Feeling Mortal Today, So Here's My Favorite Cookie Recipe!

My Aunt Kay found (or was it her daughter, my cousin Rae?) this cookie recipe for my cousin Peter who would not eat anything without peanut butter on/in it.  (Note: Peter was a grown, married man dentist!) Aunt Kay wanted to make those wildly popular chocolate chip cookies, but Peter wouldn't eat them! Thus: Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies! I've been making them about 40 years, probably. In the 90's I started pressing the dough into a pan (did I do it first, or did Michael's grandma?), and in 1993 my friend Gretchen exclaimed, "Oh, look: they have little love handles on them!" So the pan version are called "Love Handles." I still prefer actual cookies, though.
Oh: Michael's grandma also added oatmeal to them, GOOD CALL!! Her daughter Linda told me the older Grandma got, the less salt and sugar she'd put in the recipe to make it healthier...lol!

One more story: my best friend Karen immortalized these cookies by including the recipe in the QuikTrip cookbook in Tulsa over 20 years ago. She called them, "My Friend Patty's Cookies!" The bad news is, she got the recipe wrong--half was double-batch, half was single!  Makes for a good story... :-)

AUNT KAY'S PEANUT BUTTER-CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

AKA "LOVE HANDLES"

—Patty Rieman

Combine: (as my hands develop arthritis with age, I've come to use an electric mixer)

1 cup stick margarine or butter, softened is easier
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
½ -3/4 cup peanut butter (more is better, I prefer creamy)

Combine, then add:
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
½ to 1 cup uncooked quick oats

Then add:

Semi-sweet chocolate chips, larger size (12 oz?) Chunks are best, or M & M’s work, too.

 Spread the entire bowl of dough in a 13 x 9 ungreased baking pan. Bake for app. 30 min. at 350 on center rack.  You may also bake as cookies, app. 11-12 min. for walnut-sized balls on ungreased cookie sheet.