The “That’s a good egg…substitute” month continues. Reminder, all four weeks will be the same recipe and the only difference will be the egg substitute that I use.

The egg substitute that was used was the chia seed egg replacement. This is an easy egg replacement. But sourcing the chia seeds was annoying. It started when I opened the chia seed bag and there was less than 2 tbs left. This is not enough. It took me 2 stores because the first store was sold out.

The recipe for the chia egg substitute is 1 tbs chia seeds to 1/3 c water. Warm or hot water would be best. Let the mixture rest at least 5 minutes depending on the temperature of the water. I let the mixture sit while I went to an Employee Health appointment about my leg. When I got back there was a gelatinous mass in the bowl. This is what it should look like, an amorphous mass that gives when you poke it and pours out easily, leaving the bowl mostly clean.

I made the cookies as usual, substituting the chia seed egg replacement for the 2 eggs I would normally use. The dough was a little stiffer than normal and it took longer that I anticipated to incorporate the flour.

The best thing about these cookies is that they bake up wonderfully and are gorgeous. If you looked up cookie in a photo dictionary, these cookies would be the picture.

The resulting cookies are less chewy but more “snappy”, if you know what I mean. There are hints of chewiness in them. I found them delightful.

Another thing I found delightful is that, for the second week in a row, the bowl that I used had zero dough residue on it. Normally, there would be dough scraps clinging to the bowl but these past two weeks were clean.

Interesting.

When Cookie Thursday is a Thing began in our operating room in 2015, I was not the only baker. There were a group of us, committed to making and bringing in cookies on Thursdays.

One by one the others dropped out.

Along the way there were a lot of discussions on what to name the cookie day.

A couple of people wanted simplicity and said Cookie Thursday.

This didn’t feel complete enough to me. Thursdays happen every week.

In those days Thursdays were the heaviest day of the week. Both case wise and difficult case wise. There was a lot of heavy ortho on Thursdays. By that I mean total joint replacements galore. And the hospital had just gotten its first robot with its steep learning curve.

No, the name had to be distinct and special.

The evening tech and I were discussing in the hallway, just outside of the lounge. They were one of the ones that wanted Cookie Thursday. I interrupted them and said emphatically, “No, because cookie Thursdays are a thing.”

And the name was created.

The word thing is deliberate.

A thing can be many, well, things.

It can be making coworkers feel special by having specific treats in the afternoons when it is so often day shift that is celebrated.

It can be making coworkers feel seen by making what they suggest. This was in the early days, when the themed days hadn’t been settled on.

It can be sharing the load. Yeah, this one didn’t last.

For me, it can be a way of marking the days.

It can be an acknowledgement that yeah, Thursdays are bad but at least there are cookies.

In fact, that was also almost the name- It’s Thursday but at least there are cookies.

I think that one is too long. It can be shortened to At Least There are Cookies but that didn’t acknowledge that Thursdays were the bear of the week and we just had to get through Thursdays to get to Friday.

The cookies were meant to be special because it was Thursday and special for the evening shift because the hospital did not go out of its way to make evening shift feel special and special for the morale boost that having home made cookies can give a department.

This 10th anniversary month I will be making favorites. I asked a bunch of people to choose their least favorite out of a list of 6. There are 5 Thursdays in January 2025.

Stay tuned to find out the top five cookies.

I am starting with an easy one because yesterday was hard. Out of the 12 hours I was on call yesterday (0700-1900) we worked 12.

We did 2 lap choles, 2 hip fractures, an open belly, and a D&C. I kind of felt like I was in my 12 Days of the OR Christmas song.

The cookie of the week is the crust cookie.