"Restraining Order" Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yes, that's right. I call these babies "Restraining Order" Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, because I honestly need to issue an imaginary restraining order ON MYSELF after I make them. They are YUMMY. And even when I cover them up in tin-foil and walk all the way across the house to another room, they call to me, beckoning to be eaten. So I end up ignoring the imaginary restraining order. It's only IMAGINARY, after all.

Now, I love white chocolate (which isn't REALLY chocolate but is still so darn good) AND semi-sweet chocolate, so this is basically a recipe I have edited to include both (and yes, I DO sing "Ebony and Ivory" while I am making these cookies).

Bonus points are given to this recipe because it is cooking-with-kids friendly. Emmy loves mashing the butter and sugars together with her hands (I tell her to imagine she is smooshing wet sand), and she LOVES cracking eggs (though CRACKING isn't exactly the word for what she does. She basically SMASHES the egg in her hand, above the mixing bowl. I think it is absolute magic that she does this, and there is NO EGG SHELL in the batter. A miracle! It's like God really WANTS US to eat these cookies).

And EXTRA bonus points because these cookies are OATMEAL cookies, and oatmeal is rumored to help breast-feeding mamas produce more milk. I don't care if the rumor is true or not. Honestly, I am just looking for more reasons to bake and eat these cookies.

Here's the recipe we used:

1 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons vanilla

1.5 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
3 cups old-fashioned oats

3/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chunks (a la Nestle)
3/4 cups white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

In a big bowl, smush up the butter with the sugars (or have your toddler do this, but be prepared - your toddler WILL want to eat the butter/sugar mixture off their fingers). Crack the eggs (or eggies, if you are having a toddler do this) into the bowl and give your toddler some chocolate chips to eat while you stir the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture. Add in the vanilla and stir some more.

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (or have your toddler do this, but tell them to mix SLOWLY. Otherwise your kitchen will end up looking like a war zone). Mix the dry ingredients and the chocolate chips into the butter/sugar/eggy mixture.

Drop BIG (like, ice cream scoop size) amounts of dough onto un-greased cookie sheet. You don't need that much room for them to spread.

Bake for 16 - 18 minutes (until the middles don't look "wet," and the outer edges are JUST turning golden-y brown).

Let cool for a few minutes, IF YOU CAN, before eating.

I've Got the Chicken Nugget Mama Blues

Honestly, I LOVE cooking. Back when I lived in L.A., I even started my own small-scale catering business, which was more successful than I had ever thought it would be. I gave it up after just a short while because, frankly, I was a little too young and a little too “green” to run my own business. I also didn’t like smelling like cheese and onions when I climbed into bed at night. And I was afraid of going grey prematurely due to the stress involved. And I wanted to wear shoes that were NOT practical, NOT made out of canvas, and NOT stained with tomato sauce every once in a while.

But still, for the most part, cooking as a career was GREAT. I loved shopping for new ingredients, coming up with my list of “go to” favorite recipes, and learning how to put new spins on old classics. I loved that cooking could at times provide me with an adrenaline rush (like those 15 minutes before the guests of a party start arriving), and at other times bring me into an almost meditative, zen-like state (while chopping 80 carrots into equally sized pieces). Most of all, I loved seeing the smiles on the faces of people whose bellies I had made very very happy.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to put that same smile on my daughter’s face seven nights a week with mama’s home-cooking. But the sad truth is that there is only one food that puts a smile on Emmy’s face these days: out-of-the-bag, pre-formed, uniform-shaped, is-that-even-real-meat-in-there(?) chicken nuggets.

Of course I blame myself. Since my return to work full-time, cooking dinner has quickly become a thing of the past. During the work week, my husband, Em and I get home around 5:30 or 6:00ish, and my daughter is in a state of near-starvation. We have become the parents that grab whatever food-like substance is most convenient to prepare and stick it in ye olde microwave. If it can be cooked up in less than one minute on “high”, and Emmy agrees to open her mouth and eat it, by golly, it is a perfect food.
Thus, over the past several months, chicken nuggets have become a god-send, a small miracle, a sort of neo-manna sent from heaven. And I’ve become an oh-so-remorseful Chicken Nugget Addict’s mama.

I know this makes me a horrible parent. I know Em’s not getting the full spectrum of nutrients that would be provided by a really decent, home-cooked meal. I know that I myself should be forced to eat chicken nuggets (without ketchup) for the rest of my life as punishment. After all, I have enabled my child’s chicken nugget addiction. She refuses other foods, pushing them away with her little hand. She even cries when I put the chicken nuggets in the microwave because that means she actually has to wait 45 seconds (plus 15 seconds for cool down time) before she can stuff them into her cheeks like a squirrel preparing for winter.

Since I don’t want my daughter turning into a teenager who is rushed to the hospital for chronic Chicken Nugget Addiction like this girl, and don’t want our family to be the subject of Morgan Spurlock’s next documentary, I figure now would be a good time to stage an intervention.

So here’s my goal. I don’t think it’s too ambitious. I just want to find the best, most nutritious, home-made chicken nugget recipe out there (that is also REALLY easy to prepare, or REALLY easy to make ahead and store in the freezer for microwaveable reheating), that my daughter will actually eat. I consider it the first step in the twelve-step program back to preparing home-cooked meals that my whole family can enjoy.

If you have suggestions for tried-and-true, kid-tested, mother-approved, homemade chicken nugget recipes, please share. I will gladly test-drive them, and will let you know which is most successful.