Well it’s Monday and it’s January 2012 so it feels like a day of renewed committment to goals. I put up the 2012 calendars around the house (yep, 9 days after the first of the year…don’t judge). And seriously, we have a lot of calendars around the house so this was a decent feat. Especially putting up the ginormous shoe calendar I got for Christmas (my mom, whom I love and adore, has it in her head I am a shoe diva…maybe I will be one day, but I haven’t bought a shoe in months…and it was probably a pair of flip-flops from Target).
Over the weekend I started on one of my 2012 goals: creating healthy desserts. I’m not sure what really qualifies as a healthy dessert, but basically I am working on making them healthier. The BF is a big part in this decision because the poor guy is trying to lose weight, meanwhile I am baking delicious goodies left and right. I figure I can still bake for him as long as I try to healthify the recipe, right?
Semi-Healthy M&M Cookies
The Daddio gave me a giftcard over the Christmas holiday to help with all of the goodies I was baking. He wrote a little note saying it was to “help spread the joy of my baking.” Isn’t he awesome?
Well it turns out I didn’t go back to the store until a few days ago (when I made the delicious Tai at home meal) and I used the giftcard to get some new foodie items to try. Two of these items were Chia seeds and Flaxseed flour.
Oh how I adore shopping in the Health Foods section at the grocery store.
I typically start in that section of the store, just browsing, I tell myself. Then I see one thing that I must have. Must have. Such as a bag of delightful almond fit Kashi granola. And then my wide eyes wander to other fancy foodie items…really, like a kid in a candy store. I grab the boxes and bags and eagerly read over the nutrition info and health benefits. I could stay in that part of the grocery store all day. Live there, really. I should just grab the tent from the garage, and maybe a pillow and blanket and just camp out in pure bliss.
Is anyone else this passionate about food?
Back to the cookies! The delightful Semi-Healthy m&m Cookies.
I spent some time perusing the interweb to figure out just how one bakes with Chia seeds and flaxseed flour.
I found a couple of handy pages:
- Livestrong.com How to Bake with Flaxseed Meal. I decided to use the method of substituting flaxseed flour for regular flour.
- Livestrong.com What Can Be Used to Substitute Eggs in Baking. I used the recipe for “chia gel.”
Semi-Healthy m&m Cookies
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup crisco (I used butter-flavored)
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 TBS milk (I used light vanilla soy milk)
- 1 TBS vanilla
- 1 TBS chia seeds + 3 TBS warm water = chia gel (let sit for 5 minutes to get thick)
- Dry ingredients:
- 1 & 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup flaxseed flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup dark chocolate m&ms
How To:
- Cream together sugars and crisco. Add milk, vanilla and chia gel.
- In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients (not m&ms) together.
- Slowly add dry ingredients and carefully stir. Add m&ms.
- Either scoop cookies onto greased baking sheet if you are baking immediately, or put dough into the fridge for an hour.
- Bake 8-10 minutes at 325 degrees F. Make sure to watch the cookies as the flaxseed flour makes them brown quicker.
I baked a batch of these at my casa and brought some to my Chem study group and they were a hit. (Okay our entire Chemistry class is 6 people so it was just me and one other girl, but she liked the cookies. 😉 )
The rest of these were baked in a messy dude’s kitchen while I hung out with the BF while he packed. Just imagine what happens to a kitchen where two dude’s live, both of which work about 60 hour work weeks and don’t mind coming home to a place that looks like it’s been over run by wild beasts and whirling dervishes. Let’s just say I am grateful for the Daddio’s neat kitchen. 😉
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| Some of them looked tie-died on the back…pretty 🙂 |
In other news…
The zillion calendars I put up all around the class are reminding me of what this week is.
I can’t believe the day is here, but my first online class at the university is starting today! If you’ve read my little “About Me” section, you may know that I have been attending a local community college for (*cough* three years) and am transferring to a local university for my super-fantastic degree Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Sciences. I will still be taking a couple of classes at the community college, but this semester I am taking an online nutrition course as well as an in-class nutrition course.
I am over-the-mood excited for more nutrition classes. I bet you could tell that based on how gaga I get in the health food section of the grocery store.
More importantly, I am excited for finally starting at the university because my future degree seems more real. I try not to think about the fact that I still have two-and-a-half years to go, according to my adviser (thank you changing my degree from Exercise Nutrition…you wouldn’t think it’d be that big of a difference…).
Graduating will mean I can get a real job.
A real job, in my opinion, is one where you aren’t dealing with carrying drinks out to the table that will give you a few bucks for your trouble. Maybe I am a little wary of the restaurant/barista world, having been in it for 5 or 6 years…but I need to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel…even if I do have to get past a few more doof’s snapping their fingers at me, telling me to “keep the change” when it is only a dollar, and drama-filled co-workers… in said tunnel. If you are a person who plans on waiting tables for the rest of your life, you certainly have a gift of patience which I do not possess.
A real job may also mean I could buy some cool shoes, like the ones on my mom’s thoughtful calendar. I wouldn’t mind a pair of those sparkly pink pumps…
Well I am off to plan my life for the semester (while watching Modern Family…thanks Netflix!),
go for a run, head off to the wing-n-beer joint job and probably have another cookie in there somewhere.
I hope you all have a great Monday!
How are your New Year goals coming along?
Have you ever worked in a restaurant?
Linking up to:
Valentine’s Day Healthy Bake-Off with Davida at The Healthy Maven
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