My Famous Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today is the first day back to school. For my girls, long gone are the days of watching them with their lunch pail in hand walking to the bus in their new school outfits. Today, my 18 year old started her first class at college studying business. My youngest is 13 and started her first day of high school. Life is changing in our household. However, I thought today I would hold true to a tradition I have enjoyed for the last 30 years. I am making my famous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

The first batch is baking in the oven as I write this post. I wish you could smell them. When I was young, my mother would make these very cookies. My fondest memories were of coming home from school and smelling these freshly baked morsels. Still warm, moist and tender waiting for us to consume. I began the same tradition for my own girls. Throughout their school days they have often commented on how much they have enjoyed coming home to my freshly baked cookies. Their reactions when they came in from school was reward enough. So although only one daughter will be here at 3:30pm today to enjoy them I am holding true to the tradition. Some will just have to go into the freezer for my college student.

Why are they famous you ask? Mostly because whomever I have made them for over the last 30 years aways loves them and wants the recipe. Secondly, no matter how many other cookie recipes I have made over the years this one is always the tried and true favourite. I originally got this recipe from my Mom. She doesn't know where it came from. I have lost it many times over the years but I have made it so often I can recreate it from memory. I have made some adjustments each time I lost it and had to rewrite it. But now it is recorded and I hope you enjoy them as much as my family. I'm passing it along now to my nephew's wife. She has requested it. With a toddler and infant, I hope she looks forward to many years off baking these cookies for her boys.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chips Cookies
by Lynn Palermo
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups of soften butter
2 cups of brown sugar
1 tbsp. of vanilla
1 tsp of baking soda
1 cup of boiling water
4 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups of chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F
Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add vanilla. In a measuring cup add 1 tsp of baking soda, add one cup of boiling water. Add water mixture to butter mixture. Stir well. Add oats, mix well by hand. Then add flour, again mixing well by hand. Add chocolate chips. Drop by tablespoon onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15-17 minutes or until edges of cookies begin to brown. Let cool for a few minutes and then move to cooling racks. They are delicious warm right out of the oven, or once cooled package in an airtight container and freeze.