Not ready to fly solo

Do you remember that old movie Better Off Dead? Remember the mother was a truly terrible cook? Remember the green slime pudding that crawled off the plate? Dana concocted something similarly creepy last night. I was helping Chris with his class and I wanted Dana to make popcorn and watch a movie with the little ones. But we were out of popcorn. So I told her to make cookies. She's done it before, but always with supervision. I thought she was ready. She wasn't. We knew something wasn't right when she came in and told us that Derrick was helping her mix them up and he had stirred it too much. Chris and I look at each other, not sure how you stir cookie dough too much. We told her to take care of it because we had to focus on his class. Then right after we finish, she brings in what I find out to be the second batch of cookie dough. She asks, "Does this look right?" This is what reminded us of the scene in the movie when the pudding crawls off the plate. Talk about slimy looking mess - whoa!! It was the consistency of snot with chocolate chips dispersed throughout. I go into the kitchen to find the first batch and it's looking like brownie batter. I find measuring cups with melted butter in them and realize she has forgotten what it means to "cream" the butter and sugar together. She has melted the butter. That in turn melted the chocolate chips in the first batch, which she then abandoned to make the second batch. I ask her how much of different ingredients she has put in. She's gotten everything right except for the flour. The recipe called for 2 and 1/4 cups plus 1/2 cup for elevation. (I had to alter my favorite recipe for our altitude here.) She put in 1/2 cup of flour. I decided that I may as well try to salvage it if the only thing missing was flour. At that point all I'm risking is 4-5 cups of flour, the rest of the ingredients were already a lost cause if I didn't try to save it. So I mixed the two batches together and added flour. Lots of flour. They turned out pretty good - not fabulous like the recipe done right, but pretty darn good for looking like it would crawl off the plate.