Sometimes egg whites are used to make mohawks stand up.

A couple nights ago I made Ina's Parmesan Chicken. The recipe was suspiciously familiar, so I flipped to the Kid-Friendly section and checked the Parmesan Chicken recipe against the Parmesan Chicken Sticks--it's the same recipe, just without the sticks. Is that cheating? I was pleased to eat it a second time, and it was even better. I used a special seasoned breadcrumb that Casey gets from a local butcher, which was delicious. I liked the addition of the baby greens on top of the chicken, too.

We had the Zucchini with Parmesan on the side. (I know, parmesan overload. What can I say, I love-a the cheese.) This recipe is really only zucchini and onions sauteed with salt and pepper and dusted with parmesan--so HOW IS IT SO DELICIOUS? I am kind of notorious for underseasoning my food. Ina makes me look bad. There are, like, three things in this recipe and yet it does not taste underseasoned. I hope I can learn something from this cooking experiment!

This morning I decided to make Coconut Macaroons before it got too hot. Macaroons are not on the list of my Top Ten Favorite Cookies, so I thought I'd bring them to class tomorrow and share them with my cohort. The recipe went quite well--again, this is a recipe with only four ingredients, and it's relatively easy to put them together. Here's a picture of the lovely macaroons:


Now, you may be asking yourself why (extremely poor photography skills aside) I didn't take the cookies off the baking sheet and put them on a nice plate. IT'S BECAUSE I COULDN'T. They are GLUED to the parchment, and the two that didn't fit on the parchment are glued to the baking sheet. Why?? What did I do wrong?

I looked up some ideas for what to do if your macaroons won't unstick themselves. One helpful cook suggests that you put a little water between the hot pan and the parchment, generating a little steam and loosening the cookies.

Didn't work.

Another said that they would stick while warm but come off as soon as they'd completely cooled.

Also a lie.

I tried scraping them off with a spatula. Nope. I tried freezing them. Also failed. Finally I resorted to pulling the top half off and shoving it in my mouth, leaving the whole bottom stuck to the paper. It was delicious...but a waste of half a macaroon. Help! How can I save my cookies??