Times are weird and sad and stressful and our puns are increasingly terrible; whenever the duck and I feel like too much is happening, we look at photos of food to calm us down. And, if we’re planning to meet up with someone, we take it a step further and bake cookies to share. Sometimes, if we really crave something sweet and crumbly, we bake a batch of cookies anyway, even if we have nothing planned, telling ourselves that we’ll freeze some, but eating them all before we can, ideally, while we watch a show or a movie that one of our awesome friends has recommended to us. We’re lucky to have friends with excellent taste!
I took this photo of the duck after one of our not-so-recent baking sessions that I want to tell you about about today, combined with our thoughts on a not-recent-at-all TV series recommendation that we finally got to cross off our list a few weeks ago (which is much too late), after having discovered a DVD copy of it at the local library; Firefly, the infamous series of which we only knew that it apparently ended too early and what some of the posters look like, has been recommended to us by many, but not watched by our stingy selves until we could watch it for (technically) free. Here’s a step by step retelling of what we thought and baked:
Chocolate chip Serenity
Before we got into all the mixing and chopping and baking, the duck and I had a long look at the recipe and then gathered all the ingredients that we needed. 
We needed to get into the series first. We haven’t seen a lot of Space Westerns, the duck and I; we aren’t cool enough to have watched Star Trek growing up so that our Space Western experience consisted of literally laughing out loud listening to the adventures of Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars (one of our favorite storylines from the Thrilling Adventure Hour) and having watched a few episodes of Cowboy Bebop. It took us an episode or two to successfully dive into the world of Firefly, but then we turned into invisible passengers on the Serenity; we were fully immersed, like a cookie-obsessed duck in badly chopped chocolate.
The duck and I aren’t only weird about cookies and chopped chocolate, we’re also weird about how we come to feel about TV series, movies and books; they need to have specific qualities (that we definitely can’t distinguish, much less name) to make us not only enjoy them objectively, but also feel as if we are part of the world they are set in. Only then can we fully appreciate them. Let’s take the Netflix series Dark, for example: Objectively speaking we liked the first season a lot (we still haven’t found the perfect time to watch the other two; our brains aren’t ready), but we also never managed to be fully immersed in the world of Dark; there was always a certain distance that we felt (and, no, that’s not because we’ve never experienced time travel ourselves). There is just something (maybe it’s certain colors or overall moods that we are more susceptible to than others? Any suggestions?) that, in order for us to feel completely immersed, thus, fully invested, has to be part of the mix…
Hand mixers are great, aren’t they?! We’ve had to mix various baked treats by hand in the past, so, whenever we move into a place that comes with a hand mixer, the duck and I are happier than anyone should be about a simple (relatively cheap) kitchen appliance. Add in digital kitchen scales and we are delighted. And then mix in some chopped chocolate and the duck’s legs get all wobbly out of sheer joy!
Joy is also what we felt whenever we heard the Firefly opening theme, the Ballad of Serenity, that, in our opinion, suits the rusty color scheme of the series perfectly. We like how, visually, there are lots of earthy tones, even in scenes that are set outside the ship. Those tones are often mirrored in the dusty ground, the characters’ clothing and, most prominently, warm light, whether it comes from the sun or the lamp on their dinner table. All this creates a warmth that you come to crave in some of the more serious scenes that tend to be on the cooler side. The duck and I love the Serenity set – so much that we’d move there in an instant, despite our aversion to the idea of physically being in space. That and the Serenity crew’s interactions made us feel as if we were coming back to a warm and cozy home every time we started a new episode.
It was time for our raw cookies to be pushed into a warm and cozy place, as well, now that all the chocolate bits were mixed in. Waiting for them to bake is the worst part of making cookies! And, even though we thoroughly enjoyed watching Firefly, there are a few things that we’re not such big fans of, like how the series can be a bit too cheesy for our tastes sometimes (the duck and I are not good with dairy) and some of the dialogue is just a bit too on the nose for us to not feel the world around us crumble a bit, our complete immersion threatening to weaken. Another thing that we didn’t like at all is so unoriginal that I don’t even need to write it down because all Firefly fans agree that Firefly ended to early. The duck and I were not happy that, due to it being canceled rather spontaneously, the series lacks closure. Fortunately there is the movie Serenity, that the duck and I, unfortunately, haven’t come across in the library yet, but, still, when we finished the last episode (that jumped every ten or so minutes because there was a scratch on the disc), the duck and I felt a bit lost. Fortunately, there exists a remedy for those kinds of feelings: Cookies!
It’s almost comical how much the duck loves cookies! Our cookies turned out a bit bland, unfortunately. I don’t know what we did differently when we used to bake them a lot years ago, apart from youth and innocence maybe, ha! They were still cookies, though, so we were both happy. And we can now finally say that we, as well, have watched Firefly and think that there should have been more seasons. In fact, even though the series had been recommended to us by several friends, our main reason for watching it was wanting to be able to also give the standard answer to the question: ‘What TV show ended too soon?’
We came into watching Firefly expecting that we would like it (because our friends have great taste and an uncanny understanding of what we will like – it’s substantially better than the duck and mine combined!), and we did, because we love diving into other worlds, especially those that have a certain feel to them, and this one definitely does. It feels organic and cozy and warm: the perfect setting for another cookie!
What about you? Have you seen Firefly? Do you like it? Are there any shows, movies, books that you decided to start because they were recommended to you… or out of sheer peer pressure? Are you as cookie obsessed as the duck is?
We’ll continue looking out of our bedroom window now, searching for serenity, because you really can’t take the sky from me… or the duck!
The Duck in... side 