The Monster of All Cookies

If you have not heard of Monster Cookies, then I don't know how you have survived life to this point of time.  These cookies are basically every delicious thing baked into lumps of amazingness.  Lent is almost over and I have been thinking of all the things that I can do and have once the forty days of sacrifice are up.  Monster cookies came to mind because they have peanut butter, chocolate and oatmeal, a perfect blend of sweet and salty.  I decided to make some tonight and take some into work with me tomorrow night, then freeze the rest and take with us to Munchkie's Grandparents's for Easter.

We went to the store for the ingredients and on the way Munchkie was so excited.  She kept saying, "make cookies!  Yeah, make cookies!" Then her face lit up and she said "make cookies like Mimi! Uncle Yushin  likes cookies (nodding her head)." So I said, "Yes, Uncle Justin does like cookies, you're right." To which she replied "send Uncle Yushin cookies?  Yeah!  Send Uncle Yushin cookies!"  So we are going to send a package to both of Munchkie's uncles I think, since they are away from home.  So with Munchkie's help we made some hopefully yummy cookies (do you have any idea how difficult it is to not try the batter, or the product of your baking?).  I pulled from a few different recipes because I wanted to eliminate corn syrup, cut down on the butter, stuff like that, but don't think that makes these cookies healthy.  One of the great things about Monster Cookies is that you can put whatever delicious things you want in them.  Most of the time I've seen chocolate chips and M&Ms as a staple, but you can switch it up to whatever you think sounds good.

Monster Cookies

1. 6 eggs
2. 2 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
3. 2 cups granulated sugar
4. 1 teaspoon salt
5. 2 teaspoons vanilla
6. 4 teaspoons baking soda
7. 28 ounce jar of creamy peanut butter
8. 2 sticks of softened butter (yes this is cutting down)
9. 1 bag M&Ms
10. 1 bag semisweet chocolate chips
11. 1 cup crunched up pretzels
12. 9 cups quick oats

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. (Parchment paper is my new favorite thing!  It's so great, you don't even have to wash whatever you baked on, you just wipe it down, dry it off, and put it away.)
• In a large mixing bowl, or Kitchen Aide mixer, combine eggs and both kinds of sugar until creamed together.
•  Add in the salt, vanilla, baking soda, peanut butter and butter.
• Gently add the M&Ms and chocolate chips.
• At this point in time you have two options.  If you are using a large enough mixing bowl, you can continue to add the ingredients. If you are like me, and started in your Kitchen Aide, then you need to transfer the dough into a larger bowl.
• Mix in the oatmeal and then the pretzels.  

• Drop onto cookie sheets at your desired size, but keep them 2 inches apart.  I tended to go smaller, but they are supposed to be monster cookies.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes. DO NOT OVER BAKE! They are supposed to not look done.
• Let stand on cookie sheets for 3 minutes before transferring to wire racks to fully cool.
• Once completely cooled, store in airtight container or ziploc bag.

While these cookies are super easy, and fast to mix up.  They are called monster cookies are several reasons.  One of which is because it makes a monster batch.  I ended up with 86 cookies.  This is great for me because I have several plans for these cookies, but unless you plan on sharing or are practicing for competitive eating, you might want to cut the recipe down.  They do however, freeze quite well, and I intend on freezing most of mine for the next 6 days until I can enjoy sweets again.

Meatless Meals That Taste Great (Ultimate Recipe Swap)

I read this post a while ago and decided to go ahead and post it now.  With the Lenten season underway and no meat Fridays along with the rising cost of groceries, especially meat, I thought this might be helpful.  I haven't actually tried any of the recipes, but I am willing to try them if it means healthy for less!

Meatless Meals That Taste Great (Ultimate Recipe Swap)

Came across this

www.vitalicious.com

The other day I took Munchkie to Target to get her picture taken and forgot to grab anything to eat on our rush out the door.  When we got to Target I wanted to find something to eat that I wouldn't have to feel guilty about (and there wasn't a Starbucks inside, what Target doesn't have a Starbucks these days???).  Walking past the frozen foods to get to the portrait studio I saw these muffin tops that I had glanced at before when buying things from the frozen natural food section before.  I thought I would give them a try and see how they were.  I have to say that I was pretty impressed.  

