I'm queen of attention to details Sometimes when Devin and I are watching TV in the evenings, I'll say (out of the blue), "did you say you were making cookies?" (or coffee) (or chocolate macaroons). The other night, he jumped up and said, "yeah, I did" and began to blend the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. At first I milled around, observing, because he has a knack for making cookies that have something wrong with them; there's something missing, and we can never place it. But hovering only makes it worse, because he gets flustered, so I avoided the kitchen, just yelling out now and then, "did you make sure the butter and sugar are really well creamed together?!"

Yes, he assures me. Everything is super-blended and measured carefully. But when he brings me a taste of the dough, I can tell already that something's wrong. And when the cookies come out of the oven, looking perfect, they are fine, but bland. "Did you put salt?" "YES".

For the heck of it, on this particular night, I said, what if I made a second batch right now and we'll compare the result? So I did. And as I got to the final ingredients - the flour, baking soda and salt - I say, "hey, did you put baking soda?"

And finally we had our answer. At that moment I declared the baking soda to be henceforth known as "cookie deliciousness powder". My cookies came out perfect.  | ¶ 4:09 p.m.