internet porn and dessert

Congratulations to dw, who graduated *and* got The Job. Yahoo!
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Now, I'm not a big fan of Naomi Wolf, but when I read an article about food allergic ladies who lunch (or possibly dine), I tossed aside my latest mountain of research and happily clicked around until I ended up here. It's a splendid article about what internet porn has done to sex, with a leetle snippet at the end about a woman who covers her hair after marriage (aka kisui rosh). The connection is a bit facile, but I nodded my happy way through - how about you?

And the connection to the food allergic? Well, not much, really. But the food activists among us will enjoy Wolf's comparison of stale internet porn to empty processed calories. Sometimes, as she points out, the real and blemished article has more flavor, more fun, and more...heat.

It's true for apples, so it must be true for oh, stretch marks? Hm. But enough about apples, let's talk about cookies. Gluten-free, oatmeal (I know, I know - there's a machloket) coconut cookies, to be precise.

I adapted this somewhat from bakingbites.com (called there Wheat Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies). We don't do chocolate chips (the Man is quite allergic to chocolate), so this is a chocolate-free version.

Oatmeal-Coconut Cookies a.k.a,
the Mama's Remedy for the Amateur Politician
1 batch makes about 20-22 cookies (hard to count in my house, we might have made 24 but the boys kept popping into the kitchen and looking sneaky)

1/2 cup rice flour
3/4 cup oat flour (Arrowhead Mills is easiest, cheapest, and safe for the wheat allergic)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup plus 2 Tb brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup shredded dried coconut
3/4 cup Quaker Old Fashioned Oats (wheat free, no worries about cross-contamination from the other Quaker products, I'm told)
1 tsp flaxmeal (ground flaxseed) plus 2 Tb hot water OR 1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2.5-3.5 Tb hot water, as needed for consistency
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tb softened (melted is okay) margarine/butter alternative (Fleishmann's Unsalted is safe for my crew, plus soy/corn allergic types, but see the anti-margarine note below)

Mix dry ingredients together, excepting the flaxmeal and oats - let those sit in a bowl with the various bits of hot water. While you assemble dry ingredients and wait for the oven to heat. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper.

Mix dry ingredients, wet ingredients, oats and flaxmeal together. Drop 1 inch balls onto cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or so (depending on the heat of your oven), or until a light gold at the edges. Don't eat them right away, and certainly don't move them to a cooling rack immediately. Like most gluten-free, egg-free cookies, these may be so soft as to fall apart when they are fresh from the oven. Let them cool for 5 minutes on the tray before moving to the cooking rack, and they'll be just fine.

Optional: roll the uncooked cookies in turbinado sugar for some extra crunch.

Tip: not a fan of margarine? Following a suggestion from Zina, we just discovered this and have been replacing margarine with it. Solid at room temp, liquid when heated and deliciously flavored, coconut oil is a wonderful alternative cooking fat. Tree nuts and sesame are processed on the site, but the cleaning process is very aggressive - and the kosher symbol rare. We're giving this stuff a trial period, but it looks like a winner!
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Did I say something about amateurish politics? Well, yes. More on this at some future date, when I've stopped seething. But I will say that the cookies are highly therapeutic. I was wishing for some today, when the Toddles decided to cop a faceful of hives from a banana muffin (and then a mouthful of Benadryl). That I'd baked. In my clean, Toddle-friendly kitchen.

Which means that the concept of Toddle-friendly has been revised (again), and I really have to get on the kid's mailing list. But first, I have to wait for the keeper of wisdom to wake up...he's been Benadrylized.