Hello there! I am back home from my jaw-dropping, deeply inspiring 5 days in Colorado, filled to the brim with love and feeling truly centered. Renewed. Optimistic and proud Mama, too. Yesterday I very much enjoyed getting back to the business of daily farm chores and housework, a side effect of being reminded how great my “job” is. It’s perfect for me, really. One of the pleasures of being home is cooking fresh food in my own quirky, artsy little kitchen, and I’d venture to say that Handsome is glad to have me back here too. xoxo

Speaking of cooking, it’s Tuesday, so how about a quick little recipe? This is the cookie experiment to which I recently alluded and had taken to a book club event. Pretty tasty. See what you think.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, browned (two sticks melted in a skillet until lightly brown then cooled a bit)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup plain sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups quick oats
loads and loads of fresh, clean, hulled, chopped strawberries (I used about 2 cups, and that was a LOT for these cookies.)

What I like about this super easy recipe is that it uses produce in season (strawberries) and nothing too fancy. Stuff you most likely have in your kitchen right now. (By the way, you could probably split that butter amount with half shortening, but I hate that. Or, really, I just love butter so much.) This is just an adaptation of plain oatmeal cookies. I had wanted to make them “clean” but didn’t remember to buy the extra ingredients, which are something like honey, coconut flour, and magic. Actually my local grocer was all out of magic that day, so we had to go with good-ole-fashioned sugary cookies. Not mad about it.

Method:

Brown the butter and let it cool. Using an electric hand mixer, cream it together with the sugars. Add the eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and most of the flour. Now you might want a wooden spoon to finish up. With a bit of muscle, stir in the remaining flour and the oats. Then add the strawberries. That’s it!

Scoop the wet dough in heaping Tablespoons onto a cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for up to 10 minutes. Maybe try turning off the oven and allowing them to finish to a golden brown as the oven slowly cools. The strawberries get all intense looking and caramelized, like strawberry leather. And the oats are very nearly nutty. Tenderly crunchy. SOOO good.

Cool on a wire rack like normal. Serve with cold milk or hot tea or, like I did, as part of a ginormous book club feast surrounded by nine of your favorite people.

Side note: Our new pup named Klaus was brand new to the farm the day I made this recipe. Wearing his cute bandanna, he stayed beneath my feet the entire time and slept and slept afterwards. That was just a few of weeks ago, and looking at these photos I am stunned by how much he has grown. STUNNED. He is so big now! Wow. Maybe we should bake something to celebrate his growth spurt. : )

I can think of lots of fun variations for this recipe. How about you? Like, add walnuts. Add a white chocolate drizzle. Go that healthy route and try a honey-coconut flour-magic recipe. That is on my kitchen bucket list for sure.

Okay, happy baking friends! And happy everything on this gorgeous, summery Tuesday. I am signing off soon to work in the garden, play with the horses, and generally max out on this amazing life I get to live. Thank you so much for stopping here.

“People have got to learn:
If they don’t have cookies in the cookie jar,
they can’t eat cookies.”
~Suze Orman
XOXOXO