Garbage Cookies

In case you labor under the misapprehension that I am normally someone who cooks frequently, allow me to relieve you of your confusion.

I've had a busy week, which means no real time to do the pre-make something then refrigerate for eating the next day thing, which is unfortunate since that describes all the remaining breakfast recipes. So in a stroke of brilliance, I again decided to punt and cross off another cookie recipe. Which would have been fine, had said cookie recipe-- my sister-in-law's 'Delicious Nutritious All-Around Yummy Garbage Cookie' recipe--not required chocolate chips. Oh how prescient this title actually turns out to be.

I had to pick up a couple of items at the grocery store, but had an unfinished bag of chocolate chips hiding on my baking shelf left over from some previous recipe. And they were fancy Ghirardelli chocolate chips, too, which I understand matters to some people. I'm sure they would have tasted lovely, had one of the MOTHS that infest my pantry and plague my life not flown out of the plastic bag I was keeping the still half-full bag of chips in for (laugh) moth-protection.

Not only do I bake so irregularly that my common baking items have a chance to get moth-y, but 10 minutes ago I tried to give the my friend's dog whom we're babysitting a gourmet chicken treat thing we had lying around and THERE WERE MAGGOTS IN IT.

I am pretty sure I am going to have to purify myself--and my kitchen--by fire. I may just cut my hands off instead.

Meanwhile, I still made the cookies--albeit sans chocolate chips, which I'm sure would make them even more heavenly. Josh promptly ate a ton of them the second he laid eyes on them and I gave a bunch to my friend Andy, who is in town for work/visiting and, you know, likes cookies. I had a couple for breakfast and they were quite appropriately moist, which is delightful since I descend from a woman known for her brick-like brownies. I can only pray they were bug-free.

Photo credit for this--and virtually all
the good pix on this blog--to Josh

Wyn's Delicious, "Nutritious," All-Around Yumny Garbage Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) margarine or butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oats
3/4 cup raisins
2/4 cup walnuts
1 cup chocolate chips (sans moths)

1. Heat oven to 350. Scrape out hunks of brown sugar from tin and pretend this means 'firmly packed.'
2. Beat together margarine and sugars until creamy.
3. Wonder if all things with eggs in them that everyone makes has as much egg shell as what you make. Fail at getting one of your three (??) bottles of half-used vanilla open, but succeed on the second one. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
4. Add combined flour, baking soda and salt; mix well.
5. Feel smug you are going to use up chocolate chips. Scream and run around kitchen scaring dogs when you find moth in the chocolate chip bag. Decide angrily that the cookies will just have to survive without chocolate chips. Stir in oats, raisins, walnuts, and chocolate chips (not); mix well. You might want to give up on the wooden spoon at this point and just use your hands to try to knead everything into the dough. Or, ignore this and just keep hacking away at it with the mixer.
6. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Quickly realize you are going to require four cookie sheets, but you only have two.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes or until extremely light golden brown. Cookies may not look very 'done' after 10-12 minutes. Take them out anyway if you want chewier cookies (yes please). For crunchier cookies, leave in a minute or two longer.
8. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to rack to cool. Put in second shift of cookies once you've filled up rack with the first batch. Decide, when they are done, that since the rack is full with the first batch, that you can just leave them on the cookie sheets until you want to put them on a plate or whatever. Discover after an hour or so that the reason the cookie sheet is ungreased is because you are going to take them off immediately, and now they have fused to the cookie sheet and you must now pry them off with a knife--at the peril of the sheet. Eat anyway.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.