s challah recipe. It can be braided or simply turned into loaf pans. This was the recipe I Zoom taught to family members.

The COVID memories I recall most are making masks first by hand and then dusting off the sewing machine to expedite the process. I remember Zoom bread lessons with my extended family, putting in the best garden I’ve even grown, and planning meals around what we had in house. We wasted nothing.

I kept a COVID diary until the vaccine arrived. But when the world went back to ‘’normal,’’ I didn’t write a word.

Reading those diary entries reminded me of how we needed each other back then. It reminded me how blue the sky looked during the day and how black it turned at night. And those stars! We often ate dinners outdoors just to admire them. COVID taught me to pull out the IPad for Facebook yoga and to walk everyday even if it was up and down my driveway.

My older sister who never cooks baked her first recipe in COVID. My diary reminded me that she reached out asking about our mother’s banana bread. She wanted to bake it using her over-ripe bananas but had no buttermilk. I had buttermilk to lend her. She had rice cereal to off-load because the meal delivery service had messed up her order.

So I left the buttermilk on my side porch, and she dropped off the cereal. I made Rice Krispie treats and ate Rice Krispies with sliced bananas on top like the childhood days. I wish I had baked these chewy chocolate chip cookies filled with pops of rice crispiness that I am sharing today. They are clearly the cookie that could have carried me through COVID.

Five years later, what’s the COVID story you’d like to share?

During the summer of 2020, my English hollyhocks never grew so tall or beautifully. They were planted from a packet of seeds I had bought the summer before from a roadside gardener in England.

Right now, we are in another strange time. It’s not COVID, but it’s the dismantling of American government as we know it.

The violence we’re seeing on the streets with ICE raids, the unprecedented National Guard arrival in Los Angeles, and a president who in spite of campaigning to improve America’s financial health is spending millions on a military parade for his 79th birthday Saturday—this is strange.

His Big, Beautiful Bill allocates an $80 billion increase to the ICE budget, and these ICE raids are targeting brown-skinned people who cannot complain. Which is why the streets have been filled with people of all colors speaking out in support of their neighbors.

Substack writer JP Hill explains it well in his newsletter New Means:

You can feel and see this rebellious spirit spreading like wildfire. Across the country, people have had enough. We have had enough of the abductions, of the illegal and more importantly deeply immoral snatching of our neighbors. We have had enough of the terror inflicted on families and workers and communities. And now a moment that has been coming finally broke through, bursting into reality in the form of mass protest and defiance.

I just watched CNN’s viewing of the play Good Night, and Good Luck, the true story of Edward R. Murrow (George Clooney), the CBS News journalist who had a historic on-air showdown with Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. The senator was using the country’s fear of the spread of communism to label political foes in government, education, and entertainment as communists or communist sympathizers. He created a ‘’Red Scare’’ based on fear and retaliation.

On March 9, 1954 Murrow’s episode called "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy," examined the senator's unfair methods for accusing Americans of involvement with the communist party. On the following April 6, CBS aired McCarthy's response.

CNN aired the Broadway adaptation of the 2005 film co-written by George Clooney, and it was the first time a Broadway show was live on TV. (If you missed it, check out the film, which you can access for less than $5 on a streaming service. It will also educate you as to how many people smoked cigarettes in the 1950s!)

I am grateful to learn how mainstream media (CBS News) and journalists like Murrow reported truth when it would have been easier—and more profitable—to avoid it.

COVID didn’t last forever, but it changed us. I am hopeful that what’s happening right now in America won’t last forever, and I am hopeful it will change us for the good.

As George Clooney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper after the airing, ‘’The issues explored in ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ remind people that we have been through difficult times, challenging times and that we survived it as a country.’’

- xo, Anne

P.S. Happy baking on rainy days! From the archives (for paid subscribers), here are other cookies I love to bake all summer long: Barbara’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, The 1922 Girl Scout Cookie, Kathleen’s Sugar Cookies, and My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie.

THE RECIPE:

Caroline Chambers’ Coronado Cookies

I used almond butter in this recipe, but I can’t wait to try it with peanut butter. I didn’t have the yellow raisins, but I did have dried cherries in my pantry, and they are so good alongside the chocolate. For you oatmeal cookie purists, omit the chocolate and cherries and just let the flavor of the almond butter, oats, and crunchy cereal sing. They’re almost butterscotchy together. While Caroline says to bake by tablespoons, I like a slightly bigger cookie, about a 2-tablespoon size. Suit yourself, large or small, just be watchful to not overbake. In about 8 to 9 minutes, they will brown lightly around the edges but still should be soft in the center. I found the shape was nicer if I let the cookie dough chill 5 minutes before baking, and I didn’t line my pans with parchment paper as she directed, and the cookies didn’t stick after I let them cool on the pan a couple minutes. Then I let them completely cool on racks where they are delightfully chewy because you didn’t overbake them!

Makes two dozen 3-inch cookies or three dozen 2-inch cookies

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1/2 cup smooth almond butter or peanut butter

• 1/2 cup (100 grams) white granulated sugar

• 1/2 cup (about 100 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar

• 1 large egg

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 cup (120 grams) all-purpose flour

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1 cup (180 grams) semisweet chocolate baking chunks

• 1 cup Rice Krispies cereal (or a brown Rice Krispies type cereal)

• 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats

• 1/2 cup dried cherries, Craisins, or raisins

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

2. Cream the butter, almond butter, and sugars in the large bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment on medium speed until fluffy and the dough lightens in color, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth, 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.

3. Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Reduce the mixer speed to low, and gradually beat in the flour. Stop the machine. Add the chocolate, cereal., oats, and dried fruit. Beat until just combined.

4. Scoop the dough into 6 to 8 rounds on a baking sheet, placing them about 2 inches apart. Place the pan in the fridge for 5 minutes. Bake the cookies until the edges are lightly browned but the top is still soft, about 8 to 9 minutes. (The cookies will firm up and get chewy as they cool.) Repeat with the remaining dough.

Note: Caroline says you can flash-freeze the dough balls on a baking sheet, pop them into a plastic bag and store in the freezer. Bake frozen for 11 to 14 minutes.