Feeding Ravenous Soccer Players and a Recommended Read

Yesterday was our the first soccer game of the season for our six year old. This was the year that everyone started to really know how to play! No more running in a bee hive formation and picking dandelions, this year they ran like little champions. As is tradition, after each game there are the coveted snacks. We signed up as the first snack purveyors.

On Fridays I grocery shop after work is over. I don't have any meetings in the afternoon and it nice to leave my school and shop our local Real Food Market solo. I enjoy shopping with my kids but when shopping for food, it seems to be a meditative experience for me and one I enjoy on my own. As I wandered this past Friday I repeated "soccer snacks" in my head over and over again. At one point I grabbed two boxes of some sort of pre-made chocolate granola bars and thought a very inaccurate thought to myself, "At least they are organic."

They were also $7 a box, pre-made with ingredients I could not pronounce and the easy way out. I put them back and instead bought a pound of long cook organic oats (89 cents) 1/2 pound of chocolate chips ($3) 1 pound of pasture butter ($4), 1/2 pound of raisins ($2), and 1 pound dried apricots ($4). I spent the same as I would have on just soccer snacks, but what I had in mind for my ingredients would only be one use for them.

Saturday morning I made Oatmeal Cookies. My plan was to sneak whole grains, fruits and energy back into a bunch of 6 year olds, and it worked. There were 9 kids playing, I brought a bag with about 30 cookies, and came home with 6 left.

Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate chips, Raisins and Dried apricots

(Adapted from a recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook)

Ingredients:

3/4 pound pasture butter, room temperature

1 cup brown sugar (organic tastes like molasses and is so much softer)

1/2 cup unrefined cane sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

2 pasture raised eggs

1 teaspoon good vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups organic long cook (instead of quick cook) rolled oats

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 chocolate chips

1/2 cup dried apricots, snipped into small pieces

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. 

In a stand mixed with the paddle attachment, beat your room temperature butter on medium high together with your sugars, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cloves until smooth and creamy. It will look like the consistency of creamy peanut butter.

Turn the speed down to slow and add one egg at a time to the mixture and cream it together again until smooth. Drizzle in your vanilla and beat again until evenly mixed through. Leaving your mixer on low, add your flour, one cup at a time and mix until incorporated. I then turn off my mixer to add the oats, all at once, so they don't fly out as the paddle is turning. I also add the raisins, chocolate and apricots with the oats, then insert the paddle into the mixture and turn it on, mixing until evenly distributed. 

I greased my cookie sheets with butter but you can also use parchment paper for even cooking. My favorite tool besides my stand mixer for making cookies is my disher. It looks like a mini ice cream scoop but is awesome for evenly distributing cookies so they all cook at the same time. I put about 12 cookies to a cookie sheet as these do not spread much and baked them for 8-10 minutes, checking to see if the edges were brown often, which meant they would be done!

Get Inspired with this Recommended Read

If you are in need of some inspiration this spring to start a garden, buy locally or eat well, I recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kinsolver. Its is an easy and inspiring read about a family's real journey with food. Below is an illustration from the book that I love.