How to make awesome chocolate chip cookies

Everybody loves cookies, and I obviously am no exception. I've told you before I'm starting to develop my cooking skills, and I'm proud to announce that, in less than three weeks, I turned this into this:

I used a recipe of a magazine my grandmother saved and adapted it a bit to my idea of chocolate chip cookies. Here it is (adapted):

Ingredients you'll need:

whole grain flour - 400g

brown sugar - 150g

butter - 150g

baking powder - 1 tea spoon

eggs (use only the egg white) - 3

chocolate chips - 90g

Directions:

Preheat the oven and, in a bowl, mix the butter, the sugar, the egg white, the flour and the baking powder. Use your hands to mix everything until it's brownish and a little wet. Add the chocolate chips and mix a little bit more, just to make sure they're evenly dispersed.

Now shape little balls of the size of a nut, press them to make them flat and place them in the baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes and voilà, you have a perfect chocolate chip cookie!

Some minutes ago I saw a French videoclip in MCM and it caught my atention. Not the song itself, which was neither unbearable nor exactly pleasant, but the videoclip, the little movie. I couldn't get the whole idea, but it had that je ne sais quoi that made me want to shape it into a story of mine - dispersed ideas, here and there.

At that time I felt that thrill of "seeing" something, but now I'm facing a serious problem I have for weeks, maybe even for months: I have the ideas but I can't work them, shape them to form an original work. I'm not sure why! Maybe laziness, maybe lack of technique, maybe both - I don't know, but I will solve it.

Why we should ALL love The Lord of The Rings

If, one day, I have kids, I will tell them the story of The Lord of the Rings every night. First of all, every one in the world has to know this story. It can never die. Second, they need to admire and learn from the characters like I did.

The Lord of the Rings is not just an happy-ending fairy tale, the battle between good and bad. I must confess I've seen the films over and over again (and I saw The Two Towers again yesterday!) and I always find something new there - trust, anger, courage, revenge, anything. It's even more interesting than it seems and there are so many things to learn from it that no one can ever get tired of it.

I think that what I like the most in The Lord of the Rings is the fact that Frodo is NOT an hero. Yeah, he saves the whole planet from Sauron and the bad guys, but he's just a little hobbit, with hair on his feet and weakened by greed, just like everybody else. He was not meant to be the one who destroyed the ring, he is not the son of a great king, like Aragorn, nor a gracious and superior elf, like Legolas. He only destroys the ring because he realizes what is at stake and he makes a decision. Even when he's close from giving up, when he doesn't believe he can make it, he carries on (Sam plays a huge role there, also - he is loyalty in person), just like we do when we're running and we're so tired that we can't even see, hear or think anything, but we just keep moving our legs because we want to finish the race.

That's the first teaching I take from The Lord of the Rings. Believe me, I could be here posting about it for a week, but I simply advise you to see (again) the three films, because there is no other master piece like that. It is brilliantly made and the story itself has no equal. Here you have the most epic scene I've ever seen on a TV screen, just to remind you of how great a film it is:

(I also advise you to download the soundtrack of the three films. It's simply overwhelming.)

yours,

millou

Finally fulfilling one of my biggest dreams...

I deeply believe in my cooking talents - I simply don't get to use them that often. I've always wanted to be a great cook and, in these last days, I've been trying to put it into practice.

My grandmother and great-grandmother's recipes - specially cakes and cookies recipes - are resting in our living room since last summer and today, as I stared at all of Pingo Doce's cookies, I finally decided to cook something.

The initial plan was to make some biscuits with honey but I got the amounts wrong (because we have no kitchen scale!), so I decided to simply add some chocolate and... well, see if it worked.

I burnt the cookies a little too much, but I think it turned out pretty okay. I served them with black tea and my parents liked it (my proof: they ate them all).

I'll have to make those cookies again within a few days but, until then, I'm planning to make some noisette potatoes and a pineapple ice-cream. I dream of making pineapple ice-cream since I remember being alive, so this is the time. I'm going to cook EVERYTHING I've always wanted to cook. Now.

Here's today's breakfast

Here's a wrap I made for today's breakfast. Delicious :)

I bought the wrap and toasted it for a few minutes - not too much, otherwise the wrap won't be soft and you can't handle it without breaking it.

Then I just added sweet corn, lettuce, carrots, purple cabbage and chicken. It is a brilliant breakfast, believe me. I wanted to take a nice shot of it, just to show you, but I was starving so I had to stick to the one above (you can see it is bitten, I wasn't able to resist it...).

The world is a perfect place to be! Classes in Técnico are NOT from 8AM to 6PM :D

I went there again today to ask some questions (the day before yesterday I found it closed) and they explained me everything. It is kind of hard to explain how time-tables work, but it actually makes sense.  We have much more independence and we have to control our lives much more than high school students. - but that we already know... I'm going to love it so much!

Yesterday I went to Instituto Superior Técnico, which may be my college in the next year. The reception (where I wanted to go) was already closed but, once I got completely lost, I took a look around. It's old, that's obvious, but it is much bigger than I thought. I found some students in the gardens testing a robot (probably made by them) and I thought it was so awesome!

People are focused on their own things, that's the idea I have. They talk to each other and their social life isn't dead, but it's different. They look busier than kids in high school, which is normal. I saw some of the time-tables of Biological Engineering classes in their first year of college and I'm scared. Really. They have classes from 8AM to 6PM. Ten hours. That means my life won't be much more than sleeping, studying and eating, at least in the beginning. I know I will be a true zombie after the first week. After the first tree days. That's my prediction. And then, some weeks later, I'll get used to it.

That's the terrible part of college. There is also the wonderful part - you're doing what you love, surrounded by people who also love it and who are as seriously into it as you. It has to be an amazing feeling. It will be a shock, I'm sure, but I know I'll like it.

I just HAVE to say this

This has been stuck in my heart for almost seven months and I simply have to let it out. I was falling asleep, I suddenly remembered this and felt I had to turn on my laptop to write this in secret (uhhh).

All I have to say is a huge THANK YOU to a boy whose name I've never found out. I saw him on the Thirty Seconds to Mars concert in Lisbon, last December: we both had bought a Meet and Greet pass and we were the first two in the line of people waiting to go inside the M&G room. He was ahead of me, alone, just I was - so he was probably a huge fan too - and he simply let me go inside first. He stepped aside and he let me go inside first. We didn't know if they were already there, we didn't know anything. And still, he, the unknown boy who also loved Thirty Seconds to Mars, stepped aside to let me go inside first. It was one of the kindest things anyone has ever done to me and all I could say was thank you. Of course I thank him! He proved to me that there are still civilized people in Portugal and that boys are not a lost cause. He marked me much more than a gorgeous guy has ever done. Sooner or later, you forget the pretty faces, but I will never forget what he did. So yes, THANK YOU SO MUCH for being human, decent, kind and overwhelming. Really. You made me understand that it is okay to be romantic, dream of perfect people and chase ideals - and that's all I can expect from anyone. Now I understand the right thing to do was to kidnap you in the second you stepped aside and, since I didn't, all I have left to do is to honestly hope we meet again in another life.

yours,

millou