The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe EVER! aka Alice’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

http://savorysweetlife.com/2009/10/alices-chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe/

Liz notes: I only got about 36 cookies from the recipe.  I used a 1/4 cup less plain sugar and made my own brown sugar with 2 T of molasses per cup of plain sugar (you have to mix it well until it turns into the consistency of brown sugar).  I was skeptical of this being “the best .. ever!” but I think they are the best chocolate chip cookies that I’ve ever made.  Using more brown sugar (and I guess creaming the butter and sugar for 5 minutes) keeps the cookies a little softer, moister, and thicker than usual.  I didn’t try the coarse sea salt or weigh out my flour, but it turned out fine for me.

Alice’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes approx. 45-48 cookies using a sm-med 2tbl. cookie scoop

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup (2 sticks)  salted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups (12 oz) all-purpose flour *If at all possible, please weigh the flour

1 tsp. smallish-medium coarse sea salt *please do not use table salt, the sea salt gives the cookies a nice flavor and hints of texture. If you only have table salt, use 1/2 tsp. *When using sea salt, you will get small crunchy flecks of salt when you bite into the cookie.  If you do not like this taste, go with 1/2 teaspoon of table salt.

1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups/16 oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips *I use Nestle Toll-House

Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar until it is nice and fluffy (approx. 5 minutes on medium speed on a K-5). Add both eggs and vanilla and beat for an additional 2 minutes.  Add baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour until cookie batter is fully incorporated.  Finally add chocolate chips until well distributed.  The cookie batter should be somewhat thick.  Drop about 2 tablespoons of dough or use a medium cookie scoop and plop the batter onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges are nice and golden brown. Remove from heat and allow the cookies to stay on the cookie sheet for an additional 2 minutes.  Pick up the parchment paper with the cookies still on top and transfer to a cool non-porous surface.  Allow the cookies to cool on the paper for at least 3 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Speedy No Knead Bread (from NY Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/081mrex.html?ref=dining

Liz notes: this sounds so easy, that I couldn’t pass it up.  my dough ended up being really sticky and I thought I messed it up (even though I followed all the directions), but it turned out great.  I definitely had to scrape it off the plastic wrap and wax paper to get it in the pan.  I used a ceramic casserole dish and I didn’t have a lid for it, so I put a  big cake/brownie pan over it, but I did put it in the oven early to warm it up as the recipe recommends.  Oh, and I wouldn’t say it yields a really big loaf.  Mine was medium sized and was kind of  like focaccia bread.

3 cups bread flour
1 packet ( 1/4 ounce) instant yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Oil as needed.

1. Combine flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add 1 1/2 cups water and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest about 4 hours at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Lightly oil a work surface and place dough on it; fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest 30 minutes more.

3. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6-to-8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under dough and put it into pot, seam side up. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.

4. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: 1 big loaf.

take action on Oct 24 for the www.350.org global day of action. This is our best chance for getting bold policy out of COP15 in Copenhagen.

I have just finished reading “Climate Cover-Up” on the climate denial industry and it is quite depressing how successful they have been.  They have had millions of dollars more than environmental groups, and have convinced over half of the public that there is a debate about human’s causing global warming. However, I think this means that we need to re-double our efforts to turn folks out and show support for bold climate action in the next few weeks leading up to the UN Climate Negotiations (COP15) in Copenhagen.

If I had to pick one thing you could do this year that would make the most difference in the climate, I would say join or organize an action for the 350.org day of action on October 24.  But there are also a number of other important climate action days coming up:

Mobilization for Climate Justice with a day of action on November 30 and probably other direct actions leading up to and at the Copenhagen meeting.

Fast for Climate Justice is encouraging folks to take one of the most compelling forms of protest and fast.  Some folks have even committed to fast for 45 days+.  I’m considering joining for at least a couple of days.  The last time I fasted outside the White House, again for climate justice, was a great experience.

And then there’s the Global Climate Campaign’s International Day of Action on December 12 during the Copenhagen negotiations.

Energy efficiency improvements in your home, producing your own food, buying local, walking, biking, or taking public transport are always good.  I just spent a good part of the last 2 weeks putting lots of plastic around my windows to add extra insulation.  Of course, we need much better global and national energy policies to better incentivize and facilitate energy conservation, efficiency, mass transportation and renewable energy on a huge scale.  Here’s hoping that with all of the upcoming climate actions, the COP15 will produce a bold international agreement beyond 2012 (when the Kyoto Protocol ends).

Tomorrow is the National Don’t Nuke the Climate Call-In Day!

Please call both of your Senators offices and tell them to keep nuclear power out of the Senate climate bill. Recent events, like the John Kerry/Lindsay Graham op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times calling for more nuclear power in the bill, add to the urgency of this call-in day.

