  Don't miss out on these genius cookies. The combination of maple syrup and peanut butter is brilliant! They are quick to make and delicious. If you are short on time, here is what I suggest:
Get out your kitchen aid mixing bowl and place all the ingredients but eggs and dry ingredients in the bowl. Forget about it. When you have time, beat thoroughly while you unload the dishwasher. Then complete the rest of the ingredients. Melt chocolate when you have a chance.  Ingredients
 What I love about this recipe is that it combines all the best cookie additions to the regular butter, sugar, eggs, and flour: peanut butter, chocolate chips, and oatmeal. Need I say more?
I do not make cookies to be healthy. I make them b/c I love to bake and I love sweets. That said I do love cookies that have something heartier than just flour, butter, sugar, and eggs (although I really do love those simple sugar cookies too). These cookies are hearty with the addition of three cups of oatmeal (don’t use less) and peanut butter. You can decide how much more fiber you want to add via whole wheat flour and other additions like flax seeds. Mix dry ingredients together:
In your trusty kitchen aide or whatever mixer you use beat:
Then add:
After mixed well add dry ingredients slowly. Then fold in 2 cups chocolate chips or less if you don’t like things too chocolatey. I love everything too chocolatey. I used a mini cookie scoop (you know like an ice cream scoop) and then flattened each scoop with the back of a spatula. Bake for 12-14 mins at 350 degrees. Additional add in if you want: -flax seeds -wheat germ -½ cup of whole wheat flour and ½ cup white flour instead of all whole wheat flour A long time ago, I used to send out my favorite recipes. With the advent of smartphones and pinterest every favorite recipe we could want is at the tip of fingers. I do still post some of my favorites on this blog, under the “Practical” tab (my favorite COVID recipes are up). Instead, this year (don’t count on it next year) I am posting my general favorites from 2020.
Pod Casts: Did you know you can listen to podcasts while you have to do housework and everything is better…. so much better. And when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night b/c of the unrelenting stress you can drift off to a podcast and everything is better, so much better. At least the podcast stops the swirling thoughts. Okay, okay. You’ve known about this for years, but I just discovered this world and here are my top recommendations:
Books: I’ve read so many good books this year, but my top choices hands down:
Hair: Yes, hair. Check out the Hairstory. I am serious. My hair is healthier and best of all it takes me only 5 minutes to brush. This is a serious improvement. Drinks: Gin and Tonic. I have unabashedly embraced my WASP roots, and enjoy myself a gin and tonic when I can’t handle teenagers anymore. If it’s too early, try Hot Cinnamon Sunset Tea by Harney & Sons. Green Products: Everything in Etee. Really. Cooking: My best tip: cut up ten onions, 12-15 cloves of garlic, and one to two celery heads. Chop and cook all at once in a dutch oven with olive oil. Why? Because everything good starts with onions and garlic and celery (okay if you don’t like celery, leave it out). Think: red sauce, chili, shepherds pie, every soup, every casserole, every good sauce. If you have a tub of it in your fridge you don’t have to keep sweating onions every time you cook.  Can I please have your social security number and date of birth? Why may you ask? Because this recipe isn’t that complicated but two of my dear friends, Leanne and Leila, treat me like a God every time I make it. They love it. I was hoping to keep up the mystique.
The recipe has a history. The first summer I was a pastor at my very first church, everyone wanted to invite the young couple (yes my husband and I were once young) to explore their favorite summer haunts. Janice and Hal Varney spent the summer in Rockport. Hal was a principal, so they had been retreating to Rockport since they had young children. Janice’s father originally bought the house and generations of children and grandchildren and great grandchildren enjoyed the freedom summer brought in Rockport. It was a rambling cottage and as Janice confided, the home was only standing out of habit. Before we left after a day exploring Rockport and Gloucester, Janice fed us a simple hearty dinner. On the table she placed baskets of bread. One bread was dark and moist. It wasn’t really bread. It was heaven. It was chocolate zucchini bread. I couldn’t stop eating it. When I asked her about it, she quickly found and gave me the recipe she had clipped out of the Globe early that week. I still think of her everytime I make this bread-- and of course Leila and Leanne. And I make this recipe at least five times a summer, b/c there is always so much zucchini. (BTW you can also use yellow squash). Janice and Hal have since died. After Hal died Janice would sleep on his side of the bed. She missed him that much. They were one of the most loving couples I ever met, utterly devoted to one another. I suggest eating this bread with your beloved. Ingredients
 This is my new go to recipe for muffins. As you will see, there are many options using this recipe as a base. Be adventurous! My grains are only suggestions.
I’ve discovered using dates in baking. O my! They make everything moist and lower the need for processed sugar. That said, you have to be patient with the process. This is not a start to finish one-kitchen-adventure sort of recipe. You have to presoak the dates in most recipes. Once you get the hang of it, the timing is easy. Finally, do not make this recipe if you do not have a food processor. Honestly, it will be too frustrating. Ingredients:
First: Soak about 12-14 Medjool pitted dates (I buy huge packs at Costco) in 2 cups of hot water (boiling is fine). Cover & forget about. Really, forget about it. I sometimes don’t return to my soaking dates for two days and it’s fine! The reason being is not only do you want to soften the dates, but you want them to absorb water to make whatever you are baking super moist. Second: Mix the dry ingredients. I sometimes do this while I’m waiting for my water to get hot. I often mix up the dry ingredients, cover, and forget about it right along with the dates!
