Brown sugar brown butter shorties and other stories

The kitchen is coming along nicely. The tile is finished and looks spectacular, and with it done, I really can start cooking in the kitchen. I mean, I think I can but I didn't ask. Because, you know, I want to cook!

I saw these brown sugar brown butter shorties on Smitten Kitchen and drooled over them the whole week while the kitchen was closed to cooking. This morning, I woke up early and was browning butter by 6:30 AM. I planned to bake cookies and make a couple of other things, and I didn't change out of my pajamas until about 7 PM (and only then because I had to take the trash out to the curb). It was a high energy baking/cooking/unpacking kitchen boxes day. It is so me to do all things at the same time, mess up some of them, and finish nothing. After baking, cooking and putting things away in the kitchen, I only need to wash the rest of the dishes. My back was killing me after going for 14 hours so I decided to take a break and tell you about these spectacular cookies!

These brown sugar brown butter shorties are to die for. Save yourself and don't make them. Because if you do, you'll taste the dough and be unable to stop eating it. Then you'll get curious about how the cookies taste BAKED, so you'll stop and bake off a dozen or so. Then you'll eat more than your share of those. They'll call your name all day long. You'll have a couple for lunch (great), test them out with a cup of tea (great) and as dessert after dinner (great). You'll wish you had more left to share with others. If you double the recipe like I did, you'll have a fat roll of dough in the refrigerator, waiting for the right person to share them with (M is out of town but I plan to make him some when he gets home). You'll marvel that a cookie can taste this good without any chocolate.

 I also made Manchamantel, a nice chicken dish, for dinner. I found the recipe in Clean Eating magazine (you can find it here), and it was deeply flavorful and surprisingly healthy (good thing since I ate my weight in cookies earlier in the day). I oven roasted vegetables for the week. I made a big mess doing all of this but it was fun.