Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Coconut Almond Cookies

As a person who embraces the seasonal kitchen, I don't do a lot of baking in the summer. The oven stays cool while we crank up the grill and chop up the bounty of mid-summer vegetables from our garden and CSA. However, for me baking is a comfort and a recent weekend of cooler weather was enough to get me softening butter and putting the paddle attachment* on the mixer.

*Actually, when I started creaming the butter and sugar in the mixer, it wasn't coming together very well and finally noticed I was using the dough hook. That's when you know you haven't been baking for awhile. 

I'm also on a purge-the-cabinets kick. We're not materialists by any means, but as we moved into our home about nine months ago, I looked around and created a simple guideline: if we haven't used it since we moved here, we probably don't need it. I realized that for some reason I was storing three crock pots, even though I barely use one. (PS, did you want a crock pot? I have a couple extra...) I gave away the heart-shaped cake pans I've only used twice in my life, along with plenty of other duplicate pans. I dug into my closet and pulled out enough t-shirts that I never wear to fill a diaper box. I gave my mom my extra cosmetics, perfumes and lotions, asking her to pick what she likes and donate the rest to the Abused Adult Resource Center. And I realized we never, ever use can coozies, as kitchy and fun as they can be sometimes, so why keep seven of them? 

Where does all this stuff come from? In addition to purging the house, this exercise also made me reconsider how things come INTO our house. The freebies, the clearance deals, the magazines and catalogs selling stuff I don't really need or want, the throw-away containers, the endless stream of plastic bags despite our attempt to earnestly use our reusables. I'm over it, and taking steps to not only reduce our stuff, but also just refuse all that stuff in the first place. 

So these cookies actually fell into that clear-it-out, use-it-up mindset. Chocolate chip oatmeal coconut almond - it just screams pantry clean-out. Check your cupboards for random half-bags of chocolate chips or butterscotch chips, or maybe you have half a bar of dark chocolate that could be chopped up and used in here. Almonds can easily be replaced with walnuts, hazelnuts and/or pecans. Maybe you have a handful of pretzels at the bottom of a bag somewhere? Swap out some of the chocolate or nuts for chopped-up pretzels - they are amazing baked into chocolate chip cookies, I promise. And of course, dried fruit is a classic mix-in for oatmeal cookies, and although I love a good oatmeal raisin cookie, a word of warning when sharing with others: 

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Coconut Almond Cookies
Adapted from the green Gourmet Today cookbook

2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar
6 Tbls. granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. all-purpose flour
2 and 1/4 c. old-fashioned rolled oats
1 and 1/2 c. finely shredded unsweetened dried coconut
12 oz. chocolate chips
1/2 c. slivered almonds, toasted

Cream butter and sugars in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Beat in vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Beat in flour at low speed. Stir in oats, coconut, chocolate and almonds.

Place 1/4-cup mounds of dough about 3" apart on baking sheets, then gently pat down each mound to about 1/2" thick. Bake at 375 degrees until golden, 15-18 mins. Cool cookies on sheets for 1 minute, then transfer to racks to cool completely. Will keep in an air-tight container for 5 days.