I get a day off and damned if I'm not in a kitchen anyhow. Life is so cruel. Anywho...the following is a chocolate chip recipe my family has used as long as I can remember. It is almost identical to the recipe shown on the back of a Nestle [T-ayM-ay] choco. Chip package, so I guess grandma stole it. Notes and amounts of chiles added are at bottom of recipe.

If anyone makes these with habs, please lemme know how they turned out. I'm still hab-less but the plants are enjoying the hell outta the 90degree weather that's hit....as am I <g>. Shouldn't be too much longer.

Sidenote: if anyone has any really good recipes using tomatillos (chile or non-chile) they wouldn't mind parting with/sending to me, please do so w/private email. I've kept 16 tomatillo seedlings even though the word is I'm gonna get "toma'ed" up to my eyeballs. Bring 'em on, I say. Mucho grazzzzz.

Preheat oven to 375 F; 350 F for convection oven. Mix the butter, crisco and sugars well until well incorporated; creamy-like. Beat the eggs and vanilla together until well mixed. Cream into butter/sugar mixture and mix until smooth. Sift together the flour, soda and salt. Add flour mixture by spoonfuls (no more than 1/2 cup @ a time) into cookie mixture, mixing until flour is wet. Repeat until all flour is incorporated. Do not overmix; once there is no trace of dry ingredients, batter is ready. This step may be done by hand or machine. Mix in by hand the chocolate chips.

This is where you add the fresh chiles. What I did was make the cookie batter and then measured out 2 cups of batter and added 1/2 cup of fresh jalapen~os, diced small, mixing the japs in well by hand. This made for a cookie with a nice jalapen~o taste, but just a hint of heat and that was simply aftertaste. Overall, the flavor was good though and these were cookies that non-chileheads would most likely enjoy.

Hence, I took the rest of the batter, which I estimated to be about 3 cups, and dumped in about 1-1/2 cups fresh japs, diced small. These were much better in my opinion, although to get more heat, I think a hotter chile would need to be used because the cookies were beginning to remain too wet inside due to the water content of the chiles while the outside was getting too done/dark. Serranos would probably be great and habaneros would be really good too, especially because of the distinct habanero flavor.

So, in essence, use a ratio of 2:1 batter/chiles....at least with the japs.

May also be interesting to use a good chile-butter next time, w/o chiles added and then with chiles.

Drop by spoonfuls (approx. 1 1/2 Tbsp - 2 Tbsp) onto lightly greased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 F (350 F for convection oven) for approximately 9 - 11 minutes or until browned. Yields approx. 5 dozen cookies.

Chile-Heads Digest V2 #313

From the Chile-Heads recipe list. Downloaded from Glen's Mm Recipe Archive, http://www. Erols. Com/hosey.