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National Peanut Butter Cookie Day 2024
As much as I consider this 🥜 a quintessential Christmas cookie, it’s National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. So unless you or someone in your immediate vicinity has a lethal nut allergy, let’s get baking 🥜.
🎄 Christmastime 🥜 Wherever Your Oven Is
Harvard University researchers found that women at high risk of heart disease who had a tablespoon of peanut butter five or more days a week appeared to nearly halve their risk of suffering a heart attack compared with women who ate one serving or less per week. ~Michael Greger
I love peanut butter. 🥜 I love cookies. 🥜 Naturally, I love peanut butter cookies.
Among the top 5 of my favorite Christmas cookies, you will definitely find the humble peanut butter cookie.
It’s nutritious. 🥜 It’s delicious. 🥜 I love the crosshatch fork print aesthetic.
Some Christmas cookies are artistic and precise. Some are rustic and roughhewn. 🥜 Peanut butter cookies fall into the latter category.
Unlike the basic 🍪 chocolate chip cookie, there’s a unique embellishment. Both of these cookies and a few other holiday favorites are formed by rolling up a ball of cookie dough and placing it on the baking sheet.
The difference with the 🥜 peanut butter cookie is that when you drop that sumptuous little tan blob on the sheet, you take a fork and mash the middle enough to make the iconic crosshatch pattern.
Chocolate chip cookies have their signature chips. Snickerdoodles have their dusting of brown sugar. Thimble cookies have their spoonful of currant jelly and the wash of egg whites to create a glistening glaze. The humble 🥜 peanut butter cookie has its unique crosshatch that screams 🎄 Christmastime 🎅 to me every time I see it.
C Is For 🥜 Cookie!
Diabetic-Friendly Peanut Butter Cookies
It’s not a particularly complicated recipe to start with, but I need a sugar-free variation to keep me healthy and my doctor happy.
There is nothing about this cookie that explicitly anchors it to the holiday season. It’s not a Christmassy shape. It’s not typically topped with red or green sugar crystals.
It’s just a wad of peanut butter with some flour and sugar to turn it into a cookie. You could literally eat these things with all the carefree abandon as you might eat a PB&J sandwich.
🔥 Sacrilege! 🔥
I don’t think I could eat these things outside of the holiday season. In fact, I dare you to make some to test my resolve. Go ahead, make my day… 🥜🥜🥜
Don’t Mess With The Classics
The trouble with remakes is that people fall in love with the original. It’s like peanut butter. If you try to change the taste of peanut butter, you’re in trouble. ~Sylvester Stallone
While nothing is ever completely original, I definitely want The Sentinels to be uniquely mine.
It’s not DC or Marvel FanFic. It’s not a rehash of The Boys or Watchmen. It’s not a comedic romp through superhero tropes like Mystery Men, Kick-Ass or The Incredibles.
Sure, there are some comical elements in my story, but it’s not revisiting any of these excellent properties. They certainly inform my story by virtue of having been watched by me.
But I’m not trying to be any of those things. I’ve got my own angle. I can’t completely reinvent the wheel, but I can certainly ask my own questions.
That is what makes one writer’s story different from another’s. How many discount romance books feature the exact same point of departure?
Buxom lass ravished by a dashing pirate: you could probably fill a wall of bookshelves with paperbacks of that specific theme.
Evil overlord defeated by a band of humble nobodies: the hobbits vs Sauron, the Pevensies vs The White Witch, Hogwarts students vs Voldemort, the list goes on.
DC and Marvel have nearly a century of scattered lore. Writer/Artist teams frantically pumping out comic books for decades have explored ideas I wouldn’t have time to even try to cover.
What makes The Sentinels mine is that I have my own questions to explore in a world of my own creation with characters I invented taking actions I imagine in my own mind.
I’m sure a future reader will say this is like this other thing or Foxfire is just a Human Torch rip-off or the persistent unhistorical Dutch influence over NYC has been done in this book or that show.
They could say that, but I’m sitting here in my little house in Schuylkill County, PA, playing this directly from my subconscious to my Scrivener document by way of the finger/keyboard interface.
This is not, nor is it intended to be a knock-off of existing properties.
Empire City is a fictionalized New York City. Well, Marvel stories largely took place in New York City where their offices were located. However, like DC, I’ve assigned fictional place names so that I can take artistic liberties.
In real NYC, the corner opposite Carnegie Hall houses a restaurant. Presumably, the upper floors are apartments or random office space. In imaginary Empire City, that property is the campus of David Harz’s New Century Academy for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
In real NYC, there are five Boroughs. In imaginary Empire City, there are eight.
The Conclave are inspired by the Court of Owls, but are not particularly similar. Shadowy cabals are a dime a dozen in comic books as well as prose fiction.
Tim Wisler has a portfolio of companies. He’s not Tony Stark. He’s not Bruce Wayne. He’s not Ray Palmer. Those guys are rich and have various companies, but Tim is Tim and they are them.
I’m not cribbing, aping or mimeographing existing properties. I have seen them. They have inspired me to write my own stories in the genre.
It’s inherently inescapable. I’ve been reading comics since I could first read anything at all. I am obviously influenced by the 60’s Spider-Man cartoon, the Super Friends and Bill Bixby’s Hulk.
Even so, while all those stories inform my love of the genre and my interest in exploring the ideas that surround superhero stories, I’m not rewriting my favorite episodes or anything.
That lifelong love of superhero shenanigans inspires me to write my own series that, I hope, is quite unlike anything that’s been done before.
That’s all for today. I hope you’re having a great week. If you’re not, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.