Alternatives to Chivalry and Romantic Heroes in Ivanhoe

I think it was on Ivanhoe’s Wikipedia entry that I first read something like, “…and many critics in fact consider Rebecca the true heroine of the story.” At first I dismissed it as a meaningless point. But that was months ago, and now I’m going to argue that it is indeed very interesting and it does signify something more important than just a subjective response to a likable character. It hints towards the fact that Ivanhoe is a really good book and is much more than a simple adventure book for kids.

The hero in a Romance – and Ivanhoe’s subtitle is “A Romance”—is the character upon which a society’s ideals are projected (Frye 186). [Note: Like Kenneth Sroka, I’m using Northrop Frye’s descriptions of Romance in his Anatomy of Criticism. See especially the section called “The Mythos of Summer: Romance” in Fry’s third essay in the Anatomy.] If Rebecca is the romantic hero of the story, then it follows that it is her ethical code that is being championed, and not the ethical code of more traditional romantic heroes like Ivanhoe or King Richard.

Your Traditional Romantic Hero

Certainly King Richard’s code, even though it is the code of your traditional romantic hero, is not championed much at all. The narrator tells us his reign is “brilliant, but useless” (458) because Richard is more concerned with winning personal glory in Jerusalem than, you know, governing his country.

Ivanhoe is a little more difficult, because he is a hero; just not for the traditional reasons one might think. First, the narrator does not seem to give a hoot for Ivanhoe’s martial prowess or skill in battle, which Ivanhoe has in abundance. Other characters praise his skill and the glory he won in Jerusalem, and he demonstrates his skills when, disguised as the Disinherited Knight, he wins the tournament at Ashby. Except the narrator facetiously describes the end of the tournament as follows:

Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby. (149)

This is the chivalry of the time, where fellow knights, who otherwise have no quarrel with each other, kill each other for sport. There are a bunch of such deflations of chivalry throughout the book, which Joseph Duncan pointed out way back in 1955 (and he’s been cited a bunch of times since then).

But Ivanhoe is still heroic; he’s still the title character, and he is still a pretty likable guy. He’s just not heroic for the reasons we’d think. Frye defines a romantic hero as follows:

If superior in degree to other men and to his environment, the hero is the typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended (33).

What makes most of the heroes in Ivanhoe seem Romantic is their superiority in combat to other humans. Ivanhoe wins the tournament. Robin Hood does his arrow splitting thing. In battle, Ivanhoe’s heroes are like the heroes of Homer’s Iliad, swatting away regular people until they can fight one-on-one with another hero. The ideals associated with this type of martial prowess usually have to do with courage in the face of danger, and this is what often defines the main hero in a traditional romance (think of Gawain trying not to flinch in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). But in Ivanhoe, virtually every hero and villain in the book has these characteristics. The villains have nothing against a fair fight. They’re evil, but they aren’t cowards.

In Ivanhoe, martial skill isn’t idealized and violence doesn’t solve problems any more than it creates them. It should be noted that at the climax of Ivanhoe’s quest to save Rebecca, he doesn’t defeat Bois-Guilbert with skill in combat—he’s too wounded to stand any chance against the formidable villain. Ivanhoe saves the day simply by showing up, by being willing to sacrifice himself to save a woman he knows to be innocent.

The Alternative to Chivalry and Violence

What separates Ivanhoe from the other knights are his ideals of self-sacrifice, defense of the helpless, domestic practicality and non-violence. Relative to the other knights, Ivanhoe represents balance, practicality and foresight. He is able to embody the best of both Norman and Saxon ideals. He counsels Richard not to muck around so much fighting bandits as a knight errant. All these ideals are, of course, similar to the ideals championed by Rebecca, who favours an ideal grounded in “domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness” (Scott 316).

But Rebecca does it even better than Ivanhoe. Recall that she saves his life when he is wounded and helpless before he has a chance to reciprocate. She also helps other Christians who would never return the favour. Even Ivanhoe himself is barely able to see past her religion. I think I might be one of the few people who was glad that Rebecca didn’t end up with Ivanhoe, because she deserves better.

Rebecca rejects an England that isn’t ready for her or her ideals. The ideals championed by most of the characters in Ivanhoe, in twelfth-century England, and in actual medieval romances, are all about chivalry. Historian John Huizinga writes that in the Middle Ages, “chivalry was…the strongest of all the ethical conceptions which dominated the mind and the heart” (Huizinga 47). Ivanhoe is a self-conscious critique of this ideology which is so steeped in unnecessary violence, and Rebecca is the alternative.

