5 Minute Raw Vegan Oatmeal Raisin — The Cookies That Do the Staying

Another week. Another set of sunrises over Lake Superior. Another set of meals cooked for one and eaten at a table set for two. The two-place setting is the thing the kids have stopped commenting on. They used to remark when they came to visit. They used to gently suggest, in the way grown children gently suggest, that perhaps it was time to set just one. Now they set their own additional plates around mine and they let Paul's plate be Paul's plate. The setting is the love. The setting is the staying. Elsa called from Voyageurs. She had a sighting of a wolf — a single gray adult crossing a frozen bay at dawn, fifty yards from her cabin. She had a sighting of a moose two days later. She is happy in the woods. I am glad someone in this family is happy in the woods. I have always loved Lake Superior, but the deeper woods are not for me. Elsa is for the deeper woods. The match is right. Anna sent photos from Minneapolis — the kids in their school uniforms, David's new bookshelf, the dog (their dog, not mine; their dog is named Cooper, and Cooper is a Bernese mountain dog who weighs more than Anna and who is, by all accounts, the most relaxed dog in the upper Midwest). I printed three of the photos and put them on the fridge. The fridge holds the family that is not currently in the kitchen. I cooked Iced coffee and cardamom cookies this week. Strong cold-brew, ice, splash of cream. Cardamom cookies on the side. The kitchen on a hot afternoon. Thursday at Damiano. I brought a tray of pepparkakor — the second batch from the Christmas freezer, brought back to crispness in a low oven. They were eaten in fifteen minutes. The cookies are not the soup. The cookies are the extra. The extra is the message: you are worth the effort of cookies. Most of the world does not give the people who come to Damiano the message that they are worth the effort of cookies. The cookies are doing political work. I dreamed about Paul last night. The dream was specific: we were at the lake, in the canoe, fishing for trout. He was teaching me the right way to cast (he was always trying to teach me; I never quite got the rhythm; I caught fish anyway, by accident, with embarrassing regularity). In the dream he was patient and present and entirely himself. I woke up at 4 AM. I made coffee. I sat in the kitchen. The dream was a visit. I have learned to receive the visits without reaching for them. They come when they come. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. The seasons in Duluth are unsubtle. The winter is long and white and dark. The spring is reluctant. The summer is glorious and brief. The fall is brilliant and quick. The unsubtlety is a kind of honesty. The seasons do not pretend to be other than what they are. They give you what they give you. They take what they take. The kitchen, in response, does what it does — soup in winter, salads in summer, pies in fall, bread always. It is enough.

The iced coffee and cardamom cookies I made this week were the kitchen doing what it does on a hot afternoon — something cold, something sweet, something that doesn’t ask the oven to make the house any warmer than it already is. These raw oatmeal raisin cookies are that kind of recipe: five minutes, no heat, a bowl and your hands. They sit well next to a glass of cold-brew. They are worth the effort, even when the effort is small. Especially when the effort is small.

5 Minute Raw Vegan Oatmeal Raisin

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 5 minutes (plus 15 minutes chilling) | Servings: 12 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup pitted Medjool dates (about 6 large)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons almond butter
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• Pinch of sea salt

Instructions

1. Blend the base. Add the dates, almond butter, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt to a food processor. Pulse until the mixture forms a sticky paste, scraping down the sides as needed.
2. Add the oats and raisins. Add the rolled oats and raisins to the food processor. Pulse 8–10 times until the oats are incorporated but the mixture still has texture. Do not over-process — you want bits of oat and raisin throughout.
3. Shape the cookies. Scoop about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the mixture and roll into a ball, then flatten gently into a cookie shape. Place on a parchment-lined plate or small baking sheet.
4. Chill. Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes to firm up. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 85 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 2g | Carbs: 16g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 15mg