Tis the season for COOKIES!

And so the holiday baking begins. Mrs. Field's cookies - I love them. They're my favorite cookies, I do believe. They also happen to be my brother's favorite, our uncle's favorite, and they rank pretty high up for my parents as well.

As I've said before, since we have pecan trees, this recipe (big to begin with) uses a lot of them. If you don't have the inclination to spend exorbitant amounts of money on that many pecans, cut down the amount. It's not imperative that you use that much.

Also, the recipe uses both white and brown sugar. I prefer, when I can find it, dark brown sugar over light brown, but you can use either one. In the past few years, for some reason, dark brown has become scarce at our local grocery stores.

It's a big recipe - if you don't have one of those massive super-fancy mixers (I don't), be prepared to switch into a separate, larger bowl when the time comes for adding chocolate and pecans. Also, a large wooden paddle/spoon is useful at this point if you have aversions to mixing with your hands.

This is a very sticky dough, and it's a nightmare to make "golf-ball-sized" cookies by hand or using two spoons. Enter this amazing cookie scoop thing I got at Wal-Mart for something like $8. It's worth every penny, just for this recipe. It keeps your hands clean and speeds up the cookie-ing process immensely. The only thing is this - if you use a scoop, you'll need to cook them a few minutes longer, since it'll make them a bit taller than 2 spoons or hands tend to.

So, without further eloquence (haha, yeah - me, eloquent? as if) I give you the recipe to the best (imho) cookies in the world.

Mrs. Fields’ Cookies

2 cups butter, softened

2 cups white sugar

2 cups brown sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 cups all purpose flour

5 cups old fashioned oats (measure, then pulverize in the food processor)

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

24oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

one 8oz Hershey bar (grated in food processor)

3 cups chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375*.

Cream butter and sugars.

Add eggs and vanilla, mix well.

Separately mix together flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda.

Add flour mix to butter/sugar mix, slowly, mixing well.

Separately mix chocolates and pecans.

Mix dough and chocolate/pecans together. This will probably be easier done by hand in the largest bowl you own.

Make golf-ball-sized (or cookie scoop sized) cookies on ungreased OR parchment papered cookie sheet.

Bake 6-14 minutes. Do not over bake these - they'll look just a little under-done when you take them out, but they'll firm up on the cooling racks nicely.

Yield: somewhere around 175 cookies (using my handy-dandy cookie scoop).