Staticpulse writings

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:00:00 -0800

It wasn’t love at first listen when my friend Todd gave me a CD with a dozen or two tracks that mostly contained distorted guitars and screaming voices. But the excitement of seeing some of those bands play in basements and barns to a bunch of sweaty, happy listeners was enough to keep me interested while I decided whether the music was something that I could get behind.

One example: The Assistant’s record release show for “We’ll Make the Roads by Walking”. The show was way back in 2003. May 1st. Not that I remember the date all that well. I just know where to look to help jog my memory.

The drive up to Old Bridge from Manasquan was one of the easier ones, since I was driving with someone who knew the route. Later, on other occasions when I’d be going to shows in Old Bridge, I would always make sure to leave 30 minutes extra for the expected time lost navigating the combination highway/country-road system that most of New Jersey is filled with.

I had never been to Todd’s barn before (not my friend Todd, but Todd from The Assistant), but I was expecting something rural. With high ceilings. And red paint on the outside. On this final expectation, I was not let down. It was indeed red on the outside.

But it was almost definitely not rural. It was behind a generally suburban house, with a nice backyard and an above-ground pool above it.

And it was most definitely not high-ceilinged. It was basically — no disrespect intended — a glorified shed.

All this is to say that a lot about this show was pretty normal. But the good feelings this gathering engendered… those are not something found at just any old concert.

To encounter these good feelings, we need only enter the kitchen of the house where the show was taking place. Milling about were smiling faces, and below all of their noses were platters filled with pastas, salads, chips, and a few other vegan/vegetarian delicacies. But of particular interest to my 17-year-old self was a baking pan with a layer of some brown, gooey-looking, chunky blobs of weirdness that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. I wasn’t really hungry at the time, so I wasn’t hunting for food. I was hunting for understanding. An understanding of what food group those blobs fell into.

Overhearing some word-drops like “peanut butter” and “oatmeal”, I decided to get adventurous. This being my first quasi-potluck, I wasn’t sure of etiquette — was I allowed to eat if I hadn’t brought any food myself? — but after asking one of the few people there I knew by name, I found out that it was highly encouraged to eat as much food as I desired. Later in life I would come to the conclusion that this was because people liked having their food eaten by others and then to be complemented and thanked for the hard work and thought that went into the meal. Personal experience.

I reached my hand into the baking pan and peeled off one of those globs. It was a weird feeling. “Peeling” something like this. Something with a weird consistency. Let me try to explain it. It was like a small blob of dough, but brown and somewhat rugged on the outside. It didn’t stick to your fingers, so it was sort of like dough coated in flour, but instead of flour, it was greasy. It didn’t fall apart, or flake. But you could tear it in half, sort of like dough.

And when I bit into it, it was soft. And the inside was flaky, a texture unexpected from the greasy, malleable outer shell. It was also a much lighter shade of the shiny-brown-black of the outside.

Turns out, these were Leigh Sabol’s (the singer and keyboardist in The Assistant) “No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies”. And after my first bite, I couldn’t stop. There were 4 layers of them in that baking pan, and I probably ate at least a full layer myself. After sheepishly requesting the recipe a few years later, I began making them a few times yearly. Any more than that and I would be a diabetic test case by now. Maybe if I show you the recipe, you’ll understand why. Why they’re so good, and why they’ll kill you if you’re not careful.

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

Quick Rolling Oats (3 cups)

Creamy Peanut Butter (2/3 cup)

Vegan Margarine (1 stick)

Soy Milk (½ cup)

Sugar (2 cups)

Cocoa Powder (½ cup)

Vanilla Extract (1 tsp)

Instructions

In a large bowl, mix oats and peanut butter until combined. This will be a royal pain in the arse until you realize that you don’t have to go nuts here. Later, hot liquid will be mixed in with this and will make mixing everything much easier. Promise!

On stove, melt margarine, soy milk, sugar, and cocoa powder until it is one bubbly liquid mass

Dump melted liquid onto peanut butter & oats mixture

Add vanilla

Stir it all up!

Scoop it onto foil or wax paper in chunks the size you want the cookies to be.

Let cool for about 2 hours. Refrigerate for harder cookies.

I suppose, if you're interested, I could share with you some of my favorite tracks from The Assistant's catalog. They were, after all, the reason I was there, and the source for this amazing recipe.

You may not realize what you're getting into. But if you do get into it, do me a favor, and listen through to the end of the song. You may find something in there you can enjoy. And if you see me, let me know if you want to see the booklets that come with the CDs. They tell you where the songs came from, what they mean to the songwriters, and the lyrics, too. It's all quite an experience. I didn't include the song here that I based by college application essay on. That one I'll share personally with anybody who wants to know. Now, enjoy:

04_Tom_Hanks_Has_a_Huge_Beard.m4a Listen on Posterous

08_Isabelle_Hates_Charlie.m4a Listen on Posterous

03_I_Don't_Believe.m4a Listen on Posterous

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Staticpulse writings

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

Instructions

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