Photo by Flickr user DarthAbraham. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Via the (Googled up at random) US Magazine, but all the buzz around the intertubes these days…

Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s wife, Cindy, and Bill Clinton have cooked up a controversy in Family Circle.

Read the quote in context here.

What. Ever.

I can’t say how much it ticks me off to have to defend anybody but seriously! Who the Sam Hill develops their own recipes for anything these days? I make pizza dough all the time, the recipe’s from Joy of Cooking. My kid’s favorite dish is (don’t ask me why) a variation of Ma Po Tofu with shitakii mushrooms and bok choy that I picked up from an obscure “Authentic Chinese” cookbook that turned out to be all vegan. A million other things I cook come from one or another Cook’s Illustrated recipes and if I usually do variations on them, well, I flat-out guarantee the variations were inspired by CI’s obsessive documentation of all the variations they try and what the results are.

Now were my partner running for office and were someone to ask me my favorite recipe for, I dunno, eggplant parmesan, I’d… ok, actually I cook that from scratch but since it’s basically breaded eggplant with tomato sauce and mozzarella, and since I make it a little different each time, I’d still probably go grab a recipe out of Joy-of, Cook’s, or maybe Moosewood because a) I’ve made all of them, b) whatever recipe I have in my head came mostly from one of those, and c) it’s a quick, easy, and probably more reliable way to do it.

The only difference though? If I was coughing up a recipe for something like, oh, Asian sesame noodles I’d almost certainly say “I got this from Martha Stewart’s 1983 Quick Cook.”

But sheesh, doesn’t anybody in gotcha journalism actually cook their own food? Because if they did they’d recognize that there’s almost no such thing as an “original” recipe anyway. And if they cooked virtually every meal prepared at home for the last ten years they’d know perfectly well that even when you do make your own variation on a theme it almost always turns up in another cookbook, magazine, tv show, or website.

Oh yeah, and that goes double for the hired help that almost 100% guaranteed does the cooking in either Bill Clinton’s or Cindy McCain’s multiple domiciles.

So! Am I making excuses for politician’s spouses? No. In fact I think they’re doubly full of it for even bothering to collude with “homemaker” publications in the first place. Instead I’m poking a finger into the doughy little not-so-cute bellies of gotcha-flogging twits (who evidently don’t know how to cook either.)

The problem with Cindy McCain and Bill Clinton isn’t that they’re inauthentic homemakers, it’s that their politician partners were using the politically-and-economically-tied-in financial clout of their partners to circumvent public-disclosure and campaign-fianance laws, in a way that masks potentially enormous conflicts of interest. So what the heck does anybody care about cookies?!?!?

- Cream standard amounts of butter and brown sugar till light – Drop in an egg and some vanilla and stir thoroughly – Sift together flour with the standard amounts of salt and baking powder – Add flour mixture to wet mixture in two or three batches, mixing well in between. – Add some combination of nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, coconut, and/or oatmeal – Spoon onto lightly greased cookie sheets (a silicon cookie-sheet pad works great but isn’t critical.) – Bake in a 325-350 degree oven until crispy on the edges and still a little soft in the middle – Remove with a wide, thin spatula and cool on a wire rack if you’ve got one. – A Kitchen Aide makes a world of difference on your forearms.

There. That’s my off-the-top-of-my-head recipe. Unless I got an ingredient wrong (I usually have to look up baking powder and I didn’t this time) it already appears, probably quite a bit more clearly, somewhere else. Would you rather follow that or something step-by-step from a reputable source? :-)