Another trope of romances surrounding the romantic hero is their death or isolation evoking an “elegiac mood” that “presents a heroism unspoiled by irony” (Frye 36). Rebecca is the one character who’s heroism is not undermined in some way by the narrator, and it is no coincidence that she is the one character who leaves England. This elegiac mood (think of the deaths of Beowulf, Roland, and Arthur) is about the melancholic sense that, inevitably, a time of darkness must come when the hero has passed on. A time of darkness is exactly what descends upon the world in Ivanhoe after the events of the story, which is made explicit by the narrator. Richard’s more traditional Romantic heroism sheds an “unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness” (458). This is a nod that in the traditional medieval romance, Richard would be the hero whose death we mourn. But the light he shines is “brilliant, but useless,” and we don’t follow his story up until his death. It is Rebecca’s heroism that might be able to prevent darkness, only twelfth-century England and isn’t ready for her.

By the nineteenth century people were finally ready for her ideals, as evidenced by the fact that so many critics were upset by Scott’s treatment of Rebecca and the fact that she didn’t end up with Ivanhoe. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, thought Rebecca’s “foreseen hopeless” made the book a “wretched abortion” and he never finished it. Scott’s critics often considered Ivanhoe a traditional romantic adventure book for kids that praised chivalry and screwed Rebecca over just because she was Jewish. But it is a far more mature and self conscious work.

Stuff I Mentioned:

Coleridge, Samuel T. “Coleridge on the Novels.” Scott: The Critical Heritage. Ed. John O. Hayden. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970. 178-84. Print.

Duncan, Joseph E. “The Anti-Romantic in “Ivanhoe”" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9.4 (March, 1955): 293-300. Print.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.

Huizinga, John. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications,, 1924. Print.

Scott, Walter. “An Essay on Romance.” 1824. Chivalry and Romance. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1892. 127-216. Print.

- – - . Ivanhoe. Ed. Ian Duncan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print. Oxford World’s Classics.

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Soft and Chewy Oreo Cookie Cookies

Oreo Cookie CookiesA long time ago I came across this Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Recipe at Two Peas and Their Pod. The recipe was good, but it was mostly a chocolate chip cookie with a few chunks of Oreos in each cookie (which, indeed, is a perfectly fine idea for a cookie). But I wanted an entire cookie that had a kind of Oreo taste, yet maintained the chewiness of a regular chocolate chip cookie throughout. I find the chunks of hard Oreos (a relatively dry cookie) don’t fit well with an otherwise soft and chewy cookie.

It occurred to me that one way to create my chewy Oreo cookie would be to grind up the Oreos and add them to the batter. The result is this recipe. I also added some cocoa. And as for the Oreo filling, I found that if you separated the filling from the cookies, put it in the fridge awhile, you could then cut it up and shape the pieces into chip-sized… chips.

The recipe worked; the cookies were delicious, and did indeed taste kind of like big, soft, chewy Oreos. My girlfriend thought they were just a bit sweet. Next time I might drop a bit of the sugar.

Oreo Cookies on an Oreo Tin Soft and Chey Oreos

Soft and Chewy Oreo Cookie Cookies

  • 1 stick butter
  • 6 tbsp sugar
  • 6 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1.25 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp cocoa
  • 6 Oreos
  • 1/3 cup white chocolate chips
  • 1/3 cup chocolate chips

1. Separate the Oreo halves and the Oreo filling. Grind up the cookie portion of the Oreos, and put the filling in the fridge. Set the Oreo crumbs aside.

2. Beat butter and sugars until creamy. Add egg and vanilla.

3. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, Oreo crumbs and cocoa. Add this to wet mixture. Fold in chocolate and white chocolate chips. Put the dough in the fridge.

4. Take the Oreo filling out of the fridge and cut it up or shape it (whatever way works for you) into a bunch of little chip-sized chunks.

5. Take the dough out of the fridge, and drop tablespoon-sized cookies onto bake pans or sheets. Add the filling “chips” to the tops of the cookies.*

6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 8-11 minutes.

* shaping the filling into little chip-sized chunks isn’t that easy. Next time, I might consider just mixing the filling in with the dough, and adding more white chocolate chips.

