I know I’ve basically fallen off the grid for awhile….what can I say, life is busy and I thought I should probably put my kids ahead of my cooking blog….ha! I’m going to try to post more often but it might be a little more basic…less yakking on my part. Perhaps you all will view that as an improvement 😉

One thing that’s been happening around here (aside from a whole school year flying by) is that I embarked on a little weight loss journey. The past couple years I haven’t felt like myself. I was pretty unhappy with the weight I was and finnnaaaaallllly decided to do something about it. Honestly it took a couple years before I took the plunge and did 21 day fix (a program by Beachbody, the folks who brought you P90X and Insanity). I was scared to do it! It sounded too hard! But as my mom always said “anything worth doing is hard.” And of course she’s right. Anytime a person loses weight it’s hard and there really aren’t any quick fixes or short cuts. In a nutshell 21 day fix is portion control combined with low carb eating, real food and pretty much no sugar. But it really wasn’t/isn’t bad. Once I got used to it, it became a way of life and that’s sort of the idea. I can go into more detail another time, but since December I’ve lost 20 pounds! Yes I’m pretty proud of that! (If you are interested in more info you can check out my before and after pictures and website at http://www.beachbodycoach.com/rebeccakipe) I promise I won’t only talk about 21 day fix from now on!

On to the recipe… I just made these last night and knew I had to share them. Obviously my baking has been somewhat curtailed, although I have found new and fun recipes for regular food, plus treats that aren’t terrible for me! This is one of those. Healthy cookies. I know, that sounds terrible. But if they were terrible, would I be posting them? Um, no. Never fear, I will ALWAYS bake regular chocolate chip cookies because they are my favorite thing in the universe. But when I’m baking snacks for myself or my boys, I try to make them a little bit healthier. I sent these to school with them today for their morning snack. I never let them have cookies for morning snack so hopefully they were pretty excited. I’m pretty sure these are healthier than the store bought granola bars that I sometimes send. Enough blabbing….

 

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

(I doubled the batch straight off! this is a single)

about 1/2 cup ripe mashed banana, 1 Med/large

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter, better not to use natural

1/3 cup honey (I use raw)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oatmeal

1 cup crispy rice cereal

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips, or other favorite baking chip (cinnamon would be yummy!)

couple shakes of salt

In mixing bowl, add banana and mash with fork. Add the peanut butter, honey, vanilla and stir to combine. Add the oats, crispy rice cereal, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and stir together. The dough should be similar in consistency to regular cookie dough – sticky, but not crumbly or dry. If it’s too wet, add more oats, if it’s too dry, add more PB or honey. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Using a cookie scoop or a spoon, form the dough into 1-inch balls. Place on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and allow to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or up to 5 days.

When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cookies on cookie sheet covered with a silpat baking mat. Slightly flatten each cookie with a fork and bake for about 8 minutes. Remove as soon as you see slight browning. Err on the side of under baking. Allow to cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet before removing.

Store cookies in an airtight container. These were still great the second day! I don’t know about after that, because they were gone.

Adapted from Averiecooks.com