The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I am about to share one of my most favorite cookie recipes. Nothing fancy, nothing gourmet. Just a good recipe for your back pocket when you need to take cookies somewhere or even just curl up on the couch with glass of milk. I have always loved both oatmeal raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies and when I am buying cookies, I always have a hard time deciding between the 2...this recipe brings my 2 loves together.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (recipe from All Recipes)

Yields 3 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups quick-cooking oats

1 cup chopped walnuts (sometimes I use pecans)

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended. Mix in the quick oats, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets.

3. Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Beef Burgers with Green Chile Salsa, Goat Cheese and Caramelized Onions

Okay, don't be bored with burgers yet. There may be several more coming your way. Sunday night has become burger night at our house. I don't know what it is lately that has led us to want burgers, burgers, and more burgers. We have craved them for the past few weeks and I anticipate that this will continue for awhile. Kinda like our pizza craze a while back...

Tonight, the 2 of us enjoyed green chile salsa burgers with goat cheese and caramelized onions. You may not remember, but I brought this burger to you last year. I didn't have a picture then...but I do now!

This burger is awesome. It is so perfectly balanced in all aspects of flavor. Last year, we made the salsa with hatch green chiles, which I must say is slightly better than our improvised version today. When we headed to Central Market this morning, we thought it was the season again for these amazing chiles. I may need to start doing my research before heading to the store because we quickly discovered we were wrong and we were a few weeks premature on collecting a bag full of the green greatness. Bummer...my thought out menu for the week, centering around Hatch Chiles, wasn't going to happen...so, what to do when my heart was set on Hatch Chiles? I had to improvise by buying Poblano's and Anaheim's.

Once our patties were cooking we smeared some amazing local goat cheese on the top while they had just a few minutes remaining. We also added some caramelized onions before topping each burger with the star of the show...the Green Chile Salsa.

A girl can never have too much bakeware

Is it too early to start a Christmas list? Aren't these bowls and Cassoulet adorable? All I am thinking of right now is how wonderful it would be to eat chili, stew or a gratin out of these, preferably curled up on the couch with my fuzzy winter socks on. With it being a blistering 105 degrees outside lately, this gift definitely seems a little premature, but such a perfect gift for me come December!

I just hope they look this amazing in person.

Party Time

Well, the party was a huge success. We had so much fun with all of our close friends and family. So much fun that we are actually still recovering. I realized once again how exhausting it is to entertain. Well worth all the time and energy, but geez, it's tiring. I love it though. It was so fun and all of the details paid off. Brian had a blast which was of course the main goal. Unfortunately, I didn't get to take many pictures and these don't really do the party scene justice, but I guess it helps provide some sort of a visual. Why I didn't find the time to take a picture of the large lanterns in the backyard that I spent hours hanging or take a picture of me and the birthday boy before the party started is beyond me... I was in hostess mode and not good wife preserving a memory mode. Honey...please forgive me.

Stocked bar with an amazing Peach Sangria.

My prized dessert table. After all the decorating, cleaning, preparing, running errands, and stocking the bar, 3 homemade desserts was all I could crank out. I resorted to having the food catered by Pappasito's, so we were all able to enjoy some great fajitas. Here are my Triple Chocolate Cream Cheese Brownies, Brian's Birthday German Chocolate Cake, and some OMG Good Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The cookies post is coming, and they are totally going to be a staple for you! The girl's at work greatly appreciated some of the leftovers...

Lame partial view of the backyard. You can't see the light posts, the lanterns, the personally and artfully created birthday sign that was hung...Ridiculous.

P.S. I should be able to blog more often now that Brian has his new birthday gift from me. We can now both sit on the couch together...him on his iPad and me on my MacBook Pro lovin' life.