All of the Goodness, None of the Flavour

I don't know what it is like at your house, but here at Rancho Relax-o I tend to do most of the meal preparation and baking. My bride can and does cook and bake well. But for some reason I do most if it. Don't know why or how it ended up this way but there it is. I just usually end up in front of the stove when it's time to cook something. Not all the time, but most of the time. I don't mind that. I actually enjoy preparing the meals and planning the menu. Cleaning things up afterwards – not so much. Most of the time things turn out well. Sometimes things go off the rails.

One of my recent successes was with an Irish stew. After browning the beef and adding the onions and garlic, instead of adding water to simmer the meat in, I pour in a bottle or two of stout (you know the super dark, heavy beer, like Guinness, only I use my own brew) and let it simmer away for a couple of hours and then add the rest of the veggies and such. MMmmmm. Delicious if I do say so myself. Even the kids like this stew and they eat like they've been cast members on Survivor whenever it is served.

Then there are those dark days when things don't go so well. The kids love to recount the one and only time the breadcrumb topping on the seafood casserole actually caught fire in the oven. To hear them tell it you would think that a fiery rain was pouring down from the heavens.

Just today we have another unexpected event to add to the annals of family gourmet history. My lovely bride, in an attempt to cut back on packaging and to try and keep us eating healthy made some cookies. They were the oatmeal, low fat, high fibre, chocolate chip, twigs and bark, non peanut butter kind of cookies. Looking at the recipe you would have thought that these cookies had it all. That's what we thought. Taking each of the ingredients on their own, these cookies should have been great. How can you go wrong with milk chocolate chips? They even called for a little butter! Great we thought! So off she went to make these gastronomic wonders.

Fast forward a couple of hours and the cookies were cooled and ready for eating. They looked great and so I took large bite of one and was overwhelmed with the lack of taste. They had the look of cookies and the texture of cookies and the weight of cookies but none of the flavour of cookies. They were like eating crunchy air, or warm ice or something. Lots of flash but no substance. Just kind of blah. So now we have these wonderful cookies that are good for us and the environment and no one will eat them. Not even my bride, who would usually eat them just to prove a point, won't go near them. They've been sitting on the counter all evening, like some sort of nutritious leper colony. I'm half convinced that even other food is slowly edging itself away from these things. All of the goodness and none of the flavour. Perhaps if we let them age like wine flavour will develop.

Maybe some cream cheese icing and chocolate sauce would salvage them.