Let’s take a minute to acknowledge the fact that I am writing this blog post hours before 10pm. You can thank central A/C for that. Because there is no chance I’ll be leaving my house for the rest of the night. It’s a hot one out there this weekend. But it’s a nice change from the rainy weekend we had over Memorial Day. I for one am excited that summer is here. I made the most of the long weather this weekend. Starting off with our new Friday night grilled pizza and wine tradition. Then I hit up Harwichport for a nice beach day on Saturday, and visited my favorite place Home Depot today. I’ll include some of my favorite photos of the weekend at the bottom of this post.

I was trying to figure out what kind of cookie I was in the mood for this weekend. I knew it had to have fruit because I wanted something refreshing today. When I was in Chatham last weekend they had some chocolate covered blueberries that looked good for a cookie. But at Stop and Shop today the closest thing I could find was blueberry-juice infused Crasins. But I figured hey, why not right? What’s the worst that could happen? So I took my base oatmeal cookie recipe and added in some blueberry crasins, toasted coconut and chocolate chunks and bam, these cookies were invented.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups quick-Oats
• 1 cup dried blueberries or blueberry infused Crasins
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks (semi-sweet)
• 2 cups toasted coconut

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lay the coconut out on a baking sheet and toast it in the oven, moving around with a spatula every few minutes until the coconut is toasted. Set the coconut aside to cool.

Step 2: Cream together butter and sugars. Add in vanilla and eggs and mix well. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and then add to the wet mixture until well incorporated.

Step 3: Add in the oats until mixed in. Then mix in the blueberries. I could only find these blueberry juice-infused Crasins at Stop and Shop today, but they did the trick. Add in the coconut. My mixer was pretty full by this point, so just mix until everything seems evenly incorporated.

Step 4: Use a cookie scoop to scoop even-size balls of dough onto a parchment or sil-pat lined baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for  8 to 10 minutes.

Boom. Crushed it. Nailed it. Jackpot. These cookies are delicious. The blueberries are bursting with flavor when you bite into them. The toasted coconut is crunchy. And the chocolate is sweet. Just a perfect combo all around.

 

 

A huge highlight this week? A visit from baby Rocky and Jackie at work. He’s a little BA in training (Baby Analyst).

 

This was our pizza Friday night thanks to Uncle Jimmy’s recipe. Fig, Goat Cheese, Proscuitto, Arugula and Olive Oil.

 

This was my view Saturday morning. Bank Street beach was about 30 degrees cooler than Boston and nice and quiet.

 

 

And then my friend Jess and I got our favorite Sandwiches from our favorite summer sandwich shop the Mason Jar. We used to sit on the picnic tables outside when we were working for the baseball team back in our younger days and watch the baseball players drive down the street before the games.

 

 

 

And finally, the weekend was a success with our special guest Miss Lucy who visited Southie for the weekend. This little hot dog took a dip in the water Saturday afternoon to cool down.