Winning Friends with Salad

Hey guys! Whew, I’ve had a long evening in the kitchen! I decided to make two types of cookie for my recipients: “You Got Your Peanut Butter in My Chocolate” Cookies from ED&BV, and Chewy Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon. I used the basic recipes, except I subbed Cashew Macadamia Butter for PB, and Blueberry Preserves for Raspberry Preserves. Here are all the cookies cooling:

PB on the left, Blueberry Chocolate on the right. I have to say, neither of the proportions were correct for me. The PB recipe was supposed to make 12, but I made 18! And the Blueberry Chocolate was supposed to make 12, but only made 10. Go figure. The PB batter was soooo delicate, though. It was impossible to scoop with a spoon! Luckily, before I met Peter, he had a jones for chocolate chip cookies one night and went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond where a saleswoman led him around buying the most random kitchen utensils, including this:

A batter scoop. The first time I saw this, I believe my exact words were, ‘Ah, you got taken for a ride.’ Well, I bite my tounge! This little baby saved these cookies! They would have been a crumbly disaster if not for this guy. Whew!

Two weird things about this baking experience: a) I’ve known for a long time that the best way to cook is to clean as you cook. You use something, you put it away, you use something, you put it away. But I’ve never actually had the maturity to do this. Well, tonight I was positively rigid about it - the kitchen was sparkling the entire time I baked! I even stopped in the middle to sweep. Bizarre…and even more bizarre… 2) I didn’t nibble at the batter AT. ALL. Not once. I knew it was delicious, but I knew it wasn’t for me. So I just didn’t eat it…weird.

Anyway, I’m going to give some of each to Ira and Martha; and also to my friend Ian’s (Hi Ian!!) girlfriend who is a student at the Bumble and Bumble Academy and will be giving me a haircut for free tomorrow as part of her class. Score! I took a ‘before’ picture tonight, so I’ll show you guys the finished product tomorrow!

For dinner, I wasn’t really that hungry (mostly I’m just tired) so I had a TJ’ Chicken Sausage on an Ezekiel Bread ‘Roll’ with about 20g of kale chips.

Well, after I did the math, I realized I was about 200 cals short for the minimum of my calorie range, so I needed more. I made a little parfait: 105g nonfat vanilla yogurt, 67g blueberries, 85g strawberries, and 12g Fiber 1.

Dinner was 347 calories, 56g carbs, 7g fat, and 21g protein.

I feel really proud of myself today. I feel like I made really responsible choices for my life and body. Night all!