The kitchen is a place where I can quiet my mind. I can focus simply on the task at hand. I freely admit that this quieting of the mind is not something I am very good at. Which is precisely why I had to bake today. My father told my mother to tell me not to bake...but I had to do it anyway. I tried to respect his wishes by compromising a bit. I made a very small batch of cookies. I even put them in the freezer and gave some away to a neighbor, so as to hide the evidence. Said cookies are still in the tupperware I packed them up in. They have migrated however, from the freezer to the countertop...that was NOT my doing. I left them there.
These are my most recent attempt at "healthy" cookies. Healthier...but as has recently been brought to my attention by the newly health conscious Cookie Monster, cookies (whether healthy or traditional) are a "sometimes food". The Cookie Monster's lost his cookie eatin' gusto.
Here's the recipe.
Whole Grain Lower Sugar Cookies4 T. unsalted butter, softened
1/3 c. sugar
21 splenda packets
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract
1 t. almond extract
2 c. White whole wheat flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together sugar, splenda, and butter until light and fluffy. Add egg and extracts. Mix well. Add dry ingredients and beat on medium until thoroughly incorporated. At this point you could either roll your dough into a log and slice it, or you can roll it out and use cookie cutters. I did the latter. I rolled my dough quite thick, and ended up getting about 2 dozen cookies.
You could leave them unfrosted. I actually thought they were quite lovely that way. A sweet wheaty biscuit. I felt like decorating, however.
Easy Frosting2 T. butter
1/8 c. milk
2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla or almond extract
any desired food coloring
Mix ingredients together and frost away! This frosting is very forgiving...you can thin it out with more milk, you can thicken it up with more powdered sugar.
Oh yes. The most important part of this post. I didn't realize that I needed to flour my cookie cutters until late in the game. For this reason, the ghost's skinny little hands were sticking in the cutters. Rather than try to squish them back onto their arms, I decided it would be fitting to bloody their extremeties instead. Ghoulish little halloween cookies, they became.
I was wanting some healthy comfort food. Warm veggies, melted cheese, etc.
I stuffed pounded chicken breast with sundried tomato basil feta and field greens.
Sauteed apple and sweet walla walla onion to put on top of field greens and celery with a honey dijon balsamic vin. Melted provolone and garlic/parsley seasoning into a cubed (but not sliced all the way through) mini-baguette. 
Lastly, I sauteed some green beans with olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon.
I wanted to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Mostly cause I love the dough. I also wanted to do something autumnal. What comes to mind? Pumpkin. Yay! Pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. What a BRILLIANT idea! Right? Right? OhOhOh so wrong. They didn't flatten enough, the pumpkin was too strong, and they had an aftertaste to boot! (Maybe due to too much nutmeg, or perhaps because I used whole grain white flour??? I don't know).
For some reason, in recent time, Sunday night has become "steak night" at our house. Sunday night is often the only time the whole family gets together for a meal. Lately, my brother Grady's lovely girlfriend Whitney has been joining us for Sunday night dinner. It was certainly not on purpose, but I think the first half dozen times she came over, we managed to be serving red meat. One night we had to promise her we'd fix something different the next weekend.
The kitchen is a place where I can quiet my mind. I can focus simply on the task at hand. I freely admit that this quieting of the mind is not something I am very good at. Which is precisely why I had to bake today. My father told my mother to tell me not to bake...but I had to do it anyway. I tried to respect his wishes by compromising a bit. I made a very small batch of cookies. I even put them in the freezer and gave some away to a neighbor, so as to hide the evidence. Said cookies are still in the tupperware I packed them up in. They have migrated however, from the freezer to the countertop...that was NOT my doing. I left them there.
These are my most recent attempt at "healthy" cookies. Healthier...but as has recently been brought to my attention by the newly health conscious Cookie Monster, cookies (whether healthy or traditional) are a "sometimes food". The Cookie Monster's lost his cookie eatin' gusto.
