The Candy Machine

The point of having a candy machine is to facilitate the exchange of money for goods. If I have a dollar and your machine has a slot for dollars to go in, is it too much to ask that the machine actually accept dollars? Today, I tried all of my dollars and all of my intern's dollars. None of them worked. If I didn't hate the jerk who squealed about the black-market snacks next-door before, I do now. I'm going to go to a happy place. . . where they serve warm chocolate chip cookies as I read. . . Speaking of chocolate chip cookies, here's a tip. If your recipe calls for all shortening--yes, even butter-flavored shortening--or all margarine, modify it so that you use half shortening and half margarine. It improves the taste tremendously. Here's another good tip (though it may only apply to people in my family): if you're just going to eat the cookie dough, leave out the the baking soda and it won't make you feel so gross the next day. I can hear some of you squealing about the raw eggs right now. Fine, if you're going to let the prospect of a little food poisoning put you off one of the best treats in the world, that's your business. People die while jogging, too, but I don't see any government entities saying that you shouldn't jog. But, if it really bothers you, just use pasteurized eggs.