Cookie #70 - Wyoming FAIL.

It figures. 
The last cookie in the state portion of the project ends up being a tremendous FAIL. 

Not just any fail, but the world's most epic cookie fail my kitchen has ever seen.

Not really, I just like to be dramatic.

So, this is how things went down in my kitchen:

I decided that since sugar beets (Wyoming's state veg) were rather difficult to come by around here I would use Wyoming's second most abundant crop for this cookie:  Barley. 
I'm kind of glad I couldn't find a sugar beet because I'm not exactly sure how it would've been in cookie form.  I had some ideas of recipes, but I just don't know.  Barley would be much easier....or so I thought.
So, I bought myself a big ol' bag of barley flour. 
The idea was to make a simple chocolate chip cookie using barley flour instead of all-purpose. I was curious to see how the nutty flavor and texture of the barley would change a simple CCC.
Chocolate chip is good, but DOUBLE chocolate chip is even better, right?  In went the cocoa powder.

Then things got crazy...

Some more chocolate chips, a little agave nectar and a cup or so of oats later, the cookies made it into the oven.
After 10 minutes of baking, I set them on a wire rack to cool. 

Now things get even crazier...

As I went to transfer them from the baking sheet, the cookies started to crumble.  Now, when I say crumble, I mean practically disintegrate under the touch of my spatula. 
There was just nothing holding this cookie together. 

Nothing. 

They were flattened blobs of dark brown with little chocolate chips poking out. 
At this point, it's after midnight and I'd been baking since my girls went to bed at 8.  I was exhausted. 
So exhausted that i just sat down on my kitchen floor and cried. 
In all honesty, it wasn't the cookies that made me cry.  It was the long week at work I'd had.  The stress of balancing my imperfect life and just plain old everyday stuff.  The massive fail of the barley cookies was the proverbial straw on that stupid camel's back. 
After a good cry, I found my sassiest pair of big girl panties and put them suckers on. 
I threw the barley mess away and added another learning experience notch to my apron belt. 

So, no recipe for Wyoming.  Perhaps I need sometime to reevaluate the barley situation.  I need to step back, take a good long look at what I did wrong and reassess the formula.  I fully intend on revisiting it because, well, I still have a 5 lb bag of barley flour.