On December 3, 2003 my life
changed. And it changed BIG TIME! About mid-morning that day I was told that I
would have to have open heart surgery.
Actually, I would have to have coronary artery by-pass surgery which
technically is not “open heart”, but it is real darned close! Ones body can’t tell the difference. What was wrong was I had three coronary
arteries that were all plugged up like clogged drain pipes. My heart couldn’t get the blood supply it
needed to keep on pumping blood so as to keep the rest o’ me going. Those three arteries were just about shut
down. I had already had two heart
attacks that nobody knew about but me.
I had denied them so much to myself that I had forgotten them. Another artery had already by-passed
itself. That’s called “Nature’s
By-pass. The next morning, December 4, 2003, at 7:00 o’clock AM Central time I
had my last cigarette and thereby lost a very dear friend of many-many years.
On December 12, 2003 Dr. James Kirkland and his fine team of
heart plumbing specialists down at UAB cracked open my chest and, looking for
spare parts, they sliced open my left leg.
Using what they found they fixed my old clogged heart right up and a few
days later they sent me home.
But they sent me home with
a whole lot of new regulations, some do’s but mostly don’ts. Like don’t smoke, don’t do rib eye steaks,
or anything else that tastes good, like cookies. There is not a single solitary cookie sold in the stores that fit
my new diet. I know, I’ve read every
label on every package of every cookie in every store every where. They don’t make cookies for the likes of me.
So I had to invent some of
my own. Here’s the recipe for some
really good oatmeal raisin cookies.
They do have some little bit of sugar, and they have some fat but its
good for you kinds of fat. No saturated
or trans fat in these cookies, and they are much lower in calories than most
every cookie found in the stores.
Ingredients:
1 Cup Smart Balance Light
brand “buttery spread” (found in the dairy case with the butter and such)
1 ˝ Cups Splenda Sugar Blend For Baking (found with the sugar
at the store)
1 Tablespoon molasses
2 Hen Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1˝ Cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground
nutmeg
˝ teaspoon salt
3 Cups Quaker Old Fashioned
Oats
1 Cup raisins
Steps:
1) Heat oven to 350F.
2) Cream together Smart Balance, Splenda and
molasses.
3) Add eggs and vanilla; mix well.
4) Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg
and salt; mix well. Add to creamed
sugar.
5) Stir in oats and raisins; mix well.
6) Cover and chill the dough in the frig until
very stiff and gooey; about 15 minutes.
7) Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a
parchment lined cookie sheet. Allow 2”
on all sides of each
cookie so that they
can spread out as they cook.
8) Bake 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown.
9) Cool 1 to 2 minutes before removing cookies
to wire racks for further cooling.
Any that survive the cooling process are placed loosely into zip lock sandwich bag and stored in the fridge. Couple of hours later it is time to make some more cookies.