Cookie Monster

These are about 4 or 5 inches in diameter.

On second thought, better make that Monster Cookies, because they're huge! I'm always looking for things that my husband, Scott, can have for breakfast that don't involve a bowl or milk, since usually he's eating breakfast in his car on the way to work. He needs something that will fill him up and give him lots of energy because he doesn't always get lunch at the same time, and sometimes it's a long time between breakfast and lunch. Most breakfast rolls/muffins aren't filling enough or are more sweet than nutritious. I'd heard about "breakfast cookies" that were loaded with granola-type ingredients, but hadn't seen a recipe. Then my September issue of Martha Stewart Living came and, lo and behold - a recipe for breakfast cookies! I immediately showed it to Scott to see if he wanted to try them and he was game, so I decided to try it.

Raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower seeds, Craisins, dried blueberries & dried apricots.

I made a few changes to the ingredients, since Scott wasn't totally enamored of some of the dried fruit choices. The original recipe calls for dried mango, dried papaya, and raisins or dried currants. I substituted dried blueberries for the mango, diced dried apricots for the papaya, and dried cranberries for the raisins. The rest I left the same. In shopping for the ingredients, I found that it can be difficult to find raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds at the local chain supermarket, unless they have a really good bulk foods section. They can be expensive, too. If you have a Trader Joe's near you, I found all my nuts, seeds and dried fruit there and really reasonably priced. I'm pretty confident that Whole Foods would have them all, too, but we don't have one near us.

I use a chopper for my nuts and chop a handful at a time.

The quantities of this recipe seemed huge to me (except for the dried fruit), and I was skeptical. I mean, it's supposed to make 8 large cookies using 1 cup of batter or 16 smaller cookies using a half cup. So why would you need a whole pound of butter? I suppose that for all of the dry ingredients you would need a lot of fat to hold them together. Anyway, I was right - this makes way more than 16 small cookies and they were by no means small - more like 4 or 5 inches across. When I added the oats to the recipe the dough kept trying to escape from my mixer bowl and it was hard to keep it from clumping on the paddle.

Escaping dough! This recipe is huge. The white area is the dried coconut.

The dough is very stiff and I decided to use the half cup size. Even then, the amount of dough was enough that I patted them down significantly in order to avoid having cookies that were thicker than an inch, which made them spread out enough that I could only get 5 or 6 on a sheet. The fun part was putting the banana chips on top before baking; I pressed mine into the dough slightly to make sure they didn't fall off. This recipe easily made 18 or more very large cookies. I highly recommend a large drink with them - juice, milk or your favorite coffee beverage. And if you're someone who doesn't eat a lot of fiber, make sure you drink a lot of water throughout the day, since this is a lot and you'll need the water to help digest it. And as with any high fiber food, you may notice a slight change in your number of bathroom trips. *grin* My husband commented on its effect on him.

Verdict: My husband liked the one he had yesterday, although he didn't have a drink with him and his only complaint was that he needed something with it, as it felt dry on its own. Not terribly, but he felt it needed a couple of swallows of something to go with it. I had one this morning with coffee and it was pretty good. I think it might be good crumbled over yogurt as an alternative to granola or muesli. If I make this again, I'm definitely cutting the recipe in half (except for the fruit, perhaps), since I'm not sure that my family will eat all of these giant cookies before they start to go stale.

You can find the recipe here.

Squashed

Thursday should have been a fairly mellow day. I'd planned an easy dinner: soup and sandwiches. I had big plans. See, I'd gotten this butternut squash a while back (they keep for a long time) and hadn't gotten around to making my favorite fall/winter squash soup. After a whirlwind morning that included taking Maeve to the orthodontist and a brief trip to Safeway for some groceries, I was all ready to come home and chop up my squash and get cooking. Except I didn't get around to it because my Little Man is teething and he's been miserable, wanting to be held all the time. I finally got him down for a nap and had some lunch, then decided to get going on the squash.

After a few interruptions I'd gotten the squash peeled and cubed and the celery chopped, when I discovered that I had no onions. Not a one. Little Man was asleep - really, really asleep - and since that was what I'd wanted, I decided to let sleeping babies lie and put the soup on hold. Instead I folded laundry, got some other laundry done and then started on the girls' dinner. By the time it was ready, Little Man was awake and ready for dinner. He got to eat, then we all bundled into the car for yet another trip to Safeway to get onions. Fast forward several hours and I was finally enjoying my soup at around 11:30 pm. It was the perfect creative way to regain the sanity I'd lost during the day and was well worth waiting for.

So I thought I'd share this soup recipe with the rest of the world, or at least for those who haven't discovered the joy of soup. This one comes from the cookbook Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. If you aren't familiar with the Moosewood Restaurant, it's a vegetarian (mostly - they do serve fish) restaurant located in Ithaca, NY that is well-known for being fabulous, in a groovy, all-natural, hippy kind of way.

So here's the recipe. It's surprisingly easy and only has 131 calories in a 9-ounce serving. Plus, it's a super yummy way to eat your veggies.

New England Squash Soup

1 c. diced onions
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed *Note: I generally make it 2 cloves because I like garlic*
1 c. unsweetened apple juice
1 butternut squash (about 1 pound), peeled, seeded, and cubed
1 potato, diced
3 cups water or vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 cups sliced mushrooms (about 6 ounces)
3 tbsp dry sherry
1 tbsp soy sauce
pinch of dried marjoram
2/3 c. evaporated skimmed milk
salt and ground pepper to taste

Combine the onions, celery, garlic, and apple juice in a large soup pot. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables soften. Add the squash, potato, water or stock, bay leaf, thyme, salt, and nutmeg. Bring to a boil , cover, lower the heat, and simmer until the vegetables are very soft, about 20 to 25 minutes.

While the soup simmers, sauté the mushrooms in an uncovered skillet with the sherry, soy sauce, and marjoram until the mushrooms are tender and most of the liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

When the squash and potatoes are very soft, remove the soup from the heat and, working in batches, purée the soup with the evaporated milk in a blender or food processor. Reheat gently. Add salt and pepper. Serve topped with the sautéed mushrooms.

I must admit that I've not yet tried the mushroom part because I'm not sure of the combo of squash and mushrooms, and when I first made this soup I was pregnant, so all I wanted was the squash taste and the idea of mushrooms was a turn-off. Also, I use stock but I find that many of the vegetable stocks available in the market taste very onion-y, something that I really don't like. So I use 1 can of vegetable stock and one can of chicken stock because I'm not a vegetarian. I've done it both ways and it's pretty good this way, too.