Say what you will about Facebook, it reunited me with a long-lost recipe for some of the best cookies I’ve baked in a long time.

Of course, it’s a little more convoluted than that.

Let me try to put this in as small a nutshell as possible. Back in high school, I traveled to England for six weeks to spend time with a friend of mine. The summer was pretty awesome: we snuck into pubs with our pitiful fake IDs that should not have helped us gain entry anywhere (Seriously, mine literally said: Canadian I.D.), visited London and Stonehenge, spent a week in a cottage in a seaside town in Wales and basically spent a lot of time hanging out without much parental supervision. But back in Vancouver, a girl whom I had called a best friend (and whose friend we were visiting in England) essentially severed our friendship. Since she had been friends with the girl in England much longer than I, I pulled back.

And then, 15 years later, she found me on Facebook. Did I still make those famous cookies? she queried. Um, what cookies?

Over the course of several e-mail conversations, she then relayed this message: I see you travel a lot. Any chance you’re coming over here any time soon? And I was.

Was I hesitant to reconnect with a person I had not seen, let alone communicated with, in more than a decade? A woman now with a husband and children who probably no longer craves Buck’s Fizz (an awful concoction of fizzy wine and orange juice that I guzzled that summer) and with whom I may no longer have anything in common? Um, yes. But then I arrived in Bristol to a Welcome Home sign coloured by her two children. I was welcomed at the dinner table like family and everything fell into place as if no time had passed other than we have grown wiser (for the most part) and can now legally buy our alcohol.

During the three days in Bristol, she pulled out of her recipe book and showed me the short list of ingredients written in my own bubbled printing that I had given her when we were still teens. I had, apparently, made these all the time. I have no recollection of them. I copied out the recipe — an odd sensation copying something written in my own hand — in my travel journal. Since then, there have been little nudges from overseas, reminding me of the recipe.

So, when a cup of butter sat softened on the counter and my plans to make a type of roll-out cookie had fallen through, it seemed only right to see just why that recipe had stood the test of time.

I am so grateful to have it, and my friend, back in my life.

It’s so basic that I don’t quite understand how all these dull-normal ingredients can come together to make such a thick, chewy cookie. But I’m definitely not going to lose this recipe again.

Long Lost Cookies

• 1 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

(I would consider the addition of nuts or dried cranberries might be a nice touch. But this recipe is pure deliciousness as is, so don’t feel you have to experiment.)

(EDIT: Some people have wondered why there are two types of chocolate chips in my photo. The answer is, quite simply, that I had half of a bag of milk chocolate chips left over from some other baking frenzy and wanted to use them up. Though the combination was good, just use whatever you have on hand.)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together softened butter and sugars until light. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, salt and baking soda, then oatmeal. Stir in chocolate chips (and nuts or cranberries, if desired). Bake for 10 – 12 minutes. (I like my cookies a good solid size. These ones I measured out using a mounded soup spoon and they took 12 minutes.) Let cool.