Rekha's 7 Layer Christmas Crack Cookies

In the 3rd grade, my best friend Denise Yaag gave me a recipe that I've used till this day. Actually, Denise gave me 2 recipes that I still use. The first was melted Swiss cheese atop toasted bread. Before you nourish thoughts of ridicule for my early culinary efforts let me tell you this. I cooked my first Indian meal, completely unaided, in the 3rd grade. It consisted of Keema curry with the traditional green peas served over hot rice. Did I follow a recipe? Was I supervised? Nope. I just hit the fridge and concocted the meal to surprise my parents for dinner on a school night. Mom and Dad gushed over my budding skills as they chowed on a hot Telugu meal. Thus my culinary precociousness was born.

Anyhoo. The other recipe Denise shared with me was a recipe she called 7 Layer Cookies. The first time I tasted them I knew I would arm-wrestle to the death to own it. Luckily Denise was not a stingy or possessive friend and gladly wrote the ingredients in her curvy, very feminine handwriting. The first time I made them was a culinary coup. They surpassed even my puerile curry attempts. After tasting the cookies (odd for a cookie, even to an Indian family like us whose only notion of cookies were shortbread biscuits so stony they had to be dipped in hot milk to consume) the family sat around the table and stared at the baking sheet. Could something this sublime be composed of chocolate, crumbs and milk? More importantly, my family acknowledged for the first time that smack-your-lips delicious food could come from a country other than India.

20 years later... ahem, I mean 30 years later I still make them every Christmas. The house smells like chocolate, butterscotch and oddly, sex. Or perhaps it's just my perception of how the cookies make me feel. For those of you who don't like chocolate (aghast!) or sustain allergies like my walnut-averse friend Sheila, please substitute at will.

Ingredients:

1 12 oz bag 60% Cacao Ghiradelli chocolate chips. Nestle's semi sweet chocolate can be substituted and indeed I used the old standby for decades until I got turned on to the superior depth of Ghiradelli. You can find these in most supermarkets these days for the same price.

1 10 oz bag Nestle Butterscotch chips.

1 stick salted butter melted

3 cups Graham crackers ground in a food processor.

1 can sweetened condensed milk. Either Eagle or Carnation is fine.

1 cup chopped walnuts. Pecans, almonds, pistachios or other nuts can be used as well. If you're an aficiendo of nuts, use more than a cup if desired.

Directions:

Pour melted butter in a 16 x 9 inch baking sheet with at least 1 inch raised edges. Distribute butter evenly. Scatter cracker crumbs evenly across sheet. Sprinkle Butterscotch chips in an even layer. Sprinkly chocolate chips in an even layer. Then scatter nuts evenly. Evenly pour condensed milk over entire confection slowly so that thick ribbons cascade over the layers. This is important as the milk must penetrate through all the layers or else the cookies will not stick together.

Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25 minutes or until cookies are a light brown but not burnt at the edges.

If you're paying close attention you might notice I've only listed 6 ingredients. There is an additional layer and that is sweetened coconut. However I've always felt it pushed the limits of this sweet over the top and do not include it in my concoctions. So! as they say in the biz, the 7th ingredient is love. Awwwwww.

Is This Woman Indian?

Shopping at the garden center in Clifton, NJ. One of my favorites due to the extraordinary selection of Perennials. My intention is to grab a few robust annuals to replace the expired pansies in my potted containers. I realize I will need more than two hands to hold half a dozen pots of Portulacas. So I gingerly ask the cash register guy if I may leave my plants on a pedestal contraption near his machine. He's a short brusque man of Indian descent with a sharp face, and no doubt equally honed mind to be the owner of this well visited establishment.

"No," he barks. "Nothing here. Nada! Nada!" Now first of all I'm not deaf. Secondly, I"m not Spanish, although I certainly understand his meager attempts at the language. At first I'm incensed that this man, while probably not from the same state as I'm from in India, is certainly of Indian descent. So why can't he tell that I'm from the same motherland? I'm still gibbering in anger when I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Red tank top, jean skirt, hair piled high in a pony-tail. I look very much, um, darkish. Very much like a woman of mixed Latino, Indo, Caribbio descent. In other words, no I don't look Indian.

This got me thinking about my ancestry. Do I honor my Indian-ness? Well sure I do. I cook fabulous curries, I dress in saris for special occassions. I speak my native tongue, Telugu albeit haltingly with my parents and family. Isn't that honor enough? Should I emulate my mother and wear a sari when in public? Should I do as my parents and speak Telugu to each other in public?

I think not. I think I'm a woman of a rich heritage who happens to live in the U.S. As such I mix one with the other, taking the best of both worlds and merging them into an existence that could live nowhere else on earth.

So to the annoying cash register guy, I AM Indian dammit! And I make no apologies.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Diet

As you might remember I embarked upon a low carb diet several months ago. While it did re-focus consumption of comestibles, sadly it did not help me achieve the pre-wedding goal of 15 less pounds. However, as with any diet, consciousness is key. So I'd like to share a few epiphanies unearthed during the course of Atkinsing.

Foremost, white food such as rice, pasta & bread, while tasty, comforting and an ideal base for tapenades, is useless caloric intake. Not only does it load on the pounds, it offers the body no nutritional value. Now if you're Lance Armstrong you will need pasta for immediate body fuel. If you're not Lance, as I am not, and you sit on your ass for a better portion of 8 hours a day in front of a computer, then your body does not need this immediate fuel. If you're serious about losing weight, especially around the gut area, drop white food off your menu. With the exception of seafood lasagna or Singapore Noodles on the rare occasion.

Many diets proclaim this next one and with good reason: less processed foods are better for you. Think low on the food chain, unlike, say, pate. The simplier the composition, the better the item. Add to this the more complex and fiberous, the better. So here's a list of my power foods: almonds, blueberries, beans (apparently the darker the better), brown rice and other grains such as faro, barley, millet. While you might read this list with disdain I'll remind you that with a complex grain as a base, you can top it with almost anything. Coming from an Indian background, curries comprise of the quickest and easiest recipes. Substituting rice, you can use any of the previous grains as a base for some phenomenally tasty and nutritious meals. So then you say, what recipes? Aha, soon to come is a page with many of my favorite South Indian recipes. So stay tuned.

Unfortunately, dropping sugar from your repertoire will greatly increase you chances of losing weight. If you're like me, chocolate simply can't be replaced by carob or waxy non sugar substitutes. So eat a little Dove bites once in a while to appease the hunger or else you'll end up like these excerpts from my journal:

February 10: Drank a diet Sunkist with salad for lunch. While I appreciated the sweet orangeness, the aspartame became bitter and began to lend a salty quality to the beverage.

March 4: Had a piece of Peppermint Trident for dessert. Still chewing.

March 17: Looked at a Hagan Daz ad for Belgian Chocolate Chocolate really, really long.

Finally and I say this one with great pain, give up alcohol. At least until you reach your desired weight. Cause surely as Big Pharm is the cause of most American maladies, alcohol adds weight to the body. How can it not with the yeast and carbs in beer? Or the sugar in wine. Even no cal, no carb booze such as vodka bypasses the digestive process and races to the front of the digestive line to be processed first. Which means everything else takes a back seat on your back seat. And anyway, everyone needs detoxing now and then.

But let me not leave you on that sad note. Years ago I received probably the funniest cookbook in history, that of French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. So I'd like to share that with you now. Bon Appetite.