Cookies.

I made cookies last night. They were brown when I baked them. Michael came in this morning to ask if he could have some. Then he came back in to ask why they are GREEN. The cookies are my chocolate chip oatmeal recipe adapted to have the fat source as Mo' Buttah, a product my friend Joy is developing. This Mo' Buttah was sunflower spice and she said it was a little too spicy with cayenne so she gave me a big container to play with. Eventually we would like to develop some vegan baked goods featuring Mo' Buttah as the fat. Last night's first step was subbing for the regular butter I usually use. I still want to go the step further and use an egg sub.

So why in the HELL did my cookies turn green? I suspect it is because one of the ingredients in Mo' Buttah is Blackstrap molasses. Natural molasses is very high in mineral content. I looked on FitDay and one tablespoon of molasses has 5% of the RDA of copper.
I bet the copper oxidized overnight because of the moisture in the cookies. It may be that I cannot use the Mo-Buttah as the fat source, but find an alternate vegan fat source and have to use Mo ' Buttah as a filling or something. The reason for using Mo' Buttah is because it is more nutritive than regular peanut or sunflower butter. One of the reasons Joy is developing it is because she wants her company to have two sides - the profit side will enable her to have a non-profit side by which Mo-Buttah is distributed at low or no cost to nutrition programs and such to benefit populations which have trouble affording nutritious food. She has much more admirable reasons than my desire to make a lot of money doing something fun... Interesting, huh?

Michael cleaned off most of his crap on the table and washed his dishes. I had to tell him to get the water bottles too and then we were good. I am glad I didn't have to do the "something bad" I threatened this morning. I said. "I need all your stuff cleaned off the table before I get home tonight or something bad is going to happen." He asked, "What if I stay after school to do something?" I replied, "I guess you better come home after school." He did.

My next thing I am going to do is in writing because I express myself better that way. I am going to tell him how concerned I am for his physical and mental health and that he has to choose to drop one activity. Today I even considered if I should just tell him to graduate early. He already has enough credits. I realized however, that because he is taking so many AP classes he would lose the opportunity to take those tests and get college credits at lower cost than it is at school. PLUS it makes it so you don't have to take so many credits each semester to graduate in the four years. I think that really helped Emily.

Mysteries of life... green cookies and teenage time management.

I spent quite a bit of time tonight working on the picture and document sorting. There is some kind of musical multi-class reunion at Mom and Dad and Heather's HS this weekend and I knew I had a few pictures of bands and stuff like that so I got those together and put them in plastic protectors and a folder so Heather can take them back with her. I also put lots of documents and letters and stuff in the protectors. Every little bit I get done I feel better, but I am kind of sad that I didn't get to work on the front porch project tonight. It is SO CLOSE to complete. One tiny little thing that needs done takes so much work, though. For example, covering where I scratched the paint when I put in the knob... Get out the paint, get out the drill, put the paint mixer thing in the drill, open the paint, mix the paint, get a little brush, paint the scratch, wait long enough to see if it needs another coat, maybe another coat or two, then put the paint away, wash the paint mixer, wash the paintbrush, put everything away, clean up the counter where paint splashed while washing the stuff... so like an hour to paint over one stinking scratch! Sigh... I guess I will set Saturday as my goal completion date and just keep trying. Tomorrow is Heather's birthday surprise, Thursday is cello lesson, Friday is exhaustion.... more sighs. Oh well, I guess if that is a big trial in my life, I am a lucky person.

Gotta go do some STUFF, trying to hit bed before midnight. I hope I make it closer than last night. I think that was about 12:30.