By Popular Request: Cookies.

Once upon a time, shortly before I started this blog, I pretended I was a healthy food blogger. This did not go anywhere, since I'm actually a really horrible cook. But I had a few old posts describing some of my mad methods, so I thought I would share them while I'm on vacation instead of having to write a bunch of filler posts.  Off topic? Yes. Delicious? Even more so!


I grew up in a home where cooking was dropping a ladle-full of Dinty Moore atop minute rice.  At some point I realized I wanted to eat Real Food, and proceeded to try to bake cookies, since the fact that cookies are not Real Food escaped me.

My first hundred attempts were disastrous.  I thought the big soup spoon in the drawer was a tablespoon and that its smaller counterpart was a teaspoon.  Seldom did I have the correct ingredients, and when I did, they weren't exactly fresh.

That was years ago.  These days, my cookies are still disastrous!  But I have better ingredients and I know what a tablespoon is for reals.  Too bad I never measure my ingredients.  Mwahahaha.

You'll need this kind of stuff:

• Eggs
• Some kind of fatty substance.  I used heaps of vegetable shortening because I don't have butter at the moment.
• Flour (whole wheat please, we're being healthy here, jeez)
• Brown sugar
• White sugar
• Baking soda
• Vanilla
• Salt
• Crancherries
• White chocolate chips
• Oatmeal
• A helpful baby*

* Optional.

You may notice I list crancherries in the ingredients.  These are my current favorite thing in the world, second only to sweet potatoes.  I didn't think sweet potato oatmeal cookies would be as easy to make.  (Although, now that you mention it, they do sound kind of good.)  Crancherries are obviously the result of the unholy union of cranberries and cherries.  A little tart, a little sour, a little sweet, all delicious.

I threw a couple nastily big spoonfuls of shortening in a bowl and creamed it together with a small amount of granulated sugar and a big amount of brown sugar.  What do I look like, a measurer?  I guess it was probably a cup of shortening, a half cup of granulated sugar, and a cup of brown sugar.  Ish.

Then I dropped in an egg or two.  The details are hazy now.  I probably added the vanilla here, too.

If I was an Actual Baker, I would mix my flour (a cup or two, who knows) in a separate bowl with the baking soda and pinch of salt.  But I'm not an Actual Baker, so instead I mixed the baking soda and salt in the creamed fat/sugar and then added the flour.  Whole wheat flour is great for oatmeal cookies, by the way, and it has more fiber than that white all-purpose stuff.  If you don't have whole wheat pastry flour, you could run the normal whole wheat kind through a food processor to make it finer and it's almost as good.

Mix in either instant or rolled oats (but not the sugary kind from the packets).  Lots of oats.  And then one big handful each of crancherries and white chocolate.  My rationale is that even if these cookies are awful, they'll still be tasty thanks to the crancherries and white chocolate.  Who can resist mutant hybrid fruit and pseudo-chocolate?  No one, that's who.




Ugh.  Cell phone pictures.  I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near smart phones.

Anyhoo, drop dollops of dough on a greased cookie sheet.  Or do what I do and use aluminum foil.  I am super lazy and would much rather throw out the foil than actually wash dishes.

Into the oven we go!  350F should do it.





Success!  These came out so beautifully, even a cell phone camera can't ruin them.  They're fluffy but lightly crisped.  My husband says they're great, but we don't trust him because he'll eat anything I make.  Except the Helpful Baby. He's not for eating.