An Everyday Cookie

Hi Haley!

A birthday cake is a heady thing. It's a licence, really, to enact your sugar fantasies. By the way, I've been enlisted to produce Grandma's eighty-eighth. Stay tuned. I for one, am not at all appalled to hear that you made your own cake, but that's because I know how much satisfaction it gave you, and how many nights you fell asleep mulling over which frosting, which combination of flavours. (I'm thinking three, maybe four nights).

But aside from birthdays, regular, non-sushi days chug on and I'm trying to cook less and clean more. This sounds wrong, I know. Maybe it is wrong... Key word remains: 'trying'. I wanted to ask you what the website was that dictates chores to errant house-wives. I'm not really a house wife, the breadwinner, actually, but I would like to make a pass at cleanliness. You see, the other day I reached for a big mixing bowl that I had stored up on top of my fridge. My fingers were instantly sticky upon contact with the invisible top of the fridge. I rinsed them off and that seemed to take care of the problem. Then I dropped a fork and it slid under the stove. Upon fishing for it, I made a few discoveries I'd rather not share lest Joan (for new readers, Joan is our saintly clean and disgustingly health-conscious mother) should happen to read this post. Anyways, I was out of rags...

Chocolate chip cookies are the cure for most problems. (See the blog on Grade Nine Blondies). This is a really nice every-day cookie recipe. It tastes a lot like a granola version of a choc chip cookie, which is why I like it. I'm sure you'll agree that there is something about oats... Anyways, this recipe is straight from one of Peter Reinhart's (I'm way to lazy to look up the correct spelling of his name but probably should) books.

Energy Cookies a la Peter Reinhart

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 sup sesame seeds

1 Tbsp flax seeds

2 cups flour

1/2 cup choc chips

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 tsp salt

1/s tsp baking powder

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup raisins plumped in 1 cup hot water

Begin by toasting the seeds.

Combine the seeds in a bowl with the dry ingredients. Drain the raisins, reserve the water. Add the raisins and add to the bowl along with the honey and the oil. Mix!

Add water until you can mix it into a stiff batter.

Scoop the batter in mounds onto a prepared cookie sheet. Flatten the mounds with your hand as they won't spread when you bake them off.

Bake at 350 for 12 to 15 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to brown.