With the break in the weather a few days ago I thought it was all right to turn the oven on again.

So I decided to make some oatmeal cookies and share them with the fellow down the street who takes care of his invalid sister. She’s completely confined to her bed now, as she’s partially paralyzed, so she can no longer sit outside with him.

By the way, have you ever made cookies? Or anything that required stirring a thick dough?

If so, you will have grown to appreciate just how strong your mother and grandmother must have been in order to make all those baked goods all the time.

I swear I don’t know how they did it. It takes some strength to stir that stuff.

In the end I didn’t take any of the oatmeal cookies down the block as I burned the bottoms slightly and although they’re ok for me to eat, they’re definitely not something I want to share as samples of my best baked goods.

So the next day, which was slightly cooler yet, I dug out the recipe for peanut butter cookies.

And damn if they aren’t even harder to stir than the oatmeal cookies dough. At least the oatmeal cookies let me use the electric mixer, but the recipe for the peanut butter cookies was manual stirring all the way.

But I was much more careful once they got into the oven and they turned out mouthwateringly delicious!

And yes, I took a few down the street.