Cookie Trials

Not a good day for me in the kitchen. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about cookies, trying to come up with a few novel mix-ins and combo's for the classics- also trying to make them over in a more healthful way without sacrificing taste. Cookies are not supposed to be healthful or healthy, they're supposed to be sweet and buttery and comforting and make you think of "home". These are my essential characteristics of a good homemade cookie. So unless home is a vegetarian kibbutz or a macrobiotic commune, wholewheat doesn't really cut it. The Peanut Butter Honey Cookies I made a week or so ago were good; chewy, sweet, and slightly peanutty. Next time I will make them peanuttier. This afternoon's Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal Cookies were a disappoinment. The flavor was OK. I think that the rough oats stand up admirably to wholewheat flour, and that the grated apples went well in the mix. They were a fright to look at though- bulbous and bloated and beige.
What's with the cookie preoccupation?..... I really need to get going on this cookbook I'm writing with Donz. And I'm stuck on having a small sub-chapter on afternoon tea/afterschool snack. A cozy and yummy sweet snack after getting home from school, when dinner is still a few hours away. I want to include a couple of classic cookie recipes with a healthier edge, combining wholewheat flour with regular flour, using honey and brown sugar, and reducing the butter without sacrificing flavor or cookie monster appeal. I also have a nice moroccan mint tea recipe that I would love to add, as well as a super-chocolatey hot cocoa recipe. A good and hearty scone recipe wouldn't go astray either.
I finally understand, after almost 37 years of living in this world, that if you want to accomplish something, if you want to realize a dream- you have to work for it. Work really hard. It's like the Yiddish saying: "If you have a dream- don't sleep". Only for the very fortunate few do things come easy, for everyone else it's effort, and perserverence, and the sweat off one's brow. And just the way the cookie crumbles.