Jo Gartner's Cure what ails you Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 sticks butter or margarine (Jo has made these a LOT and uses Nucoa margarine)
1/2 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
2 and ¼ cups all-purpose flour. (or, if you have it, 1 c. all-purpose flour and 1 and ¼ c. whole wheat pastry flour.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
A pinch salt (more like a half teaspoon if you’re using unsalted butter)
½ HERSHEY’S bar, grated
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
1-12 ounce bag semisweet chocolate chips
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla and take out your aggressions on the batter until they're both well incorporated.
Stir in the grated chocolate. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and pinch of salt. If you’re feeling too lazy to dirty
another bowl, or the need to thwart authority, you can add the salt and baking soda directly to the batter, give it a quick mix,
and then add the flour. Open the bag of chocolate chips. Take a good deep whiff. Eat a few. Poor what's left into the batter
and give it a stir.
Stick blobs of dough on the cookie sheet. My blobs are about the size of a fat, lumpy walnut. I put about 12 on a cookie sheet.
Put it in a 375 oven. After seven or eight minutes, give your cookies a check. If you like them chewy, take them out when
they're still white and a little raw in the middle. I like it best when they’re nice and brown on the edges but still a little pale
in the middle--chewy on the inside, crispy on the outside. Slide them off onto brown paper grocery bags. I rip my paper bags,
(day getting better already), and use them insideout.
Cookies are best between about five minutes and a half-hour after you’ve taking them out of the oven. If there are any left
over, these freeze really well. When they're totally cool, toss in a plastic bag and store them in the freezer. If you pop them
in the toaster oven for about a minute until they defrost, they'll taste as if you just taken them out of the oven.

Links and Jo's Crappy Day Drawer
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How to Make Sausage balls--too good to share. Better make a double batch.
What's in Jo's Crappy Day Drawer? It used to be stuff that she needed after a day spent with hormonal 13-year-olds, especially after they shoot spit balls at her. But now it includes things that keep her sane after a run in with vampires. e.g. Serious comfort food.
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Escape books
5 oz reduced fat SHARP cheddar cheese
2 c. reduced fat Bisquick
12 oz Jimmy Dean less fat sausage
2-4 TB water or milk
(a pinch of cayenne if you want it a little spicy)
Dump in bowl. Get your hands in there and squish all ingredients together. Especially good after long faculty meetings.
Form in small balls and bake on cookie sheet at 375 or so for 10-15 minute until light brown.