Row of Oreo Cookie Cookies Oreo Cookie Cookies

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Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Cookies (thin and buttery)

Oatmeal CookiesIt took me a surprisingly long time to find an oatmeal cookie recipe that I wanted to try (like, 10 minutes on Google). I just wanted plain, thin, and buttery oatmeal cookies. I finally adapted a Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies recipe from All Recipes, and in the end it worked pretty well.

I ended up baking them one tray at a time. The first tray is what you see pictured. The cookies spread out a bunch (’til they touched each other) and were very flat. While the first tray was in the oven I put the remaining dough in the fridge to cool. When I dropped the chilled cookie dough onto the next tray I also used smaller portions, and the result was a batch of slightly thicker cookies. So if you want thicker cookies, chill the dough first. And don’t flatten the cookies with your fork. I prefer the thin versions, however; you just have to be careful to let them cool before you lift them off the tray, else they’ll fall apart. Anyways, these are great if you like your oatmeal cookies thin and buttery.

In other news, my Ph.D. applications are finally all done, and I just sent the last three (of six) application packages off this morning using Xpresspost. It’s odd that of the schools I applied to, the advantages that each one has varies quite a bit. One has a professor with research interests more similar to my own than any other. Another is the home of one of my favourite journals. Another is one of the few schools doing research into digital media and new literary mediums. Then there’s the one with the crazy library resources. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.

Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Cookies Plain Oatmeal Cookie Pile
Plain Oatmeal Cookies Recipe

  • 2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened
  • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1.25 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 cups quick-cooking oats

1. Cream butter and sugars until smooth.
2. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat until smooth.
3. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl, then add this to the wet mixture. Fold in the oatmeal.
4. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 11-13 minutes. Let cool on the pan for awhile, unless you want them to fall apart on you (especially if they are very thin).

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Simple Blondies

BlondiesI mentioned in my Simple Brownies post that I was more of a blondie man than a brownie man. And that made me want to bake blondies.

This blondie recipe is simple and pretty much impossible to screw up. I don’t really try other blondie recipes (much), because this is all you need. It’s from Smitten Kitchen’s blondies. If you check out the URL there, you can see “blondies-for-a-blondie,” which is what I used to type into Google whenever I wanted the recipe.

I’ve tried many things, but my standby with this recipe is to just throw in a bunch of chocolate chips or chopped up semi-sweet milk chocolate. In the pictures for this post, you can see I used chopped up chocolate – those smaller specks are the tinier bits I didn’t bother to throw out.

To conclude: this blondie recipe is very fast and very easy. It tastes like a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie in one. You can also use these blondies, with some ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce to imitate Moxie’s White Chocolate Brownie dessert. I usually just dip my blondies in milk, like a chocolate chip cookie, because that’s how dreams are made.

Blondie Pile Blondie Blondie
Blondies Recipe

  • 1 stick butter (melted)
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1 cup  flour
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

Directions

  1. Mix melted butter and brown sugar. You don’t need an electronic mixer. I use a fork and stir really fast.
  2. Add egg. Mix it in. Then vanilla. Mix it in.
  3. Sift salt and flour together, then add this to the wet mixture. Throw in the chocolate chips or whatever ingredient you’d like.
  4. Pour the batter into an 8×8 square bake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Err on the the side of underbaked. I pretty much take them out right at 20-21 minutes.

Substitutions / Additions:

  • Add 1/2 cup of walnuts, pecans, white chocolate chips, or anything, really, either in addition to or in place of the chocolate chips.
  • Add in a mashed banana.
  • Add in a few tablespoons of peanut butter and some peanuts.

These blondies are pretty much a blank slate for anything you want to try. But I like ‘em simple.

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Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Real-Life Trial by Combat

The Black Knight and Friar Tuck enjoy some delicious pie

The Black Knight and Friar Tuck enjoy some delicious pie

I’m studying Ivanhoe right now, and I came across some interesting articles about the book and its connection to a real-life trial by combat. So I thought I would blog about the details, because though I think it is interesting it will probably never make it into a paper. And the advantage of the blog post format is I can just present a bunch of neat details, rather than arguing something revolutionary.

Anyways…

The Ashford v. Thornton case of 1817 was the last case of a trial by combat challenge in Britain. It came at a time of rising interest in medieval England, chivalry, and romance. The problem is that the case outraged most people: the early nineteenth century wasn’t a time when trial by combat was actually considered anything other than absurd and barbaric. Most people thought the case had allowed a guilty man to get away with rape and murder… through his willingness and ability to commit another murder.

