Today's creation - the cranberry chocolate chunk o love. Why? Because I told myself I was going to eat health food today. So far it's been sourdough toast and cookies...but at least there's fruit and oatmeal involved! This is a cookie that you can eat for breakfast or to increase your fiber or to carbo load for a good long run. This is THE cookie for the oatmeal raisin cookie lover that also loves chocolate. (wait..that's me!) This really is one of my favorite cookies; I love a mix of ingredients and textures in my cookies - this one delivers. It also reminds me of my grammy - she loved oatmeal cookies.

Thinking about how food makes a person think of "home" brought my mind to an episode of "This American Life" that I listened to on a road trip yesterday. If you've never listened to "This American Life" - start now! A description of what this podcast is all about.......from their website:

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 2.2 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with around one million people downloading each week

To me, it's a wonderful way to stimulate my brain, listen to great stories, and pass the time while driving.

The episode I listened to yesterday is called "No Place Like Home". What's funny about this is I was driving home from a mini vacation/work trip and I was so excited and happy to be coming HOME. I had nothing in particular to do (bake) or no real plans (bake), but I just wanted to be in my own house, sleep in my own bed, and cook in my own kitchen (bake). If you read between the parentheses, maybe I did have an ulterior motive. Anyway, it's great to be home.

I highly recommend listening to ALL of the stories in this podcast (No Place Like Home), but the third one - "Act Three - The Hostess with the Toastess" brought me to tears and made me think about the importance of connection to other human beings. (It's also probably the reason I ate TOAST and COOKIES this morning)

Everyone has a story, and the older I get and the more people I know - I realize we are all the same; we all have hopes, fears, struggles, a desire to love and be loved. There's no perfect life, no story without drama, no family without secrets. We all learn coping mechanisms and deal with struggle in our own way and our own time.

The woman highlighted in this story established a routine in her life that helped keep her on the right path. She developed very specific coping mechanisms that helped her find her "home". My mom struggled with mental illness her whole life; I couldn't help but think of her when I heard this. Please give it a listen -

"This American Life’s Beautiful Profile Of San Francisco Cafe Owner Giulietta Carrelli"! This is the link:

http://sprudge.com/this-american-life-toast-54486.html

“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.”

Maya Angelou