Fast Favorites

To continue the celebration of the gas being finally turned back on I made a batch of my wonderful oatmeal chocolate chip cookies yesterday afternoon. The original recipe came from the Quaker Oatmeal box a long time ago (when I was a kid) and is no longer printed on the box. The recipe is the one my mom use to always use but I have since made some modifications to hopefully make it a tad bit more healthy. I reduced the butter and sugars a bit and use whole wheat flour, extra oats, and nuts. They are delicious cookies and Brian claims they are healthy enough to eat for breakfast. No doubt they are an improvement on Cocoa Puffs! Here's my recipe; it makes about 2 dozen.

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (I use Ghiradelli's 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate)
1/2 cups walnuts or pecans

Bake at 375 for about 12 minutes.

The one problem with baking yesterday was it was so hot and humid (92 degrees, 65% humidity) that the oven made our little apartment so hot the rest of the day and the humidity made the cookies really chewy. (I like chewy, Brian likes crunchy.)

Another reason for oatmeal cookies yesterday is we have TONS of oatmeal in the house. A few months ago for some of my science classes we made pinhole cameras. I had asked each kid to bring their own oatmeal box, but they didn't follow directions and brought coffee cans, food boxes, etc. In order to make sure the cameras worked I went out and bought 20 small round boxes of Quaker Oatmeal, emptied them out and turned them all into cameras. Now I'm stuck with a whole lot of oatmeal. Here's a link on how to turn your oatmeal box into a pinhole camera (and some cool photographs): users.rcn.com/stewoody/

For a quick snack we made our favorite hummus. We found the recipe in The Figs Table (one of our favorite cookbooks) a couple years ago. We love the hummus, it is easy and we can usually make it with what we have on hand. Although last night we didn't have our usual whole wheat tortillas (Trader Joe's handmade are the best and the only whole wheat tortillas I like.) for dipping so we used blue corn tortilla chips which weren't as good. Brian just used the chips as a spoon to eat the hummus. The recipe is Quick White Bean Hummus and we usually throw in a can of white beans and a can of chick peas (Goya brand). Although just using the white beans is delicious and makes the hummus lighter than the traditional chick pea hummus.

Rating 10
(Both on the cookies and hummus; recipes we make this often have to have a 10!)

The Figs Table, p. 68