natural cookies

I'm getting hitched here in a few weeks and one of the things I'm looking forward to is a homemade cookie bar... that and marrying someone awesome is good too, but you know, cookies.

My future mother-in-law has a gluten intolerance, I have a pal who's paleo, a few vegetarians, and a lactose intolerant. I want everyone to have a little something sweet at the reception but without forcing them to lie crumpled in bed beyond a legitimate hangover. Enter the search for the do-all cookie.

And I've found it. It's refined sugar free, processed oil free, gluten free, and lactose intolerant friendly. It comes by way of the Cookie + Kate blogs and I nearly pee'd my pants when Kate answered my comment. She used my name!  

However, consider yourself warned, it does not stand up well to substitutions.

Do not bother making them if you don't have honest-to-God coconut flour. Do not bother making them if you found coconut flour but ran out of baking soda and seek to substitute the appropriate amount of sub'd leavener by way of baking powder. Maple Syrup seems to do better than honey and if you use coconut oil like me, you'll need to refrigerate the dough for 20 minutes before baking.

Vegan, Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Slightly adapted from Cookie + Kate, makes about 40 small cookies.

These naturally sweetened, vegan, gluten-free cookies taste like a cross between the traditional toll-house chocolate chip cookie and girl scout samoas.  While they are not low-cal, they are healthy in that they contain no isolates. Which I think is a better deal. However, they are seriously delicious and you may need to temper yourself! 

I also like that they come together so quickly and that they don't contain any butter or egg to go bad. In Claire-world, that means you can leave the bowl in the fridge for a couple of days and make yourself a fresh cookie or two as you are baking your dinner... and of course there's no need to worry about salmonella, so lick that beater! 

Ingredients

• 1  1/2 cup almond flour (aka almond meal) firmly packed
• 1/2 cup coconut flour, firmly packed
• 1/4 cup finely shredded unsweetened coconut flakes (optional) 
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt (Kate suggests fine grain sea)
• dash cinnamon (optional)
• 1 cup coconut oil, melted (you can use the same amount of butter if you don't need these to be vegan)
• 1 cup real maple syrup (or honey)
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups vegan chocolate chips* 

*This is a huge amount of chocolate for the cookies. You can dial this back if you want and they would still be delicious. I used enjoy life brand and was very satisfied. I don't have any other experience with other brands. The small chips did a great job though. I think if they were more like regular size chocolate chips it would be a good idea to run em through a quick chop- otherwise they are going to be too melty and messy. 

Instructions

1. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix the flours, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix in the melted coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. Stir in the chocolate.
3. Let the dough rest for at least 15 minutes in the fridge so the coconut flour can absorb some of the excess moisture and firm up so they won't spread too much in the oven. While resting, preheat oven to 350.
4. Scoop dough, one tablespoon at a time, in mounds onto the baking sheet, leaving a couple inches around each cookie.
5. Bake for about 9 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool on the sheet for a bit so they don't fall apart.

how to start a sorta-detox

My friend and her hubs are going to kick the sugar/carb addiction and I'm pretty stoked that she asked me for advice. What a compliment! She has yet to decide whether her two teens will be doing the cleanse too. I don't have kids so I can't really weigh in there. But I can say that the cleanse didn't feel like a diet, so they might not even realize it's going on! So here's my breakdown of how to kick-off a sorta-detox.

1.) may I suggest that you don't look at the scales and that you don't count calories during your time on the sorta-detox? It's hard enough to plan to eat clean. Focus on eating things that are good for you, not worrying about calories. It's a short period of time and you are retraining yourself- don't let yourself get overwhelmed.  If you are hungry, eat. Also, only plan to do it for 10 days. That way you aren't thinking, I can never have a diet coke again and then give up.

2.)  watch one of the documentaries to pump you up before you start planning. If you have netflix search for food documentaries or one of the following:

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead is a good one if you want to see dramatic change. This one follows a guy that had a litany of health problems (from obesity to a skin disorder) and he went on a juice fast and eventually became so healthy he didn't need his medicine anymore. amazing.
Hungry for Change is the one I watched right before the cleanse and convinced Jeff to get on board too. Although it's production could have been better, (it was a little cheesy) it was very, very interesting. It explains how processed food are addicting.
Forks over Knives is inspiring me to add more meatless meals into my diet. I was already doing that but this doc. really upped the ante focusing on studies which show that plant-based diet can reduce the risks of cancer. (The "knives" in the title is referring to surgery scalpels.)

