Pumpkin Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookies

Something to cut the cravings!

Last night I made these cookies. They were by far the best "healthy cookie" I've made. 


Pumpkin Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookies
Nutritional stats per cookie: 128 calories, 7.7 fat, 11 carbs, 7.3 protein

1/4 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup oat flour (simply blend rolled oats in a food processor until they are a flour-like consistency) 

1 cup canned pumpkin 

1 scoop protein powder 

2/3 cup natural peanut butter 

1 cup liquid egg whites 

1/4 cup splenda 

1 tsp baking powder 

1/2 cup dark chocolate

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix all ingredients (the batter will seem too runny, but it's not). 
3. Spray two cookie sheets with Pam and scoop about a tablespoon and half unto the sheets until you've made 15 cookies. 
4. Bake for 10 minutes.

Makes 15 cookies

Not bad eh? Give them a try. They were awesome!  

In a Rush

Morning!

This has gotta be super quick, since I have to be at school early to finish a project.

Yesterday's lunch and afternoon snack looked something like this.

That protein bar made me feel so sick.. yuck.

That was dinner. It as SO good. Love Amy's mac and cheese.

Here's dessert.

Grapefruit and chia pudding.

Breakfast this morning was so good.

Pumpkin oats - using the usual recipe.

Bye Bye :)

My Way of Procrastinating

... is blogging of course!

I hope your evening has been fantastic thus far. Ours has been laid back, but right after I finish writing this post it's time to hit the books.

Pretty much right after my last post I had this to hold me over till dinner.

I love this flavor. Mmmm Mmmm good.

Then I scanned YogaDownload.com for a while, and bought the deal of the day. I didn't even see they had those! I'm planning to try it tomorrow.

D came home from work, and I made dinner.

For him - chicken ravioli and tomato sauce

For her (me) - vegetarian chili taco salad

I made it using the vegetarian chili from a few days ago, mixed greens, 1/4 green bell pepper, and nutritional yeast. It was pretty good, but it wasn't nearly enough calories to keep me full all night.

Soooooo, D and I hit up Superstore for a little frozen yogurt.

We usually just get the chocolate flavor, but today we decided on Cappuccino. AND we're SO glad we did!

It's yummy yummy. And yes, those are flakes of chocolate.

Alas, I must leave... I have a 3000 word paper to write.

A Protein Packed Dessert

Good Afternoon,

It's time to recap some of my food. I didn't post last night's meal or sensational dessert.

Here was my dinner.

It was the same as the other night. I cut up about 1/3 of the veggie pancake and served it over a bed of sautéed cabbage with the spicy mayo sauce. It was so good. I can't get over how good cabbage is! 


Here was dessert.

The banana soft serve has been frequenting the blogosphere lately. I made one attempt at it months ago, and was less than impressed - the texture was off for my liking. It wasn't until I saw Angela's recipe that I knew I needed to make a second attempt.

Her recipe:

• 1 frozen banana
• 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
• splash of almond milk 

My addition:

• 1/4 scoop protein powder

Blend everything in a food processor or blender until it becomes the consistency you like. Easy peasy, right?

Now to today's eats. You already saw what I had for breaky in the post before this one. It was so yummy. I love apples in my oatmeal.

After church I came home and made this quesadilla.

I filled the quesadilla with one of my leftover black bean burgers and goat cheese. Twas scrumptious, and was devoured in about 30 seconds flat. I was pretty hungry.

















I forget if I told you all about my new coffee discovery. When I was at the grocery store a few days ago, I picked up vanilla cream flavored coffee. It's so good! I'm not sure if it's a good thing I discovered this coffee, since it has almost doubled how much coffee I drink! I figure that as long as I stay hydrated what's the harm? Or at least that's what I'm telling myself to ease the guilt ;)

Deceivingly Delicious

How was your Friday? Mine was so laid back. I always feel guilty after Fridays for wasting my time, but they are my Saturdays, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. 

I had this smoothie as my afternoon snack. 

It tasted just like dessert. 

• 1/2 frozen banana
• 1/2 scoop vanilla whey
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
• cocoa powder
• 3 ice cubes

It was amazing! 

I drank this and hit my yoga mat for a little hip opening flow session. It made my hips feel so much better! I love YogaDownload.com 

Dinner time. I made myself the pictured items, and made D some white chicken enchiladas. He liked them.  

My dinner was not so much aesthetically pleasing, as it was completely delicious. 

For the cabbage:

• 1/4 head of cabbage
•  worcestershire sauce
• tons of black cracked pepper

Saute all three ingredients till cabbage is soft. 

For the veggie pancake:

• 1 carrot shredded
• 1 zucchini shredded
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup water

Mix all the ingredients thoroughly. Heat oil in a medium size skillet over medium heat. Cook the batter just like you would a pancake. This recipe makes 2 servings. 

I made this sauce to go along with it. 

• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• tuong ot sriracha sauce (hot sauce)  

I spread this sauce over everything. It was amazing; my tongue was on fire the whole time! I'll be using this a lot from now on. 

D and I rented Up in the Air. It's ok. I'm glad we waited for it came out on DVD. It's not worth $25 dollars to see it in a theater. 

• Chapman's chocolate frozen yogurt
• 3 chocolate covered almonds
• 1/2 tbsp granola 

Ok. This is the last bowl I'm having for a while. That's mostly due to the fact that it's all gone now. So until I buy another tub, I'm done with the Chapman's. :( I've had frozen yogurt three days in a row - I could use the break from the sweets. 

Finally Home

It's been a long night. I had my evening class tonight. It was a heavy class. Thankfully my teacher split up the class with a little group work.

