You know the experience – a nice plate of chocolate chip cookies catches your eye. You grab one and take a bite…only to discover you’ve been fooled by an impostor – it’s an oatmeal raisin cookie! They look so similar at a casual glance, but the taste difference is undeniable.

I’ve begun to wonder if anyone really likes the oatmeal raisin variety. Sure, they’re still cookies, but don’t you really want a chocolate chip cookie? Perhaps oatmeal raisin would never have earned its prominent place in the cookie hall of fame if it hadn’t ridden the coattails of the chocolate chip.

…but this is ridiculous.

I wasn’t aware that soft drinks needed to be gender-specific.

Or so they say. For some reason, the unwritten rules for breakfast seem to more more flexible than for those of later meals. No one would consider doughnuts or pancakes acceptable dinner foods, yet somehow these transgressions are overlooked for the first meal of the day.

In these hard economic times, sometimes small expenditures can allow you to convince yourself your avoiding wasting money while still stimulating the economy. Or at least that’s the complex logic I’ve used to justify the Saturday morning excursions that have become a routine.

A good bakery can be hard to find, but is truly valuable if you are fond of baked goods (and who isn’t). Flour Bakery and Café is my latest favorite. They have all the usual breakfast delicacies, including delicious sticky buns, impressive doughnuts (available early on Sundays only), a wide assortment of muffins and scones, and a variety of other treats. If you’re looking for something a bit more savory than sweet, I highly recommend the egg sandwich.

There’s a bit of a wait (5-10 minutes) as the cooks freshly prepare your eggs with tomatoes, red peppers, greens, cheese, and either thick-cut bacon or fresh ham. Since it’s a bakery, the bread itself is also fresh. At about $6, it’s not cheap, but well worth it when you are ready to treat yourself to a filling breakfast.

It’s been 80 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated as President. He arrived with untold challenges awaiting him. An economy in a downward spiral. Two wars in disarray. A discouraged population. A failing auto industry. A crumbling housing market. Financial dysfunction so complicated, no one really understands it. Despite this landscape, he promised to bring real change to the country. I, as many, was cautiously optimistic that something could be done, but I was doubtful that I would personally feel the impact.

I was wrong. The change is very real, and I have felt its direct impact. The other day I ate an apple for a snack instead of my usual cookie. No big deal, right? Well, it wasn’t just any apple…it was organic! Today was burgers and fries night in my household, but the fries were organic sweet potato fries. The burgers were dry aged, grass fed, naturally raised, 90% beef. How many more buzzwords could you want? Well how about adding local, fresh-baked, all-natural hamburger buns.

Imagine what the next 4 years can bring.

Each day I tell myself, “I’ve had too much dark chocolate peanut butter. Never again.” Yet, each day I find myself eating more. And earlier in the day. And more frequently.

I tell myself that it’s healthy: peanut butter is loaded with cholesterol-lowering unsaturated fats, and dark chocolate has been shown to lower blood pressure…but it just seems…wrong. Yet so right.

One thing that I’ve come to appreciate over the past several years is the value of a good bakery. Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to find one. Recently, I stumbled across the Blue Frog Bakery in Jamaica Plain, MA.

Verdict? Really nice muffins. If you like buttery croissants, you’ll love this place. The baguettes were also quite good. Worth a look.

The Earl of Sandwich is sometimes credited with popularizing the frequently-eaten convenient meal, but I’m convinced he’s been out done by Señor Burrito, or whoever invented the Mexican treat. Okay, so apparently the word “burrito” is supposed to mean “small donkey”…but let’s face it, that sounds retarded, so I’m sticking with my delusion of a mustachioed jumping out of bed with sudden inspiration, rushing to the kitchen, and wrapping some beans and rice in a tortilla.

Whatever the real story here, someone deserves the Nobel prize…or at least some sort of prize. While sandwiches may keep your hands relatively clean (apparently, the Earl’s main goal was to keep his hands from getting greasy while playing cards), they can still be sloppy. The bread gets misaligned, the contents fall out the side, and there’s a lot of space devoted to bread.

Consider the burrito: you can fill it with whatever you like and it’s all wrapped up in a nice, neat package. If it’s well made, the only way the contents can get out is through the end facing your mouth. Isn’t that the idea?

I’ve eaten burritos for the last two nights. And had one for lunch yesterday. Lunch today? Viva Burrito. Viva burrito, indeed. You can’t get bored of these things because there’s an infinite number of varieties. And who can argue with the convenient packaging.

The best part is that, in these hard economic times, burritos can be a wise investment. For relatively little cost (as little as $1-2, even at places like Whole Foods), you can equip yourself with a frozen burrito that will be a delicious and nutritious lunch. The key with these is to prepare them properly. If you just microwave them as instructed, they often turn out gummy and fall apart easily.

Ideally, you buy them early enough so they can thaw through the morning. Either way, start with an abbreviate trip through the microwave to warm them up: I use one minute for a thawed burrito, and maybe one and a half for one that’s still frozen. Then take it to the toaster oven until the tortilla starts to brown. This gives the burrito a bit of a crispy crust and allows time for the cooler center to warm up.

Dinner leftovers often are handy to have around the house, whether it’s for a quick snack, a easy lunch, or even the next day’s dinner. Figuring out what to do with these remainders becomes considerably more challenging when the dinner is sushi. Spicy tuna sushi, to be precise.

My wife and I were both full, yet there was still a fair amount of the spicy tuna left in the bowl. Considering the price we had paid for the high-grade fish, I wasn’t going to just throw it away. Does raw fish really keep until the next day? I just slapped on some plastic wrap and closed the fridge door, determined to worry about it later.

The next morning I became inspired. After having shelled out half of my bagel to meet the demands of my two year old in the neighboring chair, I retrieved the bowl and got to work.

It tasted…neither spicy nor like tuna. Perhaps I needed some wasabi cream cheese to give it a kick. Or perhaps “day old” and “sushi” are words that really don’t belong in the same sentence. It didn’t seem that far off from smoked salmon, but I guess it would have caught on by now if it was really the culinary breakthrough I had been hoping for.

Though I’m usually the cook in the home, every once in a while my wife comes up with something creative for dinner. After a trip to the Japanese grocery store, she returned with some high-grade tuna, real wasabi, and tobiko. After making some sushi rice and wrapping everything together, we ended up with some nice spicy tuna rolls.

In the absence of any decent coffee in my office, I’ve resorted to drinking my latest creation of necessity: the “laboccino”:

• overextracted espresso from the office machine
• a splash of milk
• a bit of hot water
• microwaved for 20 seconds

Not great, but better than nothing.