I grabbed the CranBran and when I flipped the box over I could read, understand and even pronounce every single ingredient (Water, whole wheat flour, organic sugar, egg whites, whole wheat flakes, cranberries, molasses powder, soy bran, oat fiber, wheat protein isolate, oat bran, inulin, leavening (potassium bicarbonate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), wheat gluten, fruitrim (grapejuice, brown rice), acacia gum, natural flavor, sea salt, cinnamon, xanthan gum, lecithin, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, folic acid, iron, biotin, zinc) .  Amazing.  That is really hard to find on the backside of a box these days, which is why I usually tend to stay away from boxed foods.  The nutrition facts weren't that bad either.

They really filled me up and tasted pretty good too.  I can remember my mom bringing home foods from the health food store in town when I was little and it was disgusting flavored cardboard.  Things have come a long way.  I might actually keep some of these in my freezer for the day I run out of Homemade Granola Bars and don't have time to make more.  There are also a lot of different options if you look at their website at www.vitalicious.com.  When you look at their website on the side is a little walking man and it says that it only takes 13 minutes of walking to walk off one of their 100 calorie vitatop muffins.  That definitely eliminates any guilt you might have.  Thirteen minutes is nothing!

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Frozen Chocolate Covered Banana Coins

As I've already said I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, especially to relieve stress, frustration or a bad mood.  Yesterday I first make breakfast for the fam, then a batch of granola bars, popped some of these in the freezer, tried out a homemade playdough recipe (fail on that one), then cut up a ton of peppers (for my dinner at work and Munchkie daycare lunch).  I am trying very hard not to be stressed, but I'm just not doing very well with that.  I guess I'll just keep spending time in the kitchen for now and keep praying for peace.

I want to start off by saying that I cannot stand bananas.  I don't like to eat them, to have them in smoothies and will pick them out of a fruit salad.  However, I do like them in things like banana bread and frozen.  This is weird, I know.  When I was little my mom would make us these frozen banana snacks.  One was whole bananas dipped in chocolate, rolled in nuts and frozen while the other was sliced bananas and peanut butter in a graham cracker sandwich, again frozen.  A little while ago I decided to make these to both bring me back to my childhood and also have a chilled chocolate snack available so I wouldn't turn to something way less healthy.  I can pull a couple pieces out of the freezer, slowly eat them and have my cravings filled.  They are super easy and the active part only takes a few minutes.  I never really like dark chocolate, but the sweetness of the banana makes the dark chocolate much more tolerable, so I recommend trying out a darker chocolate than you think you would like, because the darker, the better for you.

Frozen Chocolate Covered Banana Coins

3 Bananas
3 large bars of dark chocolate
Almond butter (or any nut butter)
Almond pieces
Aluminum foil or wax paper
Freezer space

1. First cut the banana lengthwise.
2. Then cut the bananas into one inch "coins"

3. Place a small dab of almond butter in between each piece of banana coin.
4. Freeze these for at least an hour, preferably until firm.

5. Take the chocolate bars and break up into small pieces.
6. Once the bananas are frozen, melt the chocolate in a small pan.
7. Dip the banana coins in the chocolate and place on aluminum foil.

8. Drizzle the left over chocolate over the top of the bananas.
9. Sprinkle the almond pieces over top.
10. Drizzle more chocolate over the top of the almond pieces.

11. Freeze until chocolate is firm.
12. Break apart and store in a Ziploc or airtight container in the freezer.
13. Enjoy!

MLK Jr. GIVEAWAY!

The cool thing to do when you have a blog is to have giveaways.  I have entered countless giveaways on the blogs I follow and have, sadly, never won anything. Since holidays are for great deals, and I am close to having 2,000 hits on my blog (wow!) I thought I would try out a giveaway on my blog, even though it's not a cool new product.

I had talked earlier about how we made our Christmas presents this year and how much work it had been.  We had made extras because we didn't want to run out after all of the work we had put into them.

I bet you're wondering what exactly are these presents? A cookbook, pure homemade vanilla, a small utensil set (our favorite, we have about 4 sets of these), and all of this is wrapped in a dish towel.

We compiled our favorite recipes from all different sources into a cookbook for our friends and families.  The recipes came from scribbles on scrap papers in a folder, cookbooks, internet searches and our families.  We enjoy cooking and wanted to pass along some tasty recipes to others.

 The recipes are divided into nine different sections including Breakfast, Breadmaker Breads, Soup, Starters and Snacks, Sauces, Sides, Entree, Dessert and Beyond Food.  There are also occasional color photos of the items taken by us.  The recipes range from an amazing blueberry muffin to stinky shoe solution. 

