A Little Oatmeal Cookie Is Good For The Soul

The inspiration to create—to make something using just your own two hands, whatever scant voltage happens to be huffing and puffing its way through your gray matter, and possibly a few raw materials—can strike anywhere, anytime, from the simplest of comments.

For instance, today, the Puddinette sent me a text that just happened to mention “good oatmeal raisin cookies.”  The moment my eyes glossed over that message, half-read, a match skritched across some hard, stony surface in my mind and a light blub flickered into life over my head. Suddenly, I had a project for the evening. I mean, sure, I already had plenty of other stuff planned for tonight: work, writing, lackadaisical sprawling across the basement couch with a MadTree PsycHOPathy IPA at some much-too-late-hour-of-the-morning because Syfy’s Defiance will be on*.

But that’s all stuff I’ll do later, in the the-kids-are-in-bed-weee—hoooo!-let’s-do-something-wild-and-crazy-and-possibly-without-pants-like-um-yanno-work-and-then-probably-fall-asleep-on-the-couch-yeesh-I’m-old-and-sad period of this evening’s itinerary.  Before then, though, in those uncertain after-dinner and not yet to bedtime hours, Thursday night called for getting a little “help” from the kids and busting out some homemade cookies.

Because, after all, let’s face it: when aren’t cookies an Awesome Idea®?

We’re all in agreement here, right?  Super. The question then is how do you homemade cookie?  Here’s what you do: you get the simplest-ass, I-need-cookies-in-mah-face-right-now recipe you can find, and you try not to screw it up. But don’t think about trying not to screw it up, because then you’ll just get all anxious and whatnot.  Believe me, the last thing you want to do is be all fussy or fret over a tray of raw cookie dough balls.

Fretted-over cookies taste like a dog saying hello to another dog**. Just sayin’.

In any case, after an eternity of internet research (which clocked in at roughly 7 seconds, give or take), I chose this recipe from Baker Bettie. I chose it because A) It can be made with as little as six (6!) ingredients. Trust me, that’s a Very Important Detail, because the fewer ingredients involved, the less likely I’II get beflusterminded—which is a thing that happens when I try to bake via recipe, wherein I putter around in an ingredient-induced daze as if kicked in the head by an angry mountain goat.  It easy leads to incidents like accidentally using a whopping dollop of turmeric instead of half a teaspoon of cinnamon, ruining the cookies, your children’s ever-shrinking trust in you, and probably Christmas, too. Also, B) Baker Better is a fun name.  And C) Bettie even wrote that it’s an “I need cookies in my mouth in less than 15 minutes” kind of recipe.  How’s that for matching motives?

Tonight, then, we made cookies.  And if you asked me, I’d say cookies are a pretty productive use of an early Thursday evening. And if you can’t agree with that, well, there’s a pretty good chance you’re more than just a zombied-up inside.

Pud’n

PS: We made oatmeal with chocolate chip cookies, too. Yes, two different types of cookies. It’s okay to be a little jealous.

*Speaking of Defiance, it didn’t sell me last season, but its fast start to season two has quickly made it one of my new favorite shows.
**Keep thinking, you’ll get it soon…