Oatmeal Cookies Revisited

Oatmeal cookies are trouble. Does anyone else agree? Most oatmeal cookies are too dry and flavorless; in order to make them tasty, you have to pump them full of sugar, fat, peanut butter, or even chocolate chips. Forget raisins. Who puts raisins in a dessert? (Bread pudding with whiskey sauce aside.) Still, I have always wanted to make the classic oatmeal cookie work. I have always wanted to like it because I love the nutty texture of oatmeal. So why does oatmeal prove to be such a problematic medium in the cookie world?

Let's raise the stakes. Consider the classic oatmeal cookie as you would consider normal life. You have a great life; you have precious family and friends and the sweetest redheaded nieces the world ever saw; your oatmeal cookies taste just fine. Then comes a shake-up. Things happen. You are forced to change your outlook, your ambition, your drive, your motivation, your life plans. But the constants - friends, family, redheaded nieces - only become greater in value and quality. Things are different than they were two weeks ago; but with great perseverance and patience comes an even richer life. Oatmeal will never be the same to me again after making these cookies. New dimensions have been unmasked and I will likely never go back to the recipe on the inside of the Quaker Oats lid. Life improves by moving forward; baking improves through constant re-evaluation and modification.

And oatmeal cookie/life metaphors improve by just stopping.