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott was published two years later, in December of 1819. It includes a trial by combat, and a few scholars have argued that the case of Ashford v. Thornton was popular enough (it inspired numerous pamphlets and plays) that both Scott and his readers would have been very aware of the case during the climactic final scene in the novel. Scott indeed mentioned the Thornton case in his private letters (Letters; click “Vol. IV”).

Details of the Ashford v. Thornton case (1817)

In 1817 Abraham Thornton was accused of raping and murdering 20-year-old Mary Ashford; her body had been pulled from a pit of water outside a very small village several miles northeast of Birmingham. Thornton had boasted earlier that night, at a party he and Mary both attended, that he’d already had Mary’s sister and would also have Mary. He later told police that he did have sex with Mary that night, but that it was consensual. Although we will never know for sure, I must say that Thornton does not come across as a very sexually appealing fellow, based on his rude sexual boasting and his appearance. While covering the trial, the London Times noted that Thornton’s “natural thickness is greater than common, but his excessive corpulency has swollen his whole figure into a size that rather approaches to deformity.”[1] In the initial trial, Thornton was found not guilty after a 12 hour trial which was followed by about 5 minutes of jury deliberation. Based on the details available today, it is impossible to say whether he was guilty or innocent.

Mary’s brother William Ashford was allowed by English law to make an “appeal,” such that Thornton was called upon again to plead. Well, upon the advice of his attorneys, he pleaded “Not guilty, and ready to defend the same upon my body” (qtd. in Dyer 386), at which point he threw down the proverbial gauntlet—in this case a yellow leather glove. William, being a frail teenager, did not accept the challenge to fight a man whom he thought had already had some experience in the killing business. And so Thornton was free. (The weapons of the fight, by the way, were to be “oak clubs.”)

The public at the time was shocked, given that it was the first trial by battle since 1638. The right of the accused to demand trial by battle was a law that had basically been forgotten about, and so never repealed. People thought Thornton had basically gotten away with murder, though the details of the case certainly don’t make it clear whether he was guilty or innocent.

One of the most shocking things about the case, for the English public, was that Thornton had basically turned the chivalric code upside down. Chivalry asks men to use their power to defend women. Thornton used the chivalric code to get off the hook after supposedly raping and killing one. William Ashford, who actually was trying to defend a woman, was out of luck because he was a weak teenager.

Ashford v. Thornton and Ivanhoe

"Combat de chevaliers dans la campagne" by Eugène Delacroix

"Combat de chevaliers dans la campagne" by Eugène Delacroix

Ivanhoe’s trial by combat surrounds a woman (the saintly Jewess, Rebecca) who has basically been threatened with rape by the Templar knight Sir Brian Bois-Guilbert. There are a few obvious differences between the case of Ashford v. Thornton and Ivanhoe’s trial by combat. In the novel, trial by combat is demanded by the threatened woman, Rebecca, not the villain (though it is Bois-Guilbert who secretly suggests it to her). The combat also does not let someone get away with murder; it saves Rebecca’s life. Indeed, the real villain, Bois-Guilbert, even though he is never on trial, ends up killed in the combat, and justice ends up actually getting served.

Bois-Guilbert dies in the combat, even though Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, who arrives wounded and just in time to fight as Rebecca’s champion, barely hits Bois-Guilbert with his lance. The narrator tells us Bois-Guilbert “had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions,” though the Templar Grand Master and Ivanhoe both claim it was God’s will. Bos-Guilbert’s contending passions would have been his will to win the fight and serve his ambition towards eventually becoming the Templar Order’s next Grand Master, and losing the fight to save Rebecca.

The two main scholars to take on the similarities of the case and Ivanhoe are Gary Dyer and Mark Schoenfield. Both argue that Scott is attempting to rescue chivalry in some way, even if he realizes it’s not at all feasible in the modern day world.

I think the idea of rescuing chivalry in a world in which it’s not feasible is a pretty important aspect of Scott’s Ivanhoe. Part of romance involves a kind of lost golden age we can never go back to, and despite the subtle narratorial critiques of it in Ivanhoe, I think that the world we are introduced to is indeed a romantic golden age. And it’s not that we can’t go back to it, it’s that it just doesn’t work anymore, even if it is a part of who we are now and where we have come from. In Schoenfield’s words, for Walter Scott, chivalric institutions (such as the trial by combat) “rendered modernity intelligible” (81).

[1] I saw part of this quotation originally in Mark Schoenfield’s article, and he cites it as 9 August 1817. But I could only find it in the 11 August paper. It’s in regards to a Friday trial, which is why it appears three days after, on the Monday instead of Saturday.