Help keep the Senate’s phones ringing all day long!

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121.

And keep your letters and faxes to your Senators coming, and keep forwarding the action url to all of your lists:

Post it on your Facebook pages, Tweet it, spread the word every way possible. More than 4,000 letters already have been sent to the Senate this week–but we’ll need more than that to beat the nuclear lobbyists. And with 16,000+ people on this e-mail list, that means a lot of you haven’t yet taken action, and haven’t yet helped reach the millions more people across this country who also want to keep nuclear out of the climate bill.

So take action today. E-mail and/or fax your Senators here. Then spread the word to every list you have, everyone you can think of.

And take action tomorrow. Call both your Senators offices at 202-224-3121.

The basic talking point is simple. If you only get 30 seconds with your Senators’ offices, or an answering machine, just tell them: No nuclear power in the Senate climate bill, no more taxpayer dollars to support the failed nuclear industry.

But if you get a little more time, below are some talking points you may want to use. These also will be useful for drafting letters to the editor, op-eds, blog postings and the like–all of which will be very helpful as well. The more noise and publicity we can make, the better off we’ll be.

Talking Points

*Nuclear power already receives a competitive advantage when a price is placed on carbon. If the nuclear industry cannot compete with such an advantage, that’s its own problem, taxpayers should not be expected to provide more help to the industry.

*Projected costs for new reactors are stratospheric. In early 2006, the Nuclear Energy Institute predicted costs for the first few new reactors would run $2,000/kw, going down to $1,500/kw over time. Instead, recent estimates include Turkey Point (Florida) at $8,200/kw and Calvert Cliffs-3 (Maryland) and Bell Bend (Pennsylvania) at about $9,000/kw, or $13-15 billion. For example, see: http://www.bellbend.com/faqs.htm

*Cost overruns have been a constant with the nuclear industry. A 1986 Department of Energy study found the average cost overrun for the first 75 U.S. reactors was 207%. Reactors coming online after 1986 typically experienced even larger overruns. The only two reactors now under construction in the West-Areva reactors in Finland and France-are currently 75% and 20% over-budget, with years to go before construction completion.

*Electricity from new reactors, as expected with such enormous costs, would make the 1980s concept of “rate shock” seem quaint. An August 2009 report from the California Energy Commission, for example, predicts kilowatt/hour costs for nuclear electricity as high as 27-34 cents/kwh-nearly a tripling from today’s prevailing rate of less than 12 cents/kwh. This report is available at: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CEC-200-2009-017/CEC-200-2009-017-SD.PDF

*Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for fairly significant carbon emissions–at least three times those of wind power, for example. A recent study by Virginia Tech professor Benjamin Sovacool on this subject is available here:  http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf

*Nuclear reactors use enormous amounts of water, and water will become an increasingly precious resource in years to come, especially as we grapple with a warming climate. Allocating water to nuclear reactors now means less water for people and agriculture down the road. An August 2009 Virginia Tech study notes 36 states are projected to experience water shortages during the next decade. http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/water/sr46waterdependency.pdf

*Nuclear power is not even the only baseload alternative, as some in the industry claim. As cited in the August 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal for example, Spain is building large baseload solar thermal power plants for about $5,200/kw. While expensive, this is still $2,000/kw cheaper than the current low estimates for new reactor construction.

*Congress must not pre-judge the administration’s re-evaluation of radioactive waste policy, which has not yet even begun. Specifically, no money should be spent on expensive, dangerous technologies like reprocessing, especially when the future direction of waste policy is unknown.

Tomorrow, NIRS staff will be going door-to-door in the Senate office buildings, delivering the thousands of postcards you sent to us (Thanks!) and the list of 629 U.S. organizations that have signed on to the simple statement on nuclear power and climate change. We hope to hear those phones ringing in every office we visit!

Thanks for all you do, but this week, let’s all try to do just a little bit more….

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

www.nirs.org

nirsnet@nirs.org

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the long-standing deception campaign against global warming.  Although, you may think it’s over–just as Ross Gelbspan did in 2005 and Gwynne Dyer in 2008–but James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s Climate Cover-Up tells us it’s now going stronger than ever (at least in terms of funding).  Hoggan is a partner in a Canadian PR firm and, as a co-founder of the Desmogblog.com, he has been digging up dirt on climate deniers since 2005.

Although, I had some understanding of of this “climate cover-up” I liked to think of it as mostly over, too.  It was sobering and frustrating to learn more details about this ongoing campaign and its success in the minds of a majority of the public.  I think as someone fighting for bold climate action it is really helpful to better understand folks fighting against you and how they are organized.  I would definitely recommend the book, especially if you, like me and many others, felt like the climate denial campaign was mostly over.  Read on for more details about the book, my thoughts and links to recent related news.

