Soylent Green is People

My weekend plans were foiled by a province-wide blizzard that kept the whole family housebound.  Sunday morning revealed a foot of snow on the driveway.  I had been looking forward to getting out of the house to do something fun since either one or both of my kids have been sick since Boxing Day. Instead we stayed home.

Saturday night Mike & I watched Soylent Green.  After years of hearing it referenced in pop culture I had big expectations, but was a little disappointed.  It's hard to get behind Charleton Heston as the protagonist when he abuses his authority as a cop to steal from crime scenes and hit women.  It was interesting though how the depiction of 2022 (as written in 1973) includes a world dealing with the greenhouse effect, overpopulation and corporations dictating people's lives.  It's part entertainment and part cautionary tale.  Thankfully Sunday's afternoon movie with the kids was much more enjoyable, Fantastic Mr. Fox.  It might have been a little violent for the kidlets, I'm hoping it doesn't cause any nightmares.  I don't know why I haven't seen it before since I adore Wes Anderson and claymation, in equal measure.

This was followed by baking cookies, as it was the perfect weather for baking.  I'm finding that since I don't have a dishwasher in the house we are currently living in, my enthusiasm for cooking/baking or dirtying any dishes has been greatly dampened, but sometimes it can't be helped.  I like to use a small cookie scoop, that way, when I eat 5 at once, I can justify it by telling myself that they are so small that it's really like eating 1 or 2 cookies, and besides, they're so full of oatmeal that I'm really doing my body a favour by eating something so healthy!  These are the best oatmeal cookies I've ever had, and I would include a picture, but they don't look like anything special so I haven't.

Old Fashioned Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup of butter, softened
2 cups of firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups whole oats
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup milk chocolate chips

I'm lazy so I mix all the wet ingredients together in a mixer, then add the salt, cinnamon and baking soda while the mixer is running.  You can use the mixer for the whole oats as well, but at the end add the flour and chocolate chips by hand, DON'T USE THE MIXER.  For some reason this really affects the consistency of the cookies, I think it adds too much air into the batter, so be sure to mix in the flour by hand.  Bake in a 350° oven for 8 minutes, just until they are beginning to brown, then remove from oven and let them finish baking on the pan before cooling them on racks.  I think this recipe makes about 8 dozen, but I'm really not sure since so many of them are eaten before I finish baking the batch.  Enjoy!