too much is never enough

I have eaten waaaayyy too many cookies in the past 24 hours.  They are just so good - I swear, these are absolutely the best oatmeal cookies I have ever made or eaten (although Kylie at Cups & Chairs makes an awfully good oatmeal cookie, too).  I'm pretty sure it's the brown sugar - I don't think I've ever used that as the sole sugar, sole sweetener in a cookie before. 

By the way - I have come to the conclusion (in my vast understanding of brown sugar and how to keep it) that Gladware is the best possible vessel for brown sugar.  I can't remember how long ago I exposed my brown sugar to oxygen, but it's been tucked away in its little Gladware vacuum, kept from sunlight in a dark corner of my cupboard, and when I opened it to scoop out the 2/3 cup for this recipe, it was as soft as it was the first day it tasted air.

Anyway, by sheer force of will (and general lack of other options) I made it through today.  It actually passed quite quickly, to my bemused horror - I keep running out of time!  I already have less than an hour until I start pretending to get ready for bed and I haven't...

• cleaned up dinner
• changed the sheets on the bed (time for the warmer ones - we won't see 40 degrees again until Friday)
• changed the bathroom towels
• put up my Christmas tree (although Mister did point out when I forgot to do it last night that the fewer nights the tree is up, the fewer nights Angst has to try to destroy it, so this one might wait until the weekend when I can also start gift shopping and wrapping...at which point I'll need something to place my pretty gifts beneath!)

So, without further ado, tonight's dinner was Moroccan Chickpeas with Couscous from Vegan on the Cheap.

It's so pretty and colorful!  Apparently, no one (including me) can write a recipe involving chickpeas, tomatoes, and raisins (cranberries) without plunking the word "Moroccan" in front of it.  Someday, I would like to go to Morocco and see if everything involves chickpeas, tomatoes, and raisins.  Actually, for bizarre, wanderlust reasons I'll probably never know, I've actually wanted to visit Morocco since I was a child.  There's something about the festiveness of the colors, the passion of the firey reds and burnt oranges that just seems regal and outlandishly extravagant to me.  In fact, while dinner was simmering, I was so taken by how opulent the colors of my simmer were, I had to snap a picture:

The broth/sauce was a rusty color that augmented the brilliant beige (find someone else who can say that and mean it) of the chickpeas, while little, barely noticeable green flecks of chives and pepper litter the pot.  I was about to dump some frozen peas in there for a little nutrition and I was irrationally worried it would mar the beauty of my chickpeas.

As you can see, I need not have worried.