3.) Pick your "rules." You can pick anything from just kicking out artificial sweeteners to a full scale detox where you go completely vegan and/or wheat free. It just depends on what you want. For me, somewhere in the middle was good.

My rules were nothing refined (foods that have been so broken down that they only have one nutrient: white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sugar, bleached flour, etc.); no artificial preservatives (sodium nitrates, etc. That means no deli meats, and most salad dressings are off limits.), no hormones (in my meat or dairy); organic for the dirty dozen; and no preventative antibiotics. So my rules allowed natural sugar. I ate honey, maple sugar, and fruit. I was really addicted to sugar and the second day I came home and just ate a spoonful of honey straight. I had to have something! But the honey isn't as addicting because it's whole. I don't think I would have been able to go off natural sugars too although some people do and swear by it. God bless em'.

Hint, if you are trying to save $, skip the organic fruits and veggies- In my opinion the pesticides hurt us less than the hormones and antibiotics, but the good thing about organics (fruit, veggies, dairy) is that they last longer. I don't know why, but they do. I guess when you poison something a little it dies faster. If your goal is just to kick the sugar/carb addiction, obviously you can skip the organics all together.

4.) Plan your 10 days. (or 14, or 30!)  It'll be difficult to stick to the game plan if you don't know exactly what to cook when you get home from work. As you know, cooking from scratch takes longer, so you don't want to be hungry and trying to think of what to have for dinner. (Hint: plan for snacks too.)  Here's what I planned.  (The red bean curry was amazing! The pumpkin spiced oatmeal was not. Surprising, no?)  You don't have to stay on your menu if you feel like free-styling. I mixed my breakfasts around. It's just good to have a game plan mostly for grocery shopping so that you won't have to make a mid-week run.    

5.) Go grocery shopping. Plan that it will take longer than your typical run and expect it to cost a little more. Produce is more expensive than processed carbs. And that's because the way our governmental subsidy system is set up.... but that's a long (and controversial) story. But I can say, it's not going to be as much as you think because you aren't going to have waste and you hopefully won't have to be making little trips to the grocery store on the way home.

6.) Have your last supper! Go out to eat and let someone else cook for you. Enjoy it, realize you aren't giving it up forever, and then pack your lunch for tomorrow!

"He that takes medicine and ignores his diet, wastes his doctor's time"- Chinese Proverb

Headaches

So I sort of fell off the bandwagon over the past 2-3 days. I was eating valentines candy and some chocolate leftover from Christmas. Last night I had a huge headache. The first substantial headache I've had since the cleanse. This one was keeping me awake last night. Further, I can rule out hormonal imbalance because I've been tracking that too. Guys, I'm more convinced than ever that refined sugar gives me headaches.

Perhaps something like this? http://www.livestrong.com/article/116901-sugar-causing-headaches/

What do you think? Does anybody else have reactions to sugar? I'd love to hear about it.

What coconut oil can't do

http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/rubin.html

Whilst proper nutrition can prevent and ease a host of health problems, there's no guarantee that eating something is going to rid you of any need for an M.D.

Valentine noms

Some Valentine's related recipes (and a reason I need a nut-milk bag!)

For those on a cleanse:
Reboot Blush Juice

For those avoiding processed sugar, but still chocolate lovers:
Double Chocolate Torte

For those in deserve of an after-work cocktail:
Blood-Orange and Bourbon 

P.S. The Lentil Burgers were delicious!
My veggie stock was past its prime so I just used water to cook the lentils. I was tempted to use beef broth. That probably would have been pretty tasty, but yesterday was for meat-abstinence so water worked just fine.

I paired my patty with Ezekiel bread, hummus, avocado, alfalfa sprouts, tomato, and roasted red pepper. Perhaps all the toppings were what made it so delicious. I have a good bit of burger leftover so I'm going to experiment with different kinds of burgers. I'm thinking a greek burger with balsamic vinegar, feta, and olives mixed into the burger, paired with hummus, red pepper, red onion, cucumber, and cilantro.

Going Old School: Meatless Fridays

Today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Part of Lent is sacrifice, including abstaining from meat on Fridays. It used to be that Catholics would abstain from meat every Friday throughout the year. (Catholic pals, check this out. I didn't realize we were supposed to be keeping up Friday penance!)  Now, most American Catholics only observe the practice during Lent. 

Here's what I'm having for dinner (no pun intended).  I'll let you know how it turned out.

As usual, something we are supposed to do for our spiritual health has a collateral benefit. 

Now there are secular movements which recognizes the benefits of abstaining from meat once a week as the old school Catholics did and do. In a nutshell, "Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel." source