The writers remind us that “no one seemed to be confused about climate change in 1988,” and in the same year, while running for president, George H. W. Bush said “we will talk about global warming and we will act.”  This, of course, was because oil and other denier funders didn’t start funding their campaign of deception until the mid-1990s.  The book lays out in great detail their campaign plans and tracks the groups that are created including the funding sources, of which Exxon has been one of the main funders.

The authors point out that there is a code of conduct for the PR industry and good PR means first doing the right thing and then being seen doing the right thing, which it sounds like they do in their work.  However, they note that most likely because of the climate and other PR dis-information campaigns, about 80% of the public believe that “PR experts help deceive the public by making environmental performance of companies appear better than it really is.”

They investigate connections between tobacco industry deniers (of the health impacts of tobacco) and the climate deniers.  Some of the people are even the same, such as Steven Milloy of junkscience.com, whose name appears multiple times–click here for more on an event with Milloy at the Heritage Foundation earlier this year.

There is discussion of denier court cases against scientists and leaders including the denier’s court case against Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth in Britain, which was funded by a gravel-pit magnate and was lost, except that the judge added that explanations of 9 points which may have been exaggerated were needed with the showing of the film in schools.  Then the deniers turned this loss into a victory focusing on the 9 points.  Just this weekend, a denier was at it again, getting Al Gore and his denier film in the news because of a question he asked Gore at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Conference.

In conclusion, they encourage everyone to be critical and to think about the credibility of sources including: where are they getting funding, what is there degree in, and what have they published peer-reviewed papers on?  Find out more about the book and how to purchase it here.

The book doesn’t discuss the nuclear energy industry, which makes sense because they acknowledge global warming and claim that nuclear power is “the solution.”  However, I think it’s important to note that the nuclear industry has a similar history of using PR campaigns to cover-up many of the problems with nuclear industry, and they have even been chastised by the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission for false claims about the environmental cleanliness of nuclear power.  Even if nuclear energy wasn’t so dirty, dangerous and expensive, just like so-called “clean coal” the timeline for implementation is at least  ten years away, which is much too long.  Nuclear energy has just made it into the Senate Climate Bill.  Help stop these guarantees in the current climate bill.

Thankfully, pretty much everyone at the hearing pushed the council to reach for a coal-free Oregon and Northwest, including many folks who weren’t even affiliated with the Sierra Club’s exciting “Coal-Free Northwest” Campaign.  There was additional opposition to burning trees for energy, support for the addition of substantial GHG reduction goals to the plan and support for removal of dams on the Snake River to support salmon recovery.  I was excited to see multiple other youth present including a recent graduate from Portland and University of Oregon students organizing Powershift West (at UO Nov. 7-8), which includes a goal of “Moving America beyond coal through regional activism.”  However, the plan and everyone at the hearing were pretty silent on the issue of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and the proposed terminal northwest of Portland.  

I even saw utility staff testifying in favor of this plan’s focus on efficiency and renewable energy (although they were concerned about how conservation credits would be distributed, since many of them have been focused on conservation and efficiency for years).  For example, Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) in Eugene, OR  already invests 5% of it’s revenue in conservation and 40 out of their 500 staff work on conservation!

Here’s a quote on the focus of The Draft Sixth Northwest Power Plan from the plan’s summary:

In each of its power plans, the Council has found substantial amounts of conservation to be
cheaper and more sustainable than many forms of additional electric-generating capability.  In this Sixth Power Plan, because of higher costs of alternative generation sources, rapidly
developing technology, and heightened concerns about global climate change, conservation
holds an even larger potential for the region. The Plan finds enough conservation to be available and cost-effective to meet the load growth of the region for the next 20 years.  If developed aggressively, this conservation, combined with the region’s past successful development of energy efficiency could constitute the future equivalent of the regional hydroelectric system; a river of energy efficiency that will complement and protect the regional heritage of a clean and affordable power supply.

Specifically, the plan states that the Northwest can meet 85% of all needs over the next 20 years solely through conservation, and can do so at half the cost of building power plants!  Many environmentalists (including me) and others have been asking Southern utilities and utilities commissions to do this for years, so it’s exciting to see an offical federal body saying this.  Although, as I mentioned earlier the plan still needs to include a GHG reduction goal and phase out coal in the Northwest as soon as possible.  If Oregon and the Northwest set a goal of going coal-free, they would be the first state and region that currently uses coal to kick the coal habit.  This would be an incredible precedent for the country and the nation!

Want to get involved?  Submit a comment on the plan before November 6th, come to Power Shift West November 6-8 in Eugene, OR and/or get involved with the Sierra Club’s Coal-Free Northwest Campaign.