They don't call me Cookie for nothing!

The sidewalk is a mosaic of pink and white cherry blossoms, bright colored tulips reach for the sky and the sun warms the earth after a long, long winter. Four weeks in anything below 85 degrees Fahrenheit constitutes a long, long winter, right? The sun is finally shining here in Seattle, and it couldn't come any sooner as I’ve been sticking my head under the food warmer at Taco Bell to meet my daily requirements of UV’s, and that is getting kind of messy.

Like an ant colony, the workers scurry around the yacht as the rush is on to get it in the water – and the rest of us pray for no further delays. With the installation date quickly approaching, it feels as if we are almost in the homestretch and the yacht is looking less like the inside of a factory and more like a mega-yacht as cabinetry is put in place, paneled walls are installed and floors are laid.

I walk through the galley with Hobbit. The cabinetry and appliances are all installed, it is finally looking like a real galley! We walk-in to the walk-in and with the compressors and fans in, it just doesn’t seem quite as large as it did – but who am I to complain? I have a walk-in! We discuss the plans for the shelving and take measurements and notes. A shelving builder from a restaurant supply company will be coming next week to help me hash-out and design the final details for the inside of the walk-in. As I stand with the Captain in the galley, the audio-video guy appears. I press him on whether there will be an iPod hook-up in the galley, to which he replies no. No time like the present to earn my nickname, so I bribe him with a batch of thick and chewy butterscotch-chocolate-chip cookies and macadamia-white-chocolate-chip cookies, and he dutifully promises that I’ll have an iPod dock in the galley.

Cookie’s Macadamia-White-Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup roasted & salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped


Heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside. Whisk butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips and nuts. Scoop out dough onto lined cookie sheets. I like to use the OXO Good Grips medium size cookie scoop (1 1/2 tablespoons) for scooping out a decent, medium size cookie (the little “scoop-ejector” wheel mechanism on the OXO doesn’t seem to break as easily as other brands do). The OXO small cookie dough scoop also works well for bite size cookies. I fit 12 cookies per baking sheet, using the medium scoop – and I get about 2 dozens cookies per batch. Bake cookies 12 – 14 minutes, turning once after 6 minutes. I tend to under-bake rather than over-bake, because I like a soft, chewy cookie.

Variations: Replace White Chocolate and Macadamias with 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup butterscotch chips for butter scotch cookies. For chocolate-white-chocolate chip cookies replace 1/2 cup flour with 1/2 cup dutch process cocoa powder and 2 cups white chocolate chips.