So I Tried Oatmeal Cookies
“When I got married, the only thing I could cook was chocolate cake. After about a month, the men at my husband’s workplace started teasing him about his lunch, asking him if he had any chocolate cake and making a big thing of it.
“So I decided to try my hand at oatmeal cookies. I’d never had one myself, but everyone I knew said they were good. I didn’t have a rolling pin, but I figured I could use a syrup bottle just as well, so I was all set.
“First the recipe called for ‘2 cups rolled oats,’ so very carefully following the directions on the box, I cooked the oatmeal. It was so gooey that I decided to roll it out between 2 sheets of wax paper; but when I started to roll it out, the softened paper tore, and I had oatmeal all over everything on the counter. Then I used my hands and patted it down until I figured it was good enough. I dumped everything else together with the oatmeal and put spoonfuls on my cookie sheet.
“When I took the pan out of the oven, the ‘oatmeal cookies’ were a single crackling sheet of brittle stuff! I had no idea what I’d done wrong.
“I called my mother-in-law. She couldn’t believe that a person couldn’t make a cookie. She had no idea why it hadn’t turned out until I told her step-by-step what I’d done. When I got to the part about rolling out the cooked oatmeal, I seriously thought she was having some kind of fit. To this day, I have an undeservedly bad reputation in the kitchen; I’m only allowed to bring rolls to family gatherings!”
