By September. The mine collapse anniversary — twenty-nine years on September 12th — passed quietly this year. I didn't write a blog post about it. I made soup beans on the 12th, which was a Saturday, and Clay and I ate them on the back porch and I said "Twenty-nine years ago today I survived." He said "I know." We ate beans. The anniversary gets quieter each year, not because it matters less but because the noise of it has been absorbed into the daily fabric of living, the way a river absorbs a rainfall — the water level rises but the river still looks like a river.
Clay's work at the restaurant is going well. Ray the pitmaster has started teaching him things I don't know — brisket techniques from Texas tradition, Carolina whole-hog methods, Memphis dry rubs. Clay is learning a broader vocabulary of smoke than I can teach. He's learning from a professional, which means his cooking is about to surpass mine in ways I can't predict, and I am both proud and slightly threatened, the way any teacher feels when the student starts asking questions the teacher can't answer. The student is supposed to surpass the teacher. That's the point. But the surpassing still stings a little, the way growing pains sting — necessary, developmental, and briefly uncomfortable.
This week: apple season. The first good apples at the farmers market — Honeycrisp, Gala, Golden Delicious. I made apple butter in the slow cooker, same as year one: four pounds of apples, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg. Ten hours on low. The house smelled like October before October arrived, which is what apple butter does — it accelerates the calendar by scent, pulling fall into a kitchen that the calendar says is still summer.
Clay tasted the apple butter on a biscuit (his biscuit, eighty-eight percent, climbing) and said "This is what I tasted in Afghanistan when I read the recipe cards." The apple butter wasn't on a recipe card. But the smell was in the kitchen, and the kitchen was in the recipe cards, and the recipe cards were in Afghanistan, and the connections between apple butter and war and a bunk in a forward operating base are real even though they're invisible. Food connects. Across miles, across years, across the distance between a slow cooker in Lexington and a soldier reading a three-by-five index card in the dark. Food connects. That's its job. That's its only job.
The apple butter goes in jars, and the jars go in the pantry, and that’s where the slow cooker work ends — but the apples keep coming, and a kitchen that smells like October wants to keep smelling like October. These apple oatmeal cookies are what happens when you buy one more pound of Honeycrisps than the slow cooker needs: the same spices, the same warmth, something Clay can take back to the restaurant in a bag without needing a spoon. Same kitchen. Different shape.
Apple Oatmeal Cookies
Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 32 min | Servings: 36 cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
- 1 1/2 cups peeled, finely diced apple (Honeycrisp, Gala, or Golden Delicious)
- 1/2 cup raisins or chopped walnuts (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Cream butter and sugars. Beat softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in eggs one at a time, then mix in vanilla extract until fully combined.
- Whisk dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and salt.
- Combine wet and dry. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until just combined — do not overmix.
- Fold in oats and apple. Stir in rolled oats and diced apple until evenly distributed. Fold in raisins or walnuts if using.
- Scoop and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake 11–13 minutes, until edges are lightly golden but centers still look slightly underdone.
- Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They firm up as they cool.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 138 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 6g | Carbs: 20g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 85mg