Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

On Monday, I was in the mood for Baked Spinach Meatball sliders. I knew I was out of parmesan cheese and so I tempted the nap gods and swung by the store on the way home from preschool pick up. When we came home, I tucked the boys in for their nap and patted myself on the back as started to prep dinner. Look at me kicking Monday in the butt! And then I realized that I was out of eggs. I had stopped by the store for ingredients and had everything I needed minus ONE, measly egg. I probably could have omitted it, but I didn't want to tempt the dinner gods after I had already tempted the nap gods. So I grabbed the baby monitor and dashed out into the pouring rain to my neighbor's house to borrow an egg. My sweet neighbor came back with three eggs because she wasn't convinced that I only need one.

I wanted to thank her so I decided to bake a batch of oatmeal cookies. I'm a fan of the Quaker Oat Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookie recipe, except for the raisin part. As far as I'm concerned, raisins have no business in cookies. Last time I used chocolate chips, but thought that they were actually too sweet. Who knew that was even possible?! I settled on dried cranberries and stumbled on a goldmine. These cookies are dangerously delicious. It's a good thing we shared them with our neighbors because we devoured the rest of batch by dinnertime.  

Are you loving the DIY origami cookie boxes? I found them on Pinterest ages ago and I finally had an opportunity to make some. (Read: I made a giant mess in my kitchen followed by a giant craft mess. Never go full Pinterest.) The result was ridiculously cute (and messy.) I followed the tutorial exactly, but instead of tying it off with ribbon I stapled it closed. I couldn't find the single hole punch anywhere and so I had to make do.

And without further ado..

Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 6tbsp. butter, softened (That's almost two whole sticks of butter. No wonder they are delicious!)

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups Quaker Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)

1 cup dried cranberries

Directions 

1. Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy.

2. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.

3. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well.

4. Add oats and raisins; mix well. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.         

                                         

This recipe received one star from my family.

*Plate-Licking Good

For more about my rating system, head over to the Eats page.

He Said, I Heard: Party Dress

Occasionally, we have miscommunications in our house. Often this happens when my husband says something and I interpret it as something slightly different. Mister Sir and I went out for a long overdue date night on Friday night. I bought a new dress with a pretty blue and white chevron pattern...very similar to the pattern on our couch cushions.

He said: You look really nice. You match with our couch pillows.

I heard: You look like an overstuffed couch cushion in your new dress.

It could have been worse. The dog's bed also has a chevron print. Haha!

The Reluctant Gardener

I use the term gardener very loosely. In fact, when I use the word gardener to refer to myself, I actually mean black thumb or person who kills every plant she touches within a 10-mile radius. I’m like the plague for plants.  I had pretty much given up on growing anything but babies until we bought a house. On a corner lot (read: huge front yard) with empty planters.

Daffodils, planted by (my) Mother Nature

Our neighbors across the street have an absolutely beautiful yard. It has lovely flowers in the spring. It has a variety of evergreen shrubs that look fantastic in the winter. On one side, there’s a lemon tree bursting with lemons all year long. It is absolutely gorgeous. My yard on the other hand, well, we've got dandelions and though they have flowers, technically those are weeds.

It is not that I feel the need to keep up with the Jones’. Our neighbor is lovely retired gentleman who prides himself on his yard. He spends hours a day weeding, pruning and planting. Ain’t nobody got time for that with two boys and a dog. But I feel bad that when I look out my bay window, I have a lovely view of their garden while they have a stellar view of my weeds. That, and when you buy a fixer-upper house, the idea is to actually fix it up.

We can grow grass. 

At first, I bought some simple wildflower seeds. I was 8 months pregnant so I conned my friends into coming over to pull all the weeds for me and put the seeds down. In the end they were certainly wild, but not very flowery. They were hideous 4 ft stick-weed-bushes. Fortunately, I’m an expert at killing plants so I had no problem abating those. We had a hot summer and with a new baby in the house, the hubby and I decided we were too cheap to water anything. Good-bye weedflowers. Unfortunately, we killed off part of our lawn too. So the next summer we reseeded and spent the kids’ college fund watering the lawn. (Side note: I learned you are supposed to reseed in the winter and let Mother Nature do the watering. Ooops. I suppose the kids will build some character in community college. No? I’m sure there’s an upside somewhere…)

The ever-hardy rosemary

Really, the upside is that our new grass actually grew. In fact, it flourished. I thought for a moment that perhaps I could grow myself a green thumb. In the fall, my mother (who rivals Mother Nature with her magical green thumb) planted some flowers, broccoli, basil and rosemary. Alas, my black thumb title remained untarnished; it wasn't long before most of the plants were lost. All of the broccolis were systematically taken out by bugs. The basil went down next. The rosemary was the only survivor. Out of the flowers, only three perished and miraculously a whole slew of daffodil bulbs recently started to appear.

If nothing else I'm determined, so I recently planted my favorite spring flower – tulips. I accidentally planted them in winter instead of in the fall so they would be as stunted as the rest of the plants in the yard, but they have proven to be pretty hardy. So far five out of ten have popped up. Given my track record, I’m calling that a success.

No actual tulips yet...

I may not have a green thumb, but I intend to conquer yard this with sheer will power. How about you? Are you the plague to plants or does beauty and life spring from everything you touch? For more trial and error gardening, follow me on Pinterest and check out my Gardening for Dummies board.