the urban baker: The End of An Era

I was born in the house my mom currently lives in. My dad passed away two years ago and there were times that I thought, her living in that house, all by herself could be a little overwhelming. She had talked about the possibility of moving, but kept saying she wasn't ready. When her dog, Becky, of 15 years passed in April, she all of a sudden became ready. She was no longer comfortable living "alone".

My cousin, a realtor in Manhattan Beach, hooked my mom up with a realtor in her neighborhood. Within one week of the meeting, there was a for sale sign on my mom's lawn and an open house was scheduled for that first weekend. The house sold in one day. In this awful economy, none of us were prepared for how much needed to get done over the next 45 days (her escrow period).

We spent lots of time going through the house and all of the memories. The more we cleaned out and packed up, the more my mom was willing to let go of.

While I was photographing all of her furniture to put on Craig's list, my kids came in and said, "let's have a garage sale". I don't really like garage sales. They are a waste of time. However, my kids really wanted to do it. I gave in.

Then they insisted we have goodies at the garage sale. I couldn't turn down an opportunity to bake. For something like this, I usually like 3 variety's of baked treats. I baked the first two and pretty much hit the wall.

Eli requested Snicker doodles. I was reading my Maida Heatter's Cookies book and found an Oatmeal Snicker doodle recipe. I don't make a lot of snicker doodles and I find them a little bland. The fact that these had oatmeal in them was appealing. These were shaped more like a mound when baked. I like a cookie like this that flattens out when baked. I wasn't crazy about them. However, everyone else really liked them. We had so many left over that I packed them up in a huge bag and sent them to school

with Eli the next day. His classmates gobbled them up.

I decided to make some brownies to go along with them. I wanted a recipe that had peanut butter in it. I had three jars of peanut butter in the cupboard all of which had about 1/4 to 1/2 cup each in them. I found a peanut butter swirl brownie recipe in the Martha Stewart's Cookies. Perfect! I was able to make a delicious brownie and clean out my cupboard at the same time.