Ingredients

1 stick Crisco-bar or 2 sticks butter (16 tablespoons total)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 cups white sugar (may substitute brown sugar)
a couple glops of honey (or more if you reduce the sugar a little)
2 eggs
a gurgle of vanilla (2 tablespoons if you're picky)
1 banana (easier to smush if it's ripe enough that the peel is browning)
1/2 cup nuts (I like walnuts) or 1/2 to 3/4 cup shredded coconut
2.5 or so cups of flour

Procedure

Melt Crisco in a large bowl. Smush a banana into it. Add in everything else but the flour. Add nuts for a banana-nut cookie. Or add coconut for the banana-coconut version (very exciting!).
Mix. Add flour.
Mix some more.
Add extra flour until the mixture is reasonably firm (doesn't stick very much to your fingers).
If you added much honey, it helps to chill the dough briefly -- otherwise the cookies melt and make big flat cookies (though they still taste good).
Drop little clumps of dough onto baking sheet.
Bake 9-10 minutes at 375 degrees F. Don't overcook -- Tom's cookies should come out slightly undercooked for that delicious chewy texture.
If you pull them out a little undercooked, you can let them cook just a little more after you pull them out of the oven as they're cooling off on the cookie sheet.

I'm getting hungry just typing this in.