Okay now I’m going to warn you… these are probably the best goddamn cookies I’ve ever baked. Granted – I don’t bake a lot of good cookies, but still.

I made three dozen and I live with one boy and they were gone before I knew it. Don’t make these if you’re not planning on housing them or giving them away basically, they won’t just sit there on your counter.

This cookie is a fudgey mixture of chocolate and ground oreos. If you’re not serious about chocolate then stop considering becoming serious about chocolate by baking these right now. Or whatever.

Cookies + Cream Cookies
(adapted from Picky Palate) 

makes 3 dozen cookies

2 sticks softened butter
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup cocoa powder
15 whole Oreo Cookies, finely ground

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a large baking sheet or two with parchment paper. In a food processor or blender, crush up the 15 oreos.

In a mixer, beat butter and sugars until well combined. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until well combined.

Place flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Add to wet ingredients along with cocoa powder, oreos and chocolate chips, slowly mixing until just combined. With a medium cookie scoop, scoop dough onto prepared baking sheet, about 1 inch apart from each other. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until cooked through. Let cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

OK now let me say one thing – I by no means think this looks awesome. I think it’s an improvement but for the first couple hours after I did this, I was like oh ok that’s hideous. It’s grown on me. You might think it looks hideous. And I guess I’m okay with that.

One of the first things I hated when we moved into our house was the fireplace. I have no before pictures, but I immediately painted the brick white. Like the first morning I woke up here. It was this horrible 80s toned brick. I painted it white and was like OK COOL but that tile below it always haunted me. Now keep in mind, we rent. And I’ve spent way too much money on this rental already so anything I can do to spend no real money and still hope to get our deposit back the better.

So I bought some weird marbled contact paper at Rite Aid for $5.

I covered the tile and cut the edges with an exacto. You can clearly see, it’s by no means perfect. It’s actually really really f*cking sloppy. But I am happy to report a friend was over the other day and didn’t realize it wasn’t real marble until she accidentally touched it and said whoa what is this? (I didn’t tell her about my brave DIY)

The marble pattern is really heavy. At some point I might go over it with a white wash to lighten up the pattern but now that cats live here, those projects seem very unrealistic. (also, don’t mind that really obnoxious wire on the wall… that’s the only way we can watch TV without cable.)

So… is it really ugly?

I feel like I buy hair clips and barrettes constantly at drugstores. Because I’m so bad at doing my own hair, maybe this particular hair clip purchase will solve everything. It never does! But my bathroom is filled with these. And if they could look that much cuter, why not?!

NOW – the thing I forgot to do was to go into painting these with a plan. I got some brushes and craft paint and started painting… soon realizing I had pretty much just painted two of them and now they were just painted different colors (the middle barrette I had taped off for a color blocking). So I painted an ombre effect onto one, I fixed up the edge on the taped one with an exact-o, and the third barrette I decided to slice into a halfway point with the blade and cut the rest off. It worked perfectly!

Is this how you even wear a barrette?!! No clue.

The perfect thing to eat at the end of the summer when you’re really trying to hold on to the summer and you’re in total denial that soon enough, it will be dark when you drive home. UGH. Well I’m eating crab rolls all year. Except crab is super expensive, so we made this last for three meals – and yes, by day three, it was gross.

Remember when I just said crab is expensive? Well I meant it. We got the quality stuff so maybe the less quality stuff is cheaper but the can we bought was $35! I totally lied when I said I’d eat this all the time! By the way – this is unique for me, but I didn’t follow a recipe and I drank wine while I made it, so prepare to taste. The crab is very forgiving!

New England Crab Rolls

one can special crab meat
half an avocado – mashed
half an avocado – sliced
1 cup mayo
boston lettuce
4 tablespoons scallions
1 tsp tabasco sauce
1 tb lemon zest
the juice of 1/2 or the whole lemon (preference!)
hot dog buns (hawaiian or potato are always best)
butter or margarine (for the buns)

In a large bowl, throw in the crab meat along with the mayo, scallions and lemon zest. Don’t mix it yet! Split the avocado and in a small bowl, mash up one half of it. Slice the other half and add both to the mix.

Liberally butter the buns and cook them face down on a pan over medium-high heat for 5 minutes.

Gently mix up the crab salad and add the lemon juice and tabasco to taste. Garnish on top of the living lettuce.