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TONIGHT I THOUGHT I'D BAKE SOME COOKIES. I hadn't baked more than one puny batch of cookies during this whole Christmas season, interestingly enough (or I suppose I could say pathetically enough, or sadly enough, or everything-else-I-had-to-do-was enough!) Those Oatmeal Chocolate-chip Cookies I'd made didn't even stick around long enough to make everyone's acquaintance.


So when several members of the family were here playing games tonight, I suddenly took the notion to make more of those cookies. Did I have the recipe I'd used? (Yes, right there online where I'd found it the first time). Did I have all the ingredients? (Yes, yes. I checked.)

This would be a fifteen-minute job (excluding baking time, of course, during which it's exceedingly easy to double-task. Or even if one doesn't wish to double-task, one can put tasking alongside playing and accomplish both. Come to think of it, just suppose one somewhat enjoys the baking of cookies, and plays games with one's family while the cookies sit in the oven; one might actually call that double-playing. [Just rambling on--I'm not really trying to steal any baseball phrases (or bases, for that matter). What I was aiming to do was bake some more of those yummy Oatmeal Chocolate-Chip Cookies.])

I got out my hand mixer and two bowls. Put a stick of butter in the one bowl and added the sugars--1/2 cup brown, 1/4 cup white. Then I beat that up well and added one egg (laid by a hen this very morning, no thanks at all to the roosters) and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. In the other bowl I put 3/4 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt and stirred it together.

Following which, I stirred the floury mixture into the buttery, sugary, eggy mixture. All one has to do after that is add a cup and a half of oatmeal (should be the quick-cooking kind) and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips (calls for bittersweet--I'd say whatsoever kind you have or want will do.) It was all so simple. I added a small handful of raisins, too, and emptied the bag of chocolate chips, rather than simply eating the extra few. (From my experience--which is possibly, even likely, more limited than yours--I'd say there's a lot of leeway in cookie baking, especially when it comes to add-ins.)

I've got a nifty cookie scoop which makes short work (or possibly play) of getting the little rounded blobs of cookie dough onto the sheets. Twelve minutes later I pulled the first sheet of baked cookies from the 325-degree oven and let them cool on the sheet for five minutes. Actually, I only let eleven of them cool on the sheet for five minutes. I couldn't resist the urge to sample.

(Insert a long pause here)

And now what do I say? Dear, dear, didn't I all too recently divulge my cooking carelessness when it came to mixing up a Sweet Potato Pie? I'm certain that your cookies will be chewy and delicious, should you choose to make this recipe. But me and my loosey-goosey ways! There was clearly something quite wrong with my cookies, though they looked just perfectly fine. It was the oatmeal that I blamed--it was so hard, not soft and baked. It could be chewed, but only in the way raw oatmeal can be chewed. Not in any kind of pleasurable way. And yet--I just knew I'd read the word QUICK beneath that Quaker Oatmeal man!



I fetched the jar from the cupboard. And then I discovered that that friendly Oatmeal man was a Barley man tonight!
(Do you know, Dear Reader, how they're almost identical twins?!)

Now I've got two and half-dozen Raw Barley Chocolate-Chip Cookies. No one else will eat them, but I will. They may not be much of a joy to eat, seeing how stuffed they are with uncooked barley; but someone's got to do it.



If I eat them two at a time, would that be double-tasking?






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