I packed up my dinner.

• about 2 cups of mixed greens
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1/4 cup roasted brussels sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted cauliflower
• 1/4 cup roasted mushrooms 
• organic balsamic dressing 

• 1/2 banana 
• 1/2 tbsp natural PB

It hit the spot, and I as starving by the time I got to eat it. 

I may or may not be snacking on this bowl of frozen yogurt as I type out this post. 

An awesome treat after a long class. Time to hang out with my hubby. Night everyone :)

Oat-Branerrrrrific

Good morning everyone!

I slept so well last night; I wasn't even up before my alarm, which is huge for me!

Last night's dinner didn't hold me over as I hoped. I was still starving about a half hour after I ate it.

• 4 cups mixed salad greens
• 1/3 cup black beans
• 1/3 cup corn
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 1 serving firm tofu 
• 1 grated carrot 
• 1/5 avocado 

It tasted great - another great mexican feast. It was just too small, or I was just TOO hungry. 

So I made D and I these babies. 

These are the fitnessista's recipe. I did have to change the recipe quite a bit because I didn't have all the ingredients. 

Here are the switches. 

• Instead of two cups of spelt flour, I used 1.5 cups of whole wheat.
• Instead of vegan chocolate chips, I used 80% dark chocolate. 
• Instead of molasses, I used honey.
• Instead of almond butter (too precious to use for cookies), I used natural peanut butter.. 

And they turned out great! D was swooning over them, while he was eating his ice cream (frozen yogurt) sandwich. 

This was my dessert. 

One cookie with one scoop of Champan's Chocolate Frozen Yogurt. It was ahhhhhhh-mazing :)

Now, let's fast forward to this morning. 

• 1/3 cup oat bran
• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1/4 sliced banana
• 4 grams goji berries 
• 1 tbsp almond butter 
• cinnamon 

It was pretty darn tasty! After I'm finished writing this post, D and I are heading to the gym. I'm running 4 miles, and I'm not sure what he's planning. 

Have a fantastic morning everyone! 

The Celebration

Howdy,

Last night D and I went over to my parents house for a Halloween cowboy party. We ate Mexican food and watched Tombstone. SO much fun.

Here are some of the costumes:

My Aunty Carol on the left, my mom on the right

A few friends

D on the left (that's a wig, not his real hair. Thank goodness!), my dad is on the right

A few other friends

These are my dad's boots on the left, my boots are on the right (Aren't they fun! You don't see pink cowboy boots too often.)

My mom had prepared several courses of food for us to enjoy. The first, seafood soup with shrimp, scallops, sweet potatoes, and cilantro (not sure what else was in it).

The second course was a salad I didn't have because I was already getting full! The salad had a pumpkin seed vinaigrette. I did try some of that while my mom was making it, and it tasted a lot like tahini.

The main course was a spread of mixings for tacos. SO yummy, spicy deliciousness. This is my plate of food. I had one taco with pork and hot peppers, with sour cream to cool everything down a tad. The other taco is beef that was marinated in a spicy pepper marinade. I topped that taco with my mom homemade fire roasted tomato salsa and guacamole. And then some homemade beans. So so so good!

Dessert was a hit. It was almost like a berry cobbler, that my mom served with vanilla ice cream.

Everyone loved it. She made it in this huge skillet.

Great night! You can always expect to have wonderful food and company when you visit my parents ranch.

Have a great day everyone!

Late Evening!

Hello AGAIN!

I just had to blog the dessert I'm enjoying right now. One of the only desserts my mother used to make for my sister when we were growing up was rice pudding. She used to make it in the pressure cooker, the oven, and the method I use - the stovetop. It's one of those combinations of flavors that brings me back wonderful memories. I thought tonight would be an excellent night to make a pot of some of this goodness. And boy was I right!

I used Elise's recipe. I have used several of her recipes and she never disappoints. Her blog, Simple Recipes is one of my favorites. The recipe I used tonight is small enough for two people, but I'll admit I could finish off the entire thing myself. I'd be tempted to do just that, if I hadn't promised I'd save D some for tomorrow.

I absolutely love raisins in my rice pudding. Elise's recipe has the perfect raisin to rice ratio. FANTASTIC! Please give this recipe a whirl, whenever you're in the mood for a comforting sweet treat.

Lunch Time

Happy lunch time to all!

I was starved by the time lunch came around. D bought us some pitas from Pita Pit. It's so handy when you live in the city! All you have to do is walk down the street to get food when you don't feel like cooking - a new concept to this farm girl.

My pita consisted of a whole wheat pita, chicken breast, lettuce, mushrooms, green peppers, carrots, pickles, cucumbers and honey mustard dressing.

So good! It took me about 2 minutes to engulf the entire thing.

Well almost the entire thing.

And then this...

Half of a homemade oatmeal cookie. I now feel satisfied and ready for a workout!

My afternoon class was cancelled; however, it's not totally a good thing. I still have to do all the work we were going to do in class with no guidance of an instructor. Ah well, I'll get it done!

Have a lovely afternoon, I'll see ya in the evening :)

Sweet Dreams

Today, I wanted my post to you to be a special one. I wanted to share one of my favorite things. Something that makes my heart go "thump, thump", something that gives me goose bumps (in the best of ways), and something that I dream only the sweetest of dreams about.

Drumroll please!

My goodness gracious... this stuff... well let's just say that I crave it almost daily.

Tonight was no exception. Did I need dessert? Probably not, but man was it worth it. 2 and half scoops of chocolate frozen yogurt, 1/4 banana and a sprinkling of peanuts.

Bliss in a bowl!

I JUST HAVE to show this picture. Look at how cute D looks!