Cookies!!!

I have no creative name for this post. I've sort of kind of forgotten about this blog for a few weeks. It's been hectic. Last week, I pulled my first real all-nighter in college.  I've come close before, but this time I did it. Between 2 papers in a less than 2 days (plus classes and everything), I spent 17 hours writing.  I've stayed up all night before, but the whole using my brain thing made a big difference for me.  I was a little delirious, and then I got a big rush of energy and felt really jittery, even without caffeine! I hadn't really eaten either. I felt a little crazy!!

Enough about how I may or may not be mentally unstable. I haven't been posting recipes, so I'm just going to show you the last one I made, this past Friday.  I wasn't really sure what ingredients we had, since I forgot to check (of course). I was hoping someone had bought oats, because we were out before! I decided to go with basic oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. These are the only chocolate chip cookies that ever get made in my house - do not even think about making cookies without oats around my mother!

I didn't ask her for the recipe we always use, but I found a similar one. And then, I was we still had lots of carrots and a few apples.  One of my favorite restaurants in Heidelberg, Cafe Rossi, used to make apple carrot and ginger juice. It was our favorite thing to sip on in the summer.  And then, lo and behold, I looked in the butter dish and there was fresh ginger!! I made a double batch of the cookies and made half regualr chocolate chip and half apple carrot ginger.
I doubled the recipe, and it made A LOT. So I froze the chocolate chip cookies for next week.

chocolate chip dough

Ingredients

• 1 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips - I didn't measure the grated apples and carrots I used, but it was about 2 cups. I also added about 1T grated fresh ginger and 1t cinnamon. We didn't have any ground ginger or I would have added some for more flavor!

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl cream shortening, brown sugar and granulated sugar. Add eggs and mix thoroughly.
3. Combine the baking soda, salt and flour and stir into creamed mixture
4. Add oatmeal and chocolate chips and stir until well blended.
5. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.

carrot dough

The chocolate chip cookies turned out a lot flatter than the carrot ones - I think the extra moisture made a difference. They also baked weird, but I think that was just the pans and oven I was using.  Everyone loved the carrot cookies, so hopefully the other ones will be as good!