Instructions: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cream butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and toasted oatmeal. Fold into butter mixture by hand until correctly incorporated. Do not overmix.

Lightly fold in chocolates and pecans, if using. Spoon by Tbls. onto cookie sheets and press down with back of spoon to lightly flatten.

Bake at 325 deg. for 20 minutes (begin checking for doneness after about 5 minutes, especially if youre making small cookies) until an even light golden color. (If edges start to brown, oven is too hot.)

Remove from baking sheet and let cool on rack.

Makes about 1 dozen
large cookies, 2 dozen small ones.

The newspaper newsroom "testers" got 3 dozen small cookies out of this recipe; they were done after 7 minutes. They also used regular butter and eliminated the salt, and used a mix of semisweet chips and milk chocolate chips instead of chunks.

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