Cited Stuff:

Dyer, Gary. “Ivanhoe, Chivalry, and the Murder of Mary Ashford.” Criticism 39.3 (Summer, 1997): 383-408. Print.

Schoenfield, Mark. “Waging Battle: Ashford v. Thornton, Ivanhoe, and Legal Violence.” Prose Studies 23.2 (2000): 61-86. Print.

Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe. Ed. Ian Duncan. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print. Oxford World’s Classics.

- – - . “The Letters of Sir Walter Scott E-Text.” The Walter Scott Digital Archive. Edinburgh University Library. Web. 19 Jan. 2010.

“Warwick Assizes, Friday, Aug. 8. Trial of Abraham Thornton For The Murder Of Mary Ashford.” The Times [London] 11 Aug. 1817, Law sec.: 3. The Times Digital Archive 1785-1985. Web. 3 Jan. 2010.

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Simple Brownies

brownie-no-walnuts-plainI am more of a blondie man than a brownie man, myself, but my girlfriend likes brownies. So here are some brownies.

I got this brownie recipe from Cookie Madness. My criteria when searching for this recipe was that it had to use an 8×8 or 9×9 pan, it had to be relatively simple or quick, and it couldn’t advertise itself as particularly “cakey.”

The recipe I used said to use pecans, but I used walnuts. I just sprinkled as many as seemed reasonable on top of one half of the brownie batter once the batter was in the bake pan, and just pressed down on ‘em a bit. The brownies also came out of the oven after 33 minutes, which is the minimum time in the recipe, because the gooier the better. Also, I used a microwave instead of a saucepan on low heat to do my butter and chocolate melting. I think I’ll save the saucepan for the fancy brownie recipe, when I want to spend more than 10 minutes in preparation. I changed the ratios, too, of the sweet vs. semi sweet chocolate, based on what was in my cupboard. There were certainly no complaints about too much sweetness, though. In fact the official verdict was, “Perfect,” so huzzah.

If you are hungry I recommend you consume brownies. brownie-plain2 Brownies

Simple Brownies Recipe

  • 1 stick butter
  • 3 oz semi sweet chocolate
  • 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup well packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • Some walnuts or pecans (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8 or 9 inch square bake pan with non-stick foil.

2. Melt most of the butter in a microwave. Add in the chocolate, and continue melting, but take it out and stir it occasionally. Don’t melt it all the way in the microwave – there should still be a few small chunks of chocolate that will finish melting from the residual heat of the butter and the other melted chocolate. Let cool.

3. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add in and mix salt, both sugars, and vanilla. Add and mix in chocolate. Fold in/mix in flour until just combined.

4. Pour batter into bake pan. Sprinkle walnuts or pecans on top if you want. I like to press down on them a bit so they don’t fall off the finished brownies.

5. Bake for 33-35 minutes, until the top just seems to start cracking. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

Cut into individual sized brownies, as small or as big as you want. But bigger brownies taste better.

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Banana Bread with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips

Chocolate Chip Walnut Banana Bread

I still haven’t discovered anything worth putting on a good banana bread. Butter, peanut butter, Nutella–all of these fail to improve upon that which is perfect. Although I have found that Banana Bread is a good bread for French Toast, even if it is a quick bread without all that fancy yeast. I’ve seen others do this online, but when I mentioned it to people in real life they thought I was just weird. So be it.

I like my banana bread with tons of walnuts and chocolate chips. Some people prefer it with none of these extra ingredients. These people are crazy, but that’s okay, because these people don’t get any walnuts and chocolate chips.

In the ingredients here I’ll go with 1/2 cup each of walnuts and chocolate chips for the bread. I like to use more (and in the pictures here, certainly, there are more), but I’ll stick to what most people I think would enjoy. It’s also what was on the original recipe I had, at some point. But I forget where it is from, and I forget what I modified. However, this banana bread recipe is moist, delicious, and awesome. And it can pretty easily be doubled or tripled.

I’ll also note that every banana bread recipe I read always says, “the riper the bananas, the better.” I guess it releases sugars or some such thing. Anyways, I don’t ever plan ahead enough to have three ripe bananas, so I buy bananas as ripe as I can find them, and then leave them in a bag for a few hours, which helps a bit. People also freeze them, but then they’re hard to mash up, so I generally don’t do that.

banana2

Banana Bread with Walnuts and Chocolate Chips

Ingredients

  • 3 medium bananas (the riper the better)
  • 1/4 cup melted butter
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1.5 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup walnuts

1. Butter/grease/spray with Pam a 9″ loaf pan. I also like to add a long strip of parchment paper across the center and long sides of the pan so that you can lift the entire loaf using the paper when it’s done.

