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Once again, the fact has impressed itself upon my awarenss that if I do not want my weekends to be a shambles, I need to set some kind of bed time, otherwise I end up still awake about the time that the Sunnyvale farmer's market opens, but not long after that.
And if you think this affected my actions on Saturday night... well, actually it did a little. I didn't actually manage to sleep, but I did lie down with the lights off for a while.
On Sunday night I almost went to bed around 2 a.m., but wound up napping with the lights on because I kept putting off brushing my teeth. I should probably brush right after dinner to avoid that particular problem.
Turned out another batch of cookies today, in between midnight and bedtime. I added a tablespoon or two more water, and was able to mix it up without resorting to the electric mixer, which doesn't do very well with batter this thick anyway. I just need to persevere until I'm actually mixing the flour, butter, and sugar together instead of just chopping them up and stirring them around each other.
This is my 2nd time using real butter since I started baking cookies again, and I haven't had many skin problems due to the milk solids in it, but I figure I should go with margarine for the long term. As luck would have it, Nucoa now makes a dairy-free margarine with no trans-fat in it; there's more saturated fat instead. I'm not really sure this is an improvement over trans-fat, from my little reading up on the subject. As far as I can tell, the main thing about trans-fat is that the molecule has the same shape as saturated fat with the same number of carbon atoms.
It doesn't seem all that hard to make trans-fat free margarine; you just keep on hydrogenating the vegetable oil until it's completely saturated, and then add some more unsaturated oil to lighten it up. I was surprised to learn that butterfat is over 30% unsaturated fat by weight, mostly in the form of oleic acid. What I wish I knew was what earthly difference the lack of saturation makes, except for the shape of the molecule.
