A curious thing happened that other day; we had a visit from a very persistent squirrel.
One of my favourite Saturday morning rituals is to bake.
I don’t bake anything fancy or elaborate, just a recipe I might have found online (I read a lot of food blogs!).
A couple of Saturdays ago, I decided to make oatmeal chocolate chip & raisin cookies based on this recipe.
I substituted maple syrup for honey, canola oil for olive oil, walnuts for pecans, and added both raisins and chocolate chips.
I made these changes because these were the ingredients I had on hand and it only made sense to use them up, rather than going out to buy more stuff.
This was a very easy cookie to make; I combined the dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, and then mixed them together.
The dough was a bit crumbly, it looked more like a mixture for granola (I think I’ll add a few tablespoons of applesauce the next time).
I pressed the dough into patties – which was a little difficult because it got sticky and wouldn’t cooperate, I had to wash my hands a few times.
I lined them up neatly on a baking pan, popped them in my small toaster oven (I love that little work horse!) and baked them for about 20 minutes.
The house smelled heavenly for hours! I let it cool afterwards and devoured a couple.
Just as I was packing the cookies away, a cute black squirrel appeared on the ledge and quickly scurried away, I didn’t make much of it.
We leave our windows open, the squirrels are everywhere, they don’t bother us and we don’t bother them.
Except this squirrel kept coming back! I put the cookies in an airtight container and left it on a cabinet by the window.
This squirrel tried to gnaw at the container!
It was a bit unsettling… I moved the cookies into the cabinet and it still came looking for it.
We closed that window by the kitchen and the clever little cookie monster came through the living room doors (which were open)!
I cursed myself for making those damn cookies… because the squirrel was making my life hell at this point.
I told everyone who’d listen about my squirrel problem.
We kept the windows closed for a while, opened it after a few days and I haven’t seen any signs of my friend the squirrel since.
I don’t know what it was about those cookies! I’m going to have to make them again to see if he’ll show up again.
Oh and the cookies?… They turned out absolutely yummy, I just didn’t have that much of an appetite for them after that whole fiasco.