When you remember you have soaking dates or when the dates cool down, fit together your food processor with your mixing blade. You know, the sharp blade that doesn’t cut as much as processes. Pour the dates, along with ½ a cup of the water they’ve been soaking in, into the food processor. (Don’t throw out the remaining water! You might need it later) Add to the dates:
Fourth: Add already mixed dry ingredients into the food processed dates. If the food processor halts and seems unable to mix, add ¼ cup of reserved date water. Add more if needed, but it shouldn’t be needed, usually an extra ¼ cup is enough. Fifth: Take out the food processor blade and fold in berries (at least a cup, but I often use two cups) or really any other fruit on hand. I love blueberries and buy frozen berries when they are no longer in season. Frozen works as well as berries. I’ve even used nectarines. Sixth: Spoon batter in lined muffins tins. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Consume with butter!!! These muffins are especially excellent for lunch with a banana & yogurt.  Today I taught someone how to make bread on Zoom using the dough hook.
“I’m Amish now,” she told me. “Well with electricity and everything else,” she laughs. Pandemic Amish we call it. I am definitely not Amish. I’ve watched Amish women beat flour into a thick ball with a wooden spoon, then lay it out on their wooden counters and knead, their well worn hands graceful. I use my KitchenAid hook instead. It was a wedding gift. How she afforded it, I have no idea. She had quit her job to go to seminary. She was rearing three boys at the same time. I still don’t know how she did it, graduating in three years. “I can’t go to your wedding,” she explained. “I would have spent money to get there so I figure I’ll spend it on your gift. I’m buying you a KitchenAid. You’re going to need it making all that food for those children you are going to have.” How did she know? My mom had a KitchenAid earlier than most. She loved it so much she bought one with deluxe extra parts for my grandma. They both got quilted handmade covers for their mixers. I wonder who made those covers? It was probably a church lady who sold them at a fair, patterns distributed during choir practice, benefits to the Sunday school program. I learned how to cream butter for cookies in my mom’s white KitchenAid that tucked in the corner of her kitchen, just like mine tucks into my corner now snug under the cabinets. You didn’t need to soften the butter. The mixer did it. I learned to slowly add flour so it didn’t spray everywhere in my grandma’s kitchen. She was a tidy baker. I’m not. My mom’s KitchenAid finally broke one day. The engine just died. Everything was always breaking in our old house. Appliances. Plumping. Cars. She would swear when this happened. Something serious like dammit. She would then mumble under her breath about old houses, my father, stress pouring out of her. When her KitchenAid died she smiled. “It doesn’t owe me a thing,” she said. “It’s been working for over 25 years. The best appliance I’ve ever owned.” She bought a new one. Cobalt blue and no flour encrusted gears. Mine is white. It looks exactly like the one my dad brought home for my mom. They seem to be a standard wedding gift these days. They often collect dust, tucked away, rarely used. My KitchenAid never collects dust. It’s used multiple times a week: pancakes, bread, muffins, cookies, cakes, eggs whipped to perfection, butter and powdered sugar transformed into frosting, leftover morning oatmeal smoothed into the beginning of bread dough, cream made into fluffy whipped cream on a June night to top fresh strawberries, sticky cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning, not to mention cut out cookies for every holiday... How do you bake love into the world without a KitchenAid? How did the women who made bread for Jesus’ last supper do it without a KitchenAid? How did my grandma make all of her children’s birthday cakes without a KitchenAid? How did they get the egg whites to peak? Did they remember to soften the butter early in the morning? Were they able to whip up as much love? I have baked love into the world with my trusty KitchenAid. My seminary friend knew I would before I did. That kitchenaid has made two wedding cakes and more birthday cakes than I can count. Communion bread: dozens upon dozens of loaves. Countless desserts delivered to those who need something sweet in their life because they have recently lost because you can’t make things okay for people but you can deliver some fresh baked bread because a baby has arrived and sugar is just the thing because you can truly bake love into the world with a KitchenAid. My KitchenAid and I have moved to four different homes together and taken many rides in my minivan to teach at my children’s school: cooking classes that invariably always became baking classes. And just this morning a Zoom class. Who knew we would have such a following, make such an impact. Thank you KitchenAid. Together you and I have baked love into each cake, each cookie, each loaf of bread. We have done good work. Here’s to hoping you last another 5 years. I think when your engine gives out, your gears too clogged with flour, I will say these familiar words over you: well done faithful servant. I will stick with the white model again. Not a shiny cobalt blue. It seems more authentic. More true to our relationship that began when I was little, standing on a stool, beside my mother, learning how to make cookies. All THREE Paddle Attachements Kitchenaid Oatmeal Bread
A little fun history via Wikipedia with my commentary: The first machine to carry the KitchenAid name was the ten-quart C-10 model, introduced in 1918 and built at Hobart's Troy Metal Products subsidiary in Springfield, Ohio. Prototype models were given to the wives of factory executives (of course not the laborers whose wives had less time and needed more help), and the product was named when one wife stated "I don't care what you call it, but I know it's the best kitchen aid I've ever had!" They were initially marketed to the farmhouse kitchen and were available in hardware stores. But owing to the difficulty in convincing retailers to take up the product (and that farm women didn’t have enough money to buy something seemingly so unpractical), the company recruited a mostly female sales force (duh, of course!), which sold the mixers door to door.  This recipe should work for 4-5 people. If you want to feed more folks, add another sweet potato or really any root veggie you have in your fridge. I used sweet potatoes, b/c let’s be honest, they were in the store. I wouldn’t increase the beans unless you were going to serve over 6 people.
As for why would I share this simple recipe: we've been eating too much meat in our house. I cook meat only three times at most a week, but it seems in this brave new covid world I have returned to tried and true comfort food like pot roast. I'm trying to get out of that rut and prove to my growing boys that actually there are many ways to get protein-- like eggs and beans! Ingredients
 Who knew my family would like this last minute pasta invention so much. All three of my “men” remarked to me “This is the best pasta you’ve ever made.” So here you have it… Don’t let them know I made it up on the fly and that it is super easy!
Ingredients
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