2. Mash up the bananas. Beat in with butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla.

3. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; add this to the wet mixture. Throw in the chocolate chips and walnuts.

4. Pour mixture into loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the banana bread comes out clean.

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Two Victorian gentlemen enjoy the effects of opium

GENTLEMAN 1: What! What! Eh – eh – oh, by God! By God!

GENTLEMAN 2: Dear me, man, my face is positively melting!

GENTLEMAN 1: By… God!

GENTLEMAN 2: (pointing) So is yours!

GENTLEMAN 1: By… God!

(Outside, an over-dressed fop with a brightly coloured overcoat walks past the window.)

GENTLEMAN 2: A peacock! Whoooaaaa!!!

(He topples over on his expensive leather chair.)

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Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

SIZED-stackHere’s the original recipe from Recipe Zaar, which is apparently taken from the Toronto Star, and they apparently got it from… Barbara Bush. Say what you will about the 43rd president of the United States–his mom makes a pretty darn good oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.

To the recipe I added ground up white chocolate (using a magic bullet), took out some dark chocolate to compensate, and threw in a bit of cinnamon. I love cinnamon on everything, so I am biased, but my girlfriend assures me it was a wise choice. The taste is subtle, bit it’s clearly there.

The white chocolate spread throughout, combined with the oatmeal and cinnamon, makes for a pretty good cookie. If you don’t want to try the white chocolate just add a corresponding amount of regular chocolate chips.

SIZED-zoom-low SIZED-stack2 SIZED-single-cookie

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 8 oz dark or milk chocolate, chips or chopped
  • 4 oz white chocolate

Directions

1. Chop up dark chocolate if not in chip form. Grind up white chocolate chips into a powder.
2. Blend butter and sugars until fluffy. Add and beat in eggs.
3. Sift flour, baking soda and salt; add to wet mixture. Stir in oats, vanilla and chips. Add cinnamon.
4. Drop by batter by rounded tablespoon onto a greased cookie sheet.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until the edges seem cooked. Remove and let cool on wire rack.

I got about 50 oatmeal cookies.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies (using cream of tartar)

Chocolate Chip Cookie TrailI got this Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from a blog called A Pookie Pantry. It appears to be this AllRecipes version, but with the addition of cream of tartar to the cookies. I bought the cream of tartar for like three bucks then realized that I only needed about 1/4 teaspoon AND the original recipe did not call for any at all. Bummer.

Here is the result of two minutes of Googling: cream of tartar is most often used, it seems, to help stabilize and give more volume to beaten egg whites. Wikipedia has more uses. In baking and making cookies, however, cream of tartar (the acid) is added to baking soda (the leavening agent) so that when combined with the wet ingredients, it causes the reaction that gives cookies their rise. Think back to the volcanoes you made in school: you added vinegar (the acid) to baking soda and water, and that caused the awesomeness you subsequently witnessed. Now, baking powder, on the other hand, contains the acid, the leavener, and other stuff. The more you know.

Back to the cookies. I didn’t add walnuts because, well, I didn’t want to. So I added more chocolate chips to compensate. This little bit of baking genius I thought up all on my own. One thing I’ve also started doing with chocolate chip cookies so to cover up the bottom of the cookies so no chocolate chips are visible. That way they don’t melt to the baking pan.

andmilk batter Cookies on Pan

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 stick (1/2 cup )butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp. hot water
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1.5 c. chocolate chips

Directions

1. Cream butter and sugars. Beat in egg, then vanilla extract.

2. Dissolve baking soda in hot water (I used a measuring cup to hold the water). Add to batter along with salt and mix. Mix flour and cream of tartar, then add them to the batter and mix it all up. Stir in the chocolate chips. Refrigerate for an hour, even longer if possible.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add cookies to baking sheets in average sized portions (use an ice cream scoop, maybe?). Bake for about 8 to 10 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely on wire racks.

I made 19 chocolate chip cookies; not huge ones, but they’re bigger than, say, Chips Ahoy. I like my chocolate chip cookies soft, so I leaned quite close to eight minutes.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Close Up Chocolate Chip Cookie Stack

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