Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs well-beaten
• 1/2 tsp hot water
• 2 1/4 cups sifted* flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups (12 oz.) chocolate chips

• Cream butter, sugars; add eggs
• Sift flour with salt and baking soda
• Add to creamed mixture
• Add hot water and vanilla
• Mix until well blended
• Add chocolate chips
• Drop from teaspoon onto greased cookie sheet
• Bake in moderate oven (375ºF) 10** minutes

*If you don't have a sifter available, take a fork and "fluff up" the flour in the measuring cup. This has seemed to work for me just as well. Naturally, it doesn't get any lumps out so if you have any lumps in your flour maybe you'd better strain it (which, of course, sifts it).

**Our feeling is that good cookies are soft cookies. That means you have to stop about a minute before the recipe says - which is about a minute before it looks done. With the caveat that raw cookie dough, while sometimes tasty, can give you a stomachache ... which I know from experience.