Cowboys and Ninjas

   Beastie is now five, the little stinker, which means my time will never be mine again.  Five happens to be the starting age for most extra curricular activities.  From now on my life will be classes and activities and games.  Currently it's T-ball.  If there's anyone out there who doesn't know what T-ball is, let me explain.
   T-ball is a version of baseball for the five to six year old crowd where the ball is batted from a stand (the tee) instead of off of a pitch.  There are no outs so everyone bats and no one rides the bench so everyone takes the field.  Games last one hour or three innings, whichever comes first.  That's one hour of "watch the ball. No, not the plane, the ball", "run, run, run, run, run, STOP", and "you can pee after you've run home."
   Everyone who had ever played an after school sport or who had kids who did or who even knew someone who knew someone who did knows that snacks are involved.  Snacks are ALWAYS involved.  And guess who was up for snack duty for the very first game of the season.  Yep, yours truly.  So from our first parent meeting I had about a week to come up with a semi-healthy after game snack.  After a bit of waffling I decided on Cowboy Cookies.
   Over the past week I've been asked several times, "What exactly are Cowboy Cookies?"  The short answer is "Whatever you want them to be."  The long answer is more my own opinion than anything else.  Cowboy Cookies should be hearty, and when I think of a hearty cookies I think of an oatmeal cookie chock full of all sorts of goodies.  Mine included coconut, shredded carrots and chocolate covered sunflower seeds.  Here's my recipe...

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
  
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups oatmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup finely shredded carrot
• 3/4 cup shredded coconut
• 1 cup chocolate covered sunflower seeds

 

Cream the butter and the sugars together.

Add the eggs and vanilla.

Mix together the dry ingredients.  Add to the butter and sugar mixture.

Add the carrots, coconut, and sunflower seeds and mix.

Roll cookies about the size of ping pong balls.

 

Place about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes at 350˙.

Om nom nom.

  These turned out pretty darn good.  The batch made about 50 cookies, enough for each T-baller to get 3 along with a box of milk and still have some left over for me and my other kids.  I was really surprised how much the carrot just kind of disappeared into the cookies, I easily could have doubled the amount and it would not have been too much.  Just the right kind of snack to refuel after the game.

  Beastie's team was the last to be added to the line-up so they got stuck with Black while all the other teams got colors.  At some point one of the team moms suggested the team name be the "Ninjagos" which I guess are lego ninjas (I am soooo out of the loop).  Think I'll just call them the Ninjas instead.  Go Ninjas!