Oatmeal Anything Cookies - Or how I managed to bake when I could only digest ginger ale

As I mentioned before, my brother was visiting when I came up with the idea for this blog.  He had a really terrible visit, just so you all know.  First, it started with cleaning out my mom's furniture, including selling the less important pieces, and loading a UHaul with my AMAZING husband in North Texas Summer heat.

On that note, I'd like to say a thank you to Rodney and Michael, my brother's best friends (and for all intents and purposes, my adopted brothers as I've known them since I was seven).  They were so, so helpful in keeping things light and moving heavy things.  Additionally, my second cousins, a couple of awesome guys named Roland and Jonathan, also came to help.

Anyway, I had asked my brother to stay longer with us, promising him that we'd have fun after.  We sure did!  We had fun at the hospital!  Yup, the same hospital we visited twice with my mom last Christmas, including on Christmas Day!  I mean, seriously.  While I'd promised good dinners, new restaurants, and fun times, he got to go to Whataburger with the husband a few times, and I went to bed at 8pm over and over.  So when he asked me to make "those cookies", I could not refuse.

"Those Cookies" are a cookie I call Oatmeal Anything cookies.  Starting with my mom's Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe, I created this to compensate for the fact that I hate raisins.  I hate them.  Why ruin a good grape?  If you don't want it fresh, turn it into wine.  Be productive, people.

So this recipe is a very basic, delicious Oatmeal Cookie recipe.  Nearly everything in it, once you get past the base, is optional.  It's also REALLY easy, and I've never made them when people didn't scarf them down.  My brother was first introduced to them when he and my mom came to visit last summer.  I made them so we'd have a snack during the closing ceremonies of the Olympics.  Secretly, I made them so I could have a little bit of the dough.  It's REALLY good dough.  But don't eat it.  Raw eggs are bad.

Oatmeal Anything Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a few cookie sheets.  I use Pam for Baking, and probably grease about three.

You'll need:
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups rolled oats

Beat butter and sugars until smooth.  Add both eggs, and vanilla and continue beating until smooth.

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (except oats).  Slowly add the dry to the wet mixture, beating on low, until fully combined.

Add oats and, at this point, you can add any of the following, or combination of the following:

walnuts
pecans
raisins (if you must)
peanut butter chips
chocolate chips
toffee chips
butterscotch chips
cinnamon chips

My best successes have been 1/2 bag tiny semi-sweet chocolate morsels with 1/2 bag of peanut butter chips.  I then add 1/2 cup chopped walnuts.  I've also had a lot of people love the cinnamon chips with chocolate chips, toffee with pecans, or just plain chocolate.  This part, along with the oats, has to be stirred in with a spoon, not with a mixer.

Scoop cookie dough onto cookie sheets.  This part also depends on what you like.  My brother and I tend to love big cookies, and this recipe works well with big cookies.  I use my inch scoop.

Bake them 8-10 minutes, or until they're the right consistency.  Again, cookies are so dependent upon what you like.  I like soft, doughy cookies so I lean toward pulling them out slightly tan, and letting them finish baking while the sheet cools.  A fresh out of the oven sheet will bake for 1-2 minutes, so really, you're probably covered.  Once they're solid, move them to a cooling rack.  Don't skip this step - it's completely worth your time to use a cooling rack.  Cookies stop baking, for one, and are easier to remove from a cookie sheet while warm.  Also, it frees up the cookie sheet for another round of baking.  The butter in the cookies will leave enough grease so that you don't have to spray the cookie sheet again.

The final product.  Not beautiful, but very tasty.  I have a feeling this will be a running theme.  My mom's cooking wasn't always pretty, but it was always delicious!  I guess I'm just following in her footsteps.

A long time coming

My apologies for the delay in posting!

The day after I started this blog I woke up with what I thought was my first food poisoning.  I mentioned in the last post that the recipe thing was half of the reason for starting this blog.  As you all know by now (probably), the other half of our reason is our Baby Boy Taylor, who will be making his debut in the world sometime around December 1.  Well, Baby Boy Taylor decided in my 13th week to require a huge amount of HCG, the pregnancy hormone, which in turn hit me with a case of Hyperemesis Gravidarum.

Naturally, I didn't have much interest in food for a while.  I've managed to settle, with the help of Zofran and ginger ale, and I even eat meat and eggs again!  Hooray!  So I'm back to thinking about what recipes I want to include in the family cookbook.

The process of deciding is a lot tougher than I thought.  I have to decide what I want to include, know what I can make, and plan for the things I'm not even close to ready to try, IE homemade candy.  This scares me to death.  I also have to figure out how to use a bread machine.  Yipes.  I'm very grateful technology has offered me something much more awesome than that ancient hand-crank ice cream maker that required boxes of salt and what felt like hours of waiting.

Lastly, there are many recipes my family loves, my mother LOVED, and the world tells me are awesome that I just do not like.  Pregnancy might change my mind, or make the process hellacious.  We'll see how that goes together.