Bring Your Cookies, Your Stories, Your Poems, Yourself

Aren’t they beautiful?

I learned this today. Unless you tell people that the cookies are oatmeal chocolate chip, they’re going to assume there are raisins involved. And that provokes a lot of unarticulated raisin bias, the slightest of nods, the looking away to listen to a sound not made. I see it, people’s irrational dislike of raisins but I don’t condone it.

Me, personally, you couldn’t put too many raisins in oatmeal cookies or nuts or even chopped dates and I’d welcome all of it, the mess of it, the products of the cupboard’s oldest bags rolled up with rubber bands, because I like a really chunky cookie. Chocolate chips, to me, are like fairy dust, nice but superfluous to actual cookie nutrition.

I took a batch of really beautiful, buttery oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to an event. I should have made a sign. NO RAISINS!

Next to me at a picnic table, a woman said to the person next to her, “It’s rare to have an oatmeal cookie that doesn’t have raisins.”

It almost did, honey. It almost did. Stirring the batter, I was this far away from grabbing the raisins and the walnuts but, for once, I showed some restraint. That’s pretty meaningful given my history with cookies and overdoing in other areas of life. Nobody appreciated that but oh well.

Red Oak folks – some who like raisins and many who don’t but who are all wonderful and generous writers who forgive and often celebrate all manner of mistakes and omissions and failures and raisins. It is an honor to bring them my stories on a too small plate every two weeks.

12 Comments on “Bring Your Cookies, Your Stories, Your Poems, Yourself

  1. What a wonderful time at the Red Oak picnic last evening. It was such a great opportunity to bond with old friends and new. As for oatmeal cookies, I’m good for anything chunky dried fruit.

  2. What was wonderful time at the Red Oak picnic. I was glad to see all of us together. As to the oatmeal cookies, I’d go with including a lot of chunks of whatever are fruity. – Tom

  3. They were delicious. I was going to comment that I love the nod to nutrition in oatmeal. My grandkids have come to know that they don’t get cookies without oatmeal or some “other good for you addition”. So, raisins, chips, nuts, cranberries(one of my favorites), I’ll take your cookies and writing and presence every time!

  4. i love all of it, mixed in there. you are so right though, people often have a visceral and overwrought reaction to discovering a raisin in them. the image of adding all the things in the old rolled up bags in the cupboard is so accurate

    • I’ve got a lot more oatmeal cookies to make before I make inroads on the rolled-up bags in the cupboard. 🙂

      • there’s a bit of comfort in knowing that they are waiting patiently in your cupboard. makes it feel like home.

  5. Put me in the raisin camp,. And damn, you’ve been nosing around my pantry, rubber bands and all.

  6. Put me in the “not rational” dislike of raisins. Well, I don’t like the purple raisins. I’m okay with the golden. I know makes no sense, but neither do I much of the time. Sorry to miss the gathering and also to miss the oatmeal cookies without raisins.

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