Snow day!

Snow! We got snow at the beach! Of course, it's almost all melted off now, but it was gorgeous to watch it fall last night, the big, wet flakes.

It was a perfect day for it, too. I'm actually really beginning to feel better, except I still have this awful cough -- I've now coughed so hard I sprung a rib yesterday, and cannot bend or stretch or really do much with my right side. In fact, I've been coughing so hard my entire torso hurts. My left side hurt so much yesterday I wondered if it was my heart, but no. It's just muscle pain and the screwed up rib, which I heard/felt pop yesterday as I was standing at the sink, coughing.

But I managed to make some delicious "Chocolate Puddle" cookies yesterday, and Jen and I ate snacks and watched the Olympic opening ceremonies last night.

I thought about making orange slice cookies, which were one of my mom's great treats, in honor of my brother's birthday today. He would have been 57 today.

But he liked all kinds of cookies, and was a really good baker, so I feel like he would have appreciated these.

Want to try? They are easy. You don't even need a mixer -- just a big bowl and a wooden spoon. Here's the recipe:

2 cups chopped pecans (or any nuts you like)toasted and cooled completely
4 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt
1/2 cup plus 3 TBSP. good quality unsweetened cocoa powder
4 egg whites, slightly beaten
1 TBSP real vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 320 degrees, and place the racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together the sugar, cocoa and salt. Stir in the nuts. Stir in the egg whites and the vanilla. Mix until it forms a thick batter and all the sugar and cocoa is incorporated.

Spoon dough mounds onto the cookie sheets, about 2 TBSP each. Make sure there's plenty of room between the mounds -- don't try to fit more than 6 per cookie sheet -- because they spread.

Bake 12-15 minutes, until the tops of the cookies are shiny and somewhat cracked.

Carefully slide the parchment paper onto a cookie rack so the cookies can cool on it. The cookies are very fragile until cooled, so keeping them on the paper helps.

The finished cookies are delicious -- meringues meet brownies. The outsides are crispy and chewy at the same time, and the middles are soft and chewy like brownies.

Buon appetito, and happy birthday Drew. I miss you.