cookies

I was very lazy on Saturday. Hell, I barely even bothered to breathe. I never went outside despite it being a beautiful day--I didn't even pick up my mail from the mailbox.

This was all due to a little burnout from a bad week of work. My solution? Well, just before midnight I decided that making some cookies might help. Over there on the left you can see the ingredients as I started heating the syrup.

This type of cookie isn't baked -- there's no chemistry involved. No flour, no butter, not even any eggs. This is just a process involving heat transfer from the stovetop to the ingredients.

You use sugar, water, powdered milk, shortening, peanut butter, cocoa powder and some vanilla (or almond) extract and a whole lot of oatmeal--3 cups of it.

As you might be able to gather from the odd list of ingredients, this recipe was devised in a time of shortages. During WW2 when many dairy products were rationed recipes like this one were used to allow households to have items like cookies which could no longer be prepared in the usual way.

So peanut butter was used to hold the cookies together instead of the eggs, shortening instead of butter, dry milk instead of fresh. Back then it was forced by necessity, now I make them 'cause they taste good.