Peanut Butter Cowboy Cookies

Week 483, and the tomatoes ripening, the corn arriving, the garden in full production, the heat in the kitchen. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Teaching Noah challah; messy braiding; chain to third grandchild. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made challah this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

After the challah was braided — imperfectly, gloriously, Noah’s small hands and my older ones making a mess of the strands before they finally came together — he wanted to keep baking, because that’s what children do when the kitchen is warm and someone is paying attention: they want more. So we made these cookies, which are not delicate or precise, which require no special technique, which forgive everything and reward everyone, which is exactly what a grandmother needs in her recipe box when a grandchild is standing at the counter and the afternoon is long and the chain is being handed, link by link, to the next person in line.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add peanut butter and vanilla extract and mix until smooth and fully combined.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Mix the dough. With the mixer on low, gradually add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in the oats, chocolate chips, and shredded coconut with a wooden spoon or spatula.
Portion and bake. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Gently press each mound down slightly with the back of a spoon. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are golden but the centers still look slightly underdone.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes — they will firm up as they cool — then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peanut Butter Cowboy Cookies — Baking the Chain, One Grandchild at a Time