Critical Cookbook Entry: Oatmeal Banana Cookies

For my entry into the critical cookbook I decided to take a simplistic, yet debatable approach of food choice. Originally I wanted to create a dish that was either natural of organic. In doing so, I did extensive web research on multiple blogs and pages in search of an all-natural recipe that not only seemed appealing, but also was easy to make. In this search, however, it became very apparent to me that this was no simple task, and that I might have to take a different approach. After making the executive decision to change up what I was going to be creating, the idea of making something healthy that wasn’t completely natural or organic, yet had natural ingredients incorporated into it. This notion lead to my discovery of the recipe that I chose for this cookbook. The recipe that I chose to make was Banana Oatmeal cookies with raisins. Below is the recipe as well as the steps to that were made to create the cookies:

Ingredients:

• 3 bananas, ripe
• 1⁄3 cup canola oil
• 2 cups quick-cooking oats
• 1⁄2 cup chocolate chips or rasins
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• cooking spray

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large mixing bowl, mash bananas with a fork until no longer lumpy. If bananas aren’t very ripe, a hand mixer may be used. Stir in oil, oats, chocolate chips, and vanilla.
• Lightly grease a cookie sheet.
• For each cookie, spoon about 2 tablespoons of cookie mixture (or more depending on how big you want the cookie) onto the cookie sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Variations:

Instead of chocolate chips add :

raisins or, craisins, or even add walnuts. Also, try coconut oil instead of canola oil.

When making these cookies, I decided to add the coconut oil in substitution for the canola oil simply because I like the taste of coconut and thought it would be a better addition to the taste of the cookies. Overall, these are simple, yet delicious cookies to make as well as to share. On a personal level I find that a recipe such as this can be a topic for discussion when it comes to debatable foods. A food such as a cookie is always seen more often times than not as a dessert. However, cookies such as oatmeal raisin, or oatmeal banana often have a negative connotation towards them in the food critic world. In all honesty, there are few people who I speak to that tell me that their favorite cookie is an oatmeal raisin cookie. From this statement, they go on to elaborate how they don’t even understand how they are considered a cookie at all, and should not even be a dessert. Often times laughing at this, I decided to analyze why this is got me thinking on a bigger level. Why is it that healthy is considered to be its own category? As a culture we view healthy foods as being able to fit into any other mold such as that of a dessert food. This got me to thinking about Barbara Kingsolver and her family. My mind couldn’t help but question “what would she think of these ‘healthy’ cookies”. I kept being reminded of her extreme healthy dynamic and somewhat excessive approaches in eating. Is something unhealthy because of its categorization, such as the fact that it technically is considered a cookie? There truly is no real answer. However I believe Kingsolver would not let her kids have these cookies due to the fact that they have chocolate in them ( I substituted raisins) and are not completely natural, yet only have some natural or organic qualities to them such as if all of the ingredients purchased were specified organic.

As an entirety, there is an astounding amount of politics behind the oatmeal cookie. The history of this simple snack has such a broad spectrum on how it is perceived. Usually there is an overall deciding factor on if we as a culture or community love something. However, when it comes to this cookie there is an astounding love-hate relationship to be had. People love to hate oatmeal raisin cookies, yet people hate to love them. In knowing the facts of peoples hate for raisins, I made the decision to omit chocolate chips and see how the politics of the class turned out. When trying to have a better understanding of the politics behind this cookie I realized that I kept being reminded of The Help. In this film, all of the women were so high-class and wanted to be healthy and beautiful, yet they all wanted to eat the fried chicken that the help was making. All of the women wanted to make the less healthy choice, but pretend that they weren’t. This notion brings me back to the raisins in the cookie. People want to eat the cookies because well, they are cookies. However, they don’t want the key aspect of the cookie that makes them healthy and sets them apart. I suppose that there truly is a deeper meaning behind our love-hate relationship with these cookies. It can be rooted back to what we as humans deem as acceptable. We want to look and fit the part, yet seemingly when it comes to it we shy away from things that could be beneficial to us for things that will satisfy us. Satisfaction trumps all when it comes to dessert, so it seems fitting that it would trump the oatmeal cookie and all it has to offer us. As a culture we more often than not look away from things that are different or unique. This is evident in Kingsolver’s writing. She makes many points of how our society chooses to eat unhealthy simply because the healthy food there is to offer is foreign to us. Sometimes I can’t help but have sympathy for a cookie like the oatmeal raisin. Misunderstood, unaccepted, and perfectly perfect in its own way.