Mesocosm

I’ve been working on my chocolate chip cookies a lot recently, ever since I learned that if the butter is nice and cold when you mix up the dough, they have a marvelous, chewy texture that you can’t get any other way.

Unfortunately, when the butter is too cold, the sugar doesn’t dissolve fully when you’re beating, so the cookies have a slight granulated quality. It’s a delicate balancing act.

This weekend I learned a hard lesson. After baking several batches with carefully-calibrated adjustments, I believe I hit the very point of coolness at which the sugar is fully dissolved, and alas! The cookies are not quite chewy enough. It turns out that my idealized goal of a smooth cookie with just the right degree of chewiness is just a phantom. It’s a chimera, a mirage, a mere fabrication of my imagination. There is no way to reach it.

Like the North Star, the perfect cookie hangs above the horizon, guiding me onward but forever out of reach.

Thus have I heard: One day, the World Honored One was baking chocolate chip cookies.

His disciple Ananda came into the kitchen in disarray, saying “I have been speaking with a man of the Hindu persuasion, who has the most outlandish ideas. I have tried to dissuade him of his false, corrupt, destructive, and seductive views. His beliefs will lead him to harm himself. His beliefs will lead him to harm others. His beliefs will lead him to be reborn in the realm of animals, Blessed One, or in the realm of the hungry ghosts, or in the Hellish Realms.

“He would not listen to your teachings. What should I do?”

The Blessed One said, “Have a chocolate chip cookie.”

Comment: As I write these words, I have a pan of cookies in the oven. I wish you could smell them, I wish you could taste them.