 We also made homemade vanilla.  Many kinds of vanilla have additives, including the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, and aren't really pure vanilla.  Don't worry I opened, scraped and sliced the vanilla beans myself.  This is pure vanilla.  I actually haven't baked since it was finished brewing in my cabinet, but I hear it is very good.

So, I am going to offer two of these to two people who read my blog.  I don't have any neat computer program that will randomly select a winner, so I will have to do it the old-fashioned-pick-a-name-out-of-a-hat way.  In order to enter this giveaway leave a comment here on my blog with your email address. To have a second entry, become a follower of this blog and leave a comment saying that you are a follower. I will put all of the email addresses into a hat and draw from there. 

This giveaway will end Wednesday January 19th at 8:00am.  (Mostly because that's when I'll get home from work to see who entered.)  If you are a winner, I will email you and ask for your mailing address.

Good luck!

Full Freezer = Happy Munchkie's Mama!

I said before that I would talk about those processed-convient-chemical-ladden-frozen meals.  I think you can catch my thoughts from my description.  I am not saying anything about the people who make and eat them, I'm saying that the people who create them are to blame.  Let me give a quick synopsis of our food eating married lives.

First we got married six days after graduating from college and were thrown into grown up living, married life, first time real jobs and keeping up a home.   At first we were basically just surviving, eating fast food, take out, with an occasional frozen meal thrown in.  We both enjoyed cooking, however it was time consuming, we both hated dishes and expensive to decide to make a recipe and then buy everything that you needed for that recipe.  When we discovered that you could buy frozen fulled prepped meals (both of our moms are mostly homemade from scratch) in the store.  This our bridge to homemade cooking.  We were able to get into the routine of figuring out what to eat and then have the patience to cook it ourselves.  We found ourselves cooking at home more often because it was zero prep, quick, not very many dishes to clean (however we still felt sluggish and uck a lot).  Once we started doing this, we began branching out and making more meals from home.  This slow progression from fast food to homemade brings us to today (we find when we are eating a lot of organic food, fruits and vegetables and eliminating preservatives and chemicals we have so much more energy and overall feel better).

There is nothing more convenient than pulling out a frozen meal that is prepped and cook it up in minutes.  However most frozen meals are so full of chemicals, preservatives, and other not so good for you things.  The other night at work another nurse was showing me a Lean Cuisine frozen meal that said it was preservative free.  When I asked what was in it, on the ingredient list, she couldn't pronounce most of the huge list of ingredients.  For this reason I was so excited when I saw a friend's blog about freezer dinners  that I had to get the book right away.  When you make it yourself, you know what the ingredients actually are.  Due to my recent purchase of many pounds of meat and a weekend off, I have spent my entire weekend creating freezer meals and now I have about 70 options for frozen meals in my freezer.  That will last us a long time!

Now this is how a working mom has homemade meals for her family without relying on chemicals and preservatives.  I may not be able to provide a fresh homemade meal every night for my family, but I can make sure we have healthy options in the freezer.

Look at all I have made this weekend!  I had to create an inventory document because I don't know how else to know what we have buried in that bottomless hole of a deep freezer.  If anyone has an organization system for their deep freeze please let me know!

 It took a lot of pots to make all of the soups, which is why it took so many days.

 Munchkie's Daddy had made this tomato sauce a little while back, but I took inventory of it this weekend.

Spaghetti squash to go with the tomato sauce.  I have no idea how well this freezes, I guess we'll find out.

Chicken with Peanut Sauce frozen in rolls with a ziploc bag of peanut sauce in the middle.  I have plans to make a stir fry with some frozen peppers and onions and serve over rice with that peanut sauce.

Dijon Pork Loin Roast, we had to cut it up into portions for our family.  I think this will be served with some mashed cauliflower and salad.

Orange Teriyaki Chicken.  Going to be another stir fry.

Lentil Soup, a family recipe that took me a long time to try, but is now a winter staple.

Sausage, Kale and Bean Soup which is very yummy!

Chicken and Rice Soup, hopefully this is good, I didn't have a recipe, just kind of threw stuff into a pot.

Creamy (Creamless) Zucchini and Potato Soup which I haven't tried yet, but hopefully is good!

My full freezers make me very happy!