The Physicist's Cookbook
As a graduate student I have a fair amount of "study time". On a completely unrelated note, I baking a lot at roughly the time I started here. Grad. school is one of those places where you meet some "interesting" (to put it mildly) cats, especially in Physics: from the weird, lanky Germans to the countless far-too-friendly-for-their-own-good Chinese students to the ones whose you just know it's better to steer clear of, without really knowing why. Andrew (I'll let you take bets on whether that's his real name) is one of those bizarre creatures that actually seems to be a nice, normal (by Physics student standards) guy. By-the-by, he's a vegetarian. Bear that in mind.

Anyway, getting back to the baking: there's only so often you can make regular cookies, sponges or carrot cake - awesome as these things are, there does come a limit. You can spice them up - make the cookies into double-chocolate coconut ones etc. But again, there comes a point where you're just re-hashing the same old stuff. As such I've strayed a touch from the usual limits set in cookbooks, meaning I've baked things mentioned in - say - the newsletter. Now, cast your minds back a few months and you might remember a cookie recipe that made the newsletter. It came about from a discussion the author of the recipe had with her husband about whether a certain foodstuff improved anything it was added to. Apparently said foodstuff, while maybe not an improvement to the humble chocolate chip cookie, certainly wasn't detrimental to it. "Funking awesome!" thought I, "I'm gonna have to make them!". And I finally did make a decent batch a few months ago. People I told about it were either disgusted or intensely curious, no-one was ambivalent. Have I drawn this out enough yet? Maybe not quite - just hold on a minute more.

Anyway, a few weeks ago these magical cookies were mentioned again around Andrew, he'd never heard them mentioned the first time round and - despite the warnings of some nay-sayers - was one of those in the "intensely curious" camp. I warned him about their special contents and he was still adamant on trying them. So I whipped up a batch over the weekend of January 24th/25th (this is important as well) and took them in on the Monday. I proffered one to Andrew and he bit in, looked mildly quizzical, then started noddling satisfactorily. "These are good," said he, "really good."

He's just taken a bite from one of my choc-chip BACON COOKIES. Yes, real fried-dead-pig-in-little-strips BACON. Now, I know that bacon is food of the Gods and it's one of the main hurdles for vegetarians to overcome, but still - I felt proud. Still, it was an easy victory - tempting a vegetarian with bacon, so I could actually forgive him that and not call him a hypocrite (much). However, remember the date I made these cookies? Despite living ~3500 miles away I do still feel the need to tend to some of the rituals of my Scottish homeland. See if you can guess what leftovers I had as my lunch on Monday January 26th. Right, got it?

No sooner had Andrew finished the cookie than I (still eating said lunch) offered him a bite. Having never tried it before Andrew gladly took the fork and grabbed a big forkful of minced, spiced and boiled sheep innards. "Not bad" was his verdict on this delicacy. How the hell can you call yourself a vegetarian and happily munch on haggis, ffs? Not that I mind, of course. Now I just need to find a tee-totaller in the Physics Dept. to try the Jack Daniels brownies that are just out the oven. Somehow I think they'll be harder to come across than a vegetarian.

Just in case anyone's interested in the cookies - here's a link:
physicistscookbook.blogspot.com/2009/02/bacon-cookies.html
(This is a slight variant on the original, tweaked to my particular taste in cookies. That and I've lost the link to the original site - if it still exists - and can't be arsed trawling through old newsletters, I do apologise.)
(warmidea, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 4:33, 1 reply)

Bacon and/or pork fat in baked goods
isn't that new a thing. I have several dozen recipes for bacon cookies and pork cakes in my personal collection that date as far back as the mid-1800s and I'm certain there are older ones around. I find it disgusting, but pork in general does make me sick to my stomach so I'm biased.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 18:09, closed)