Good morning everyone!  It’s Monday!

The sky is just transforming into a lighter shade of grey out my windows as I type this, coffee in hand.  I got up super early this morning so that I would have time for my morning meditation and to work on a blog post and take some photos before I had to go to work.  Aaaaand, when I logged on to my blog site I saw that my viewership had tripled overnight….which could only mean one thing…..

I had three photos accepted to Tastespotting last night!  This is a pretty big deal for me, because I’ve been working pretty hard on my food photography skills – for much longer than the life of this blog!  I still have plenty of complete failures, but I am so thoroughly enjoying the process of learning, and the *jackpot* feeling when I manage to take a great shot.  Now some other people think so too!  Sweet!

Click on the little Tastespotting icon on the right hand side of this page to see which photos got published….but I’ll give you a hint – they were from a few of my favorite recent recipes:  pulled pork nachos with goat cheese and apple salsa (have you made these yet?  Oh. My. God.  They’re awesome!), my bucket-list raspberry white chocolate croquembouche, and my oh-so-delicious vanilla bean sticky buns with Bailey’s caramel sauce.

So we’re celebrating today with cherry almond oatmeal cookies, a recipe I adapted from this one at Smitten Kitchen.

Here’s what you need:

1/2 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/8 tsp. almond extract

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup dried cherries

1/2 cup almonds, chopped

Here’s what you do:

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla and almond extracts. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Then add in the oats, cherries, and almonds.

Now is the time to be patient:  chill the dough in the fridge for about an hour.  This will ensure that your cookies come out nice and thick when they bake (as opposed to spreading all over the cookie sheet).

When you’r ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350F.  Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper and scoop your dough out, with each cookie about two inches from the other ones.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until they are golden at the edges but a little under-done looking in the middle.  Let the cookies sit on the hot baking sheet for 2-3 minutes after removing them from the oven and before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Enjoy!