Peanut butter & chocolate chip cookies and when diets go bad

Everything in moderation.  Including moderation. ~ Unknown

Maybe it's something to do with eating really healthily for the last little bit to fit into my wedding dress or maybe it's to do with the self restraint required for not eating cookies for the whole of Lent but in the last week I've been back up in Auckland, I've basically eaten my weight in food.  I'm eating like it's going out of fashion.

A mere 3 weeks before my wedding and I've gone from a Wedding Diet to a See Food And Eat It Diet.

I kid you not, in the last week we've eaten at Sri Mahkota, Sun World, Canton Cafe, and Muse and at each and every meal I've eaten until it hurt to move: slow braised pork belly, steamed garlic prawns, beef brisket noodle soup, crispy fried chicken, soy honey lamb chops, shallots chicken, four seasons beans.  While the rest of the table are already clutching their bellies in fullness, I'd still be shoveling food in my mouth.  Need a dish finished off? No worries, pass it to Nessie.

Not to mention the pies-ing I've been doing at home: I've single-handedly demolished a whole 1.5 kilograms of greek yoghurt with a whole bottle of kithul treacle from Sri Lanka, made and eaten a whole stack of cinnamon oat pancakes smothered in golden syrup and then a massive batch of butter chicken and hoovered up almost half a batch of these Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They're gluten free, so simple to make you could make them with one hand tied behind your back and SO addictive you too will have trouble not eating all the dough even before it hits the oven.

Who ate all the cookies in the cookie jar? Nessie ate all the cookies in the cookie jar.

Oh self restraint, why have you abandoned me???

Cookies for Grandma: Traditional Chinese New Year Peanut Cookies

Is it just me or is 24 hours in one day is far too little?   30 or 35 hours would be more like it.

Dear big man upstairs, for my next Christmas prez I would really really like just a couple more hours a day, if it's not too much trouble.  Thanks big fella. 

For the last couple of months the days have just flown by so fast I find that we are suddenly in March and I swear new years was only about a week ago.  Where on earth did February go?

Chinese New Year fell at the beginning of February this year, right smack bang in the middle of the intense craziness, one week before I moved down south.  We had Grandma over for dinner and I had meant to make some Traditional Chinese New Year Peanut Cookies, which as the name suggests, are peanut cookies made and served traditionally at Chinese New Year.

But in amongst packing and organising and general mayhem, the cookies fell through the gap and even though I had all the ingredients ready and the recipe all sussed out, I didn't end up making them in time for the dinner.

Grandma did come over for dinner though: we had amazing scampi sashimi, steamed tofu with ginger and spring onions, pan fried snapper and stir-fried kang kong.  I love cooking for my Grandma - there is just something incredibly wonderful about cooking for someone who has cooked all her life, who taught my Dad to cook who in turn taught me to cook.

I ended up making the cookies a couple of days later, fully intending to get some to Grandma before my big move but again just got too busy and I never got that package of cookies to her.

My Grandma passed away at the end of last week.  After a sudden and completely unexpected stroke.

I won't get the chance to give her cookies again.  Being down in Dunedin, I didn't get a chance to say goodbye before she slipped away. It's really hit me rather hard.  Another suckerpunch.  Grandma was the only grandparent I've ever known and it's incredibly sad to think of all her stories, her recipes, her hopes and dreams that we never got a chance to ask her about.

I think from now on, I'll make sure to take time out to breathe and bake cookies.