Retreating To Simplicity. And Peanut Butter

I entered the kitchen this morning to complete my task of making cookies for the 4-H meeting this afternoon. I'm currently out of chocolate chips, so that means no chocolate chip cookies (or oatmeal chocolate chip cookies).

I thought about making oatmeal raisin cookies, but as one of my own sons dislikes raisins in baked goods, I figured that was a no-go.

I considered making snickerdoodles, despite never actually having made or even eaten snickerdoodles before. But all the recipes I found for them required cream of tartar, which I do not have. And apparently, a snickerdoodle isn't a snickerdoodle without cream of tartar.

Also, they require the extra step of rolling them in cinnamon-sugar. I am not making cookies that require any extra steps. I can barely manage creaming butter and sugar without silently swearing.

I briefly looked at some random recipes online for just cinnamon cookies, but those all had an egg plus one yolk. Separating eggs and having a lone egg white in the refrigerator are a personal big "no, thanks" for just a cookie recipe. Or they were actually sugar cookies with a lot of cinnamon in them, and that is just a straight HELL NO.

All this clicking through online recipes was stressing me out, doubly so when the wifi was going on and off because A. was trying to fix our non-working Internet phone service*.

So I did what I should have done to start with and made the peanut butter cookies from my 1996 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

Simple ingredients. A whole egg. No weird instructions. Almost certain to be loved by every child. And the oddly therapeutic task of pressing hatchmarks into the cookies with a fork.

Let this be a lesson to future me: Sometimes it's best just to close the computer and go with the tried and true.

The end.

* This is exactly why I was so disappointed that an old-school landline was not an option here. Nothing works like an actual wire straight into the phone. Also, this is like the fourth thing that is currently broken in our house right now, including my washing machine, but I'm not thinking about that right now LALALALALACOOKIES.