On Eating My Feelings [oatmeal scotchies]

Was it Mean Girls that first introduced us to the phrase “girls who eat their feelings”?

Because thank you, Mean Girls.  I am that girl.

I don’t think I sat at that table in high school though.  Oh man, I hope that wasn’t it.  SCL, and Queen Cupcake would have told me if it was, right?

When I read books and hear that a character was so stressed she couldn’t eat anything, I wonder where the author got that idea.  Do those people even exist?  That I can recall I have been too stressed to eat twice in my life.  One dinner in the fall of 2009, and one lunch in the summer of 2011.  Yep.  That’s it.  When I am stressed, I eat.  I survived eight semesters of college finals with tubs of chocolate frosting and a spoon.  Not.  Kidding.

Dear readers, Grandma Glass of Milk got sick this summer, and she died in early August.  If you haven’t met the cast yet, then you might not know how highly I think of her and how close we were.  It was a big loss for me, and of course, my family.

And after I visited her for what I knew was likely the last time, all I wanted to do was rush into the kitchen and bake cookies.  So many of my memories with Grandma Glass of Milk involve cookies.

Like always making them on the wooden top of her dishwasher, brushing them with egg wash and putting on some insane amount of sprinkles that made them only appeal to us kids.

Like how she always had a green glass jar of them ready for us whenever we visited (usually chocolate chip with walnuts, and snickerdoodles).

And how she sent me a tin of them at camp.

Fun fact: I sent her a thank you note for them, and she saved it.  And now I have it again.

They were Oatmeal Scotchies.  They are some of my favorites.

To make at least 3 dozen, you will need:

• 1 1/2 C flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 C granulated sugar
• 3/4 C packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract or orange zest
• 3 C oats
• 2 C butterscotch chips (One bag is 1 2/3 C because they’ve gotten smaller over the years.  If you can, spring for a second bag so you can fit more chips in these)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and set aside.  In another bowl, beat butter and sugars until fluffy and lighter in color, 2-3 minutes.  Add eggs, one at a time, stopping to scrape down bowl as necessary.  Add vanilla, and beat till combined.  Slowly stir in flour mixture and beat just till combined.  Fold in oats.  Fold in chips.

Spoon out one or two tablespoons of dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets, and bake cookies for 8-9 minutes.