How to Bake Brownies Without Invading Another Country!

Hint: Use an extra egg!

If I were to give you one piece of unsolicited advice, it would be to never answer questions that you weren’t asked. Or put another way, don’t provide explanations where none are demanded, required or even requested.

People mess this up most often when they are trying to get away with having an affair, committing a crime, or some other nefarious behavior. [Your vocabulary word for today is “nefarious.” Please use it in a sentence that does not include “behavior.” Your work will be accepted in the comments and graded speedily.] They start explaining all the ways in which they weren’t doing something, when no one asked and no one thought they were. Once they start explaining, however, people start to wonder… why are you telling me this if you weren’t…

My favorite example of this is how I do not walk around telling people that I do not, ever, shoot plum tomatoes off of other people’s heads with either a gun or a bow and arrow.

Obviously I don’t. If you know me, you know I am nowhere near coordinated enough to kill the tomato and save the person. And besides, who does that? A non-rhetorical question.

Point being, there is no need for me to provide endless explanations of how and why I am not doing something if I am not doing it.

A close relative of this piece of advice is that the chances that two people who probably should not become sexually involved are, in fact, about to get involved, are directly proportional to the ferocity with which the people in question insist that they must not, under any circumstances, become sexually involved.

I don’t mention to the guy at the check out at the Co-op that we are not hooking up because while he seems nice enough, neither of us thinks there is any remote possibility that we are going to. No means, motive, or opportunity. I did find out that he’s diabetic and offer to bring sugar free cupcakes next time I drop cupcakes off to the Co-op, which I do, in fact, do. But we are not on the verge of a passionate affair, even if it could get me a better discount and the ridiculously overpriced hippie organic co-op that I kinda hate but am often stuck with.

Perhaps by now you are wondering how I managed to invade a foreign country without you hearing about it. Since I mentioned the lack of necessity to do so in order to make brownies in the title, you have gone from the moment before you saw this post, when you had no concept that I would either invade a foreign country or make brownies, to wondering why I’ve put so much effort into telling you why I would never, under any circumstances, discuss not doing something if I was not actually doing it.

Well, just this once you’re safe. I made brownies without any military action whatsoever.

Saturday night I had some of my favorite people over to dinner. My old friend Ken, who runs a harm reduction organization and with whom I once both ran an organization and a book, and my friends L and K. L is my cat shelter partner, and as such, she is my Alpha Cat. L can catch an angry cat, medicate any cat, calm a cat having cage rage, figure out which ones are likely to get along with others and which are not, and Loviefluffy loves her. Her husband K is also a great cat purrson, and they have six cats. My friend Ken and L’s husband K are approximately the same age, though K is a bit younger, and they hit it off fantastically and like the same kinds of foods. All four of us are PURRPOSEFUL Cat People, so we get along extremely well.

[This little sweetheart was one of the cats L and I looked after at our Tuesday shift.]

Prior to a couple of days ago, you might have not been particularly thinking about invading a country, capturing dictators or anyone else. You probably weren’t wondering why a cat is sitting in what you may rightly identify as pee pads either, but since you are now, it’s because we line the cages with them for cleanliness and ease of changing and when we let the meows out to play, someone invariably wants to make the pile a comfy kitty perch.

Now that you are no doubt wondering which foreign dictator or otherwise we caught to shake down for half price pee pads, and also wondering how you can adopt that beautiful tuxie Sylvester cat (hit me up, for the cat, not the dictator), I’ll mention that L is a huge fan of my peanut butter balls, which are a low carb treat that I learned from a friend I met through Dr. Feinman, one of my longest standing friends, who taught me the phrase, “On two feet like half a dog,” as the proper response to the question, “How are you doing?”

The peanut butter balls are made as follows:

Soften one block of full fat cream cheese

Melt about half a stick of butter

Stir these together with about four tablespoons of peanut butter, the no sugar, real kind

Add in Swerve zero calorie sweetener, the granulated variety (no, no foreign dictator, you can get it from Amazon, and spare me the speech about how Bezos is a dictator cause he’s not, and I just read a heartwarming story about his mom and have zero patience for people who whine about capitalists who actually work hard and provide things we want and buy, but if you want to complain about that I can introduce you to my five thousand Facebook friends who will join you all day and all night.)

After adding the Swerve to taste, mold the mixture into little balls, about quarter sized in diameter or smaller, and put them in a pan, cover with foil or plastic wrap or put in a Tupperware or generic equivalent, and let chill in the freezer for twenty minutes. Then serve or put some in the fridge for up to four days. You can also coat them with cocoa powder!

L loves the peanut butter balls, so I happen to know that she likes peanut butter and chocolate things. Hence, anticipating her and her husband’s visit, I got some brownie mix and some peanut butter chips with which to do what you think I would - or at least I hope you are assuming I would make brownies with peanut butter chips, since anyone who knows me knows I would be terrible at constructing anything nefarious [your word again!] out of anything, much less simple cooking ingredients.

I began the baking process and realized that while the mix called for 2/3 cup of vegetable oil and 2 eggs, I had two dozen eggs but maybe 1/3 cup of vegetable oil at most! So what did I do?

Those of you who are fishing out your 30 year old “No Blood for Oil” t-shirt to respond to the President’s recent actions in Venezuela are probably thinking, “You invaded Venezuela!”

That was, in fact, the rather clever quip that L’s husband K came up with. I liked it.

But no, I did not invade or even conduct a surgical operation in Venezuela or any other country in order to procure the makings for my brownies. I went back the advice of a dear friend of mine who was a pastry chef and cooking professor: if you need stuff for the binding, add an egg. More butter = more crispy. More egg = more cakey.

I figured that that oil would be like butter and that if I just substituted more egg for the oil I’d come up with brownies that were perhaps a bit more cakie than brownie but still good, and they were just fine! Quite delicious in fact, or so my guests agreed.

In addition to the dessert, I made French fries for the first time! Except that I baked them. Does that count? I sliced several potatoes from the farmers’ market, then salted them with sea salt and let them drain in a colander for about half an hour. Then I dried them with paper towels, coated them in olive oil and sea salt, and baked them on 450 for oh, quite a long time. I never really follow recipes you see. I am compulsive about improvising the way that some people are compulsive about “doing it right,” whatever “it” is.

They turned out great, and the guests commented that they tasted more “real” than French fries purchased out, which I suppose they were.

I also made hot dogs with beef hot dogs from the attractive farmer from Lancaster, with whom I had perhaps a ten minute conversation on Saturday. They were way better than any sort of store bought hot dog, leading to a satisfying total meal.

All was well, and even Loviefluffy had a good time. She likes these friends, while she is pretty hesitant around most people.

No international or national laws were violated. You could claim that anything I do is Zionist but I assure you that the Israeli government did not pay me to make this dinner or write this post. If I were being paid by Israel I’d have a lot more outfit choices and a way bigger kitchen, and probably a hot Israeli boyfriend or a husband named David, but let’s not get carried away here.

Feel free to use and modify any of my recipes. That’s what I would do with yours!

No dictators required. No blood for brownies!

Eeeewwww.