As a teacher, I “get the summer off” each year. Technically, I get fired in June and rehired in August…but no one really wants to think of it that way…they prefer to think that teachers have the best/cushiest jobs around. And, really, we do. If it weren’t for the parents and the kids, my job would be perfect. But today I’m not talking about my job. It is, after all, “summer vacation,” the reason that all teachers become teachers: June, July, and August. We look forward to it all year. We plot and plan and hope and dream and it finally gets here. We finished up school and got the kids graduated on last week, so this past Monday was the official “start” to my summer vacation. Monday, I went with my sister and nieces (and great-nieces) to Las Vegas to do some shopping. Tuesday, I went with my Mom to Mesquite to go shopping and get her hair done. Wednesday I officially got bored.
 What does that say, when I get “bored” after two days? I refuse, however, to let boredom win. I will not waste my summer sitting around trying to figure out what I can do. That’s when I decided to make some oatmeal cookies. (Well, sometime between that moment and the moment I realized we had 7 containers of oatmeal…unopened…in our pantry.) It sounds easy enough…but when I looked in The Cookbook (the cook book that my mom (usually referred to as Grandma) makes for everyone on their graduation/wedding…I realized that there was no recipe for oatmeal cookies. If there is no recipe in the book, that means there is only one thing to do…find a bunch of recipes and try them all.
 Four and a half recipes later, my kitchen was full of oatmeal cookies, my summer diet idea was out the window, and I still hadn’t found “the one.” It amazes me that I can have four different recipes that all use, basically, the same ingredients, yet they turn out so differently. (There is definitely a deep life lesson there somewhere…like how two parents can have a whole brood of children, each of whom is uniquely different…but that’s a deep thought for another day.) Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have a taste-memory of oatmeal cookies. It’s probably not something that can be matched; I often say my imagination is so much better than reality. It is, however, something that I will keep searching for. It is the ultimate scavenger hunt, and it makes me look really generous to the family and friends…it’s better to plate them and take them around than to let them sit on my counter, calling to me…I don’t have much will power, and I am very easily influenced.
 Recipe 1, “Big Oatmeal Cookies,” came from one of Mom and Dad’s “old people” magazines. They get a lot of magazines like The Good Old Days and Reminisce and Remember When and Hey, Look, We Still Print Things Instead of Beaming Them to Your Phones. I don’t recall from which magazine this particular recipe came, but it is good. It uses shortening instead of oil/butter/margarine…I assume that is why the cookies turned out soft and chewy, more cake-like than crisp. It also calls for cinnamon and ginger, plus it uses honey instead of sugar. They are tasty. They are not what I was looking for, but I would make them again…maybe in the form of a cookie bar or cake instead of actual cookies.
 Recipe 2, “Katy’s Oatmeal Kookies,” came straight from the back of the Western Family oatmeal canister. This is the recipe that my mom says she uses. While I believe her, they still are not the ones from my memory. They are good...crisp and chewy at the same time…but not what my taste buds were wanting.
 Recipe 3, “Better Homes and Gardens Oatmeal Cookies,” came from their cookbook. They turned out like a cross between the first two, calling for (optional) spices, and turning out a bit more cake-like than the 2nd recipe, yet they were crunchy, too. These ones were the driest in the bowl, and didn’t spread as much. I ended up smashing one batch a little, to see if they would bake differently…if you don’t smash them, you end up with oatmeal balls.  Still tasty, just a little odd.
 Recipe 4, “1,000 Calorie Cookies” came from Janice, in the recipe box on this site. (The other recipes should be there, too, if you want to do your own cookie cook-off.) These are, perhaps, the closest to the memory cookies, but not quite what I was thinking/wanting/remembering. (They are, however, the ones that are disappearing the fastest. Whether this is because they were the last out of the oven and were sitting out on the counter for a while, or whether it is because they are simply the best tasting, I can’t say. My palate has been overwhelmed.) Technically, the fourth try was the 1,000 Calorie Cookies with butterscotch chips…and the fourth-and-a-half recipe was the plain 1,000 Calorie Cookies. I had to make them without the butterscotch chips so that I could taste the oatmeal, since the butterscotch chips were rather overwhelming to the taste.
 Other than the fact that I disappointed my father and my oldest brother by not putting raisins in any of the batches (if I’m the first taste-tester, there will be no cooked raisins in anything), and I didn’t find “the recipe” that I was looking for, it was a pretty useful experience. We are now down to six canisters of oatmeal in the pantry, I was able to give plates of cookies to three different households, plan on taking a few more around today or tomorrow, and still have a ton sitting here, waiting to be consumed by whoever walks by…and then circles back for more. That, after all, is what cookies are really for, isn’t it? Most recipes make one of something…one cake, one pan of brownies, one casserole. Cookies are the cooking world’s answer for spreading sunshine and keeping boredom at bay.
 And tomorrow…after they have hardened up a bit…they will be paired off and meet my friend the vanilla ice cream, because the only thing better than a plate of cookies, is a plate of ice cream sandwiches.