Month: December 2019

For our Salt Lake City / Park City trip, we stayed at Marriott’s Summit Watch Vacation Club Resort. Since it’s a ski resort rather than a regular hotel, it has different amenities, like the kitchenette in each room and the family activities like crafts for kids. It’s super close to everything, including the ski lift. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with this room or the resort, but I’d like to stay somewhere different next time.

The biggest plus of staying here, I think, is the walking trail behind it, which runs along a little creek, and the walkability of the whole town

and the shoe tree is right at the resort too:

Even though it was warm out, the ski lift stays in operation. We were just dressed in our regular street clothes and got on. BTW, when they hear that you’ve never done this before, and they warn you that when it’s time to hop off and to keep briskly walking, take that advice because otherwise, the lift is going to just nearrrrrrly knock you over! Hurry! haaaaaa!

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It was time to walk around Park City more — they have these commemorative manhole covers from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games

The whole town is so pretty and walkable. No wonder Sundance is so fabulous (this year it’s January 23 – February 2). This is the Egyptian Theatre.

a Banksy — camera man and flower:

We really liked staying in Park City for the SLC part of our trip, and I know we’d have a fun time again — just different, because of the season — if we went now. We’d definitely need to bring the boys and start on the bunny slopes; PC has the largest ski area in the country so lots of options. I just checked now, and their high today is 25* and the hotel we stayed is almost booked.

Mona Superhero duct tape artwork.
Voodoo Doughnuts
Austin TX, 2017.

One of the places we went at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas was Milk Bar —

I’ve checked out founder Christina Tosi’s cookbooks from the library — her All About Cake, Momofuku Milk Bar, and Milk Bar Life.

Actually, the first thing we had from Milk Bar was from Momofuku next door. After our lunch there, we ordered Milk Bar’s (Christina Tosi started at Momofuku so they stay tight) crack pie off the Momofuku dessert menu:

It has an oat-filled crust, and the filling is like it wants to be a really thick custard but is so much more sweet and sticky than that. I’m all about pies so I know my ideas about them can be a little critical, but this wasn’t one of my faves. With a big howEVER, though, a few years ago, crack pie got a crazy amount of attention from the media (think Magnolia Bakery cupcake level), and people were just super enthusiastic about it. I’m sure I’m in the minority. I hope if you try a slice, you’ll be a fan of it. The recipe is available here at BA. Thing is, we decided to run next door to Milk Bar proper and just pick up a couple of cookies for later and see what we thought of those. We weren’t wild about these corn cookies:

Or these compost cookies. Now, they weren’t bad at all. They just weren’t faaaaabuloussssss.

Anyway, last week the boys didn’t have a lot of homework one night so I decided to make the batter for the compost cookies from one of her cookbooks (the recipe is on the Milk Bar official site, too) to give the boys an opportunity to get a little creative in the kitchen. Maybe if we did our own thing with it, we could make them more to our liking. No matter what, it would be fun to play around with.

If you have a chocolate chip recipe that you like, making it minus the chips will give you an excellent base for the next part.

I made just a half batch of batter from the compost cookie recipe so we didn’t have too many going on (seriously the more we make, the more I’m going to have to think about NOT eating). On the kitchen island, I put out a selection of things the boys could choose from to include — which is why they’re called ‘compost’ cookies — you just put in whatever sounds good. Oats? Choc chips? Pretzels? Leftover Halloween candy? Any or all. That’s the fun part.

I made each of them a bowl of half the batter, and a few salty and sweet things put out. Of *course* they thought it was super fun, and the final dough they made didn’t share very much in common. It was a great way to finish off partial bags of chips and a peanut butter jar that was getting low too.

Shug was mostly about peanut butter and white chocolate

Shugie, a little of everything. Have to say, the salty pretzels MADE it.

The cookies rested in the fridge as dough for 24 hours, then we baked them.

Second only to cold raw cookie dough, in my world, is a cookie so hot out of the oven that you have to eat it with a spoon.

Really, really, really good.

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Right now on the Milk Bar site is the recipe for their ‘Really Big Holiday Chocolate Cookie‘ which is one of those giant cookies the diameter of a pie and yeah, that does sound like fun too.

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate today! Xoxo!

Vann Thomas Motel
Anniston, AL 2011
sign no longer extant.