Healthier Chocolate Chip Cookies

Over the years I've been looking for ways to make things I love better for me. And like just about everyone else in the US I love chocolate chip cookies.

Now, let's pause a moment before I get into the recipe. These are healthIER chocolate chip cookies, not HEALTHY chocolate chip cookies. They've got lots of fat and calories. They are still real cookies, not cardboard tasting diet things.

But, they also have anti-oxidants, calcium, and iron, things not usually found in chocolate chip cookies.

2 Sticks of Butter
1 1/2 cups of sugar (or if you really want to up the "healthy" aspect 3/4 cups sugar and 3/4 cups Splenda.)
1 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract (use the good stuff, it's worth it!)

Cream the first three ingredients together until light and fluffy.

1 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour
1 Cup Almond Flour/Almond Meal
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Mix dry ingredients together.

2 Eggs

Once butter mixture is creamed add the first egg. Mix until fully incorporated. Add second egg, mix until fully incorporated.

Add the dry ingredients a half cup or so at a time.

3 Cups of Chocolate Chips. (I use a mix of half Nestle Chocolate Chips and half bits of Ghirdelli dark chocolate. The more dark chocolate the more anti-oxidants.)

Blend in the chips.

Drop onto a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 until you can smell the cookies (about seven minutes).

This dough freezes very well, so I portion out the cookies when I make the dough, cook some of them and freeze the rest. When I want cookies I grab some from the freezer stick them on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, and bake at 350 until I can smell them. Ten minutes give or take. Only making two or three cookies at a time also helps keep these healthy, you don't feel the need to eat six or seven of them because they're just sitting on the counter waiting for you.

The addition of Almond flour to the recipe adds Iron, Calcium, and Protein to the cookies. The dark chocolate adds anti-oxidants. (If you like some of the chocolate chips can be replaced with dried cherries, which would also increase the anti-oxidants, and make these more of a 'grown-up' cookie.)

These are thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies. Very crispy. Don't try to sneak one near the kids because they'll hear you crunching it even if they can't see you eating it.

Hip Deep In Baby Poop

In the Moo Household there are two little Moos. Baby Moo is three months old, Toddler Moo is a bit past two and a half.

We've been working on potty training with Toddler Moo. So far with no real results of a satisfactory to grown ups variety. Toddler Moo on other hand has been enchanted with all things poop. Today while I was putting Baby Moo to sleep (Which means that I am upstairs, where it is quiet, and Toddler Moo is downstairs to keep it that way.) my keen mommy hearing picked up something vaguely like "poopy" from downstairs.

I head down to investigate, and see Toddler Moo dancing at the bottom of the stairs in his shirt. Since he was wearing a shirt, pants, diaper, and socks when I saw him three minutes earlier I am somewhat dismayed. I become very dismayed when I realized that yes, he is singing "Poopy."

He then leads me through the kitchen, past his pants, socks, and diaper, all of which are pristine, into the dining room where he proudly shows me how he pooped on the floor.

As I am cleaning him and the floor up we have a conversation about how there are only two acceptable places to poop, in his diaper and in the potty. We go over this several hundred times because he keeps saying "I don't know." when I ask him where it's o.k. to poop.

An hour later I've got both Baby Moo and Toddler Moo down for their naps, so I decide to do something reckless, something wild, something I've really wanted to do since last night. I get a shower.

When I get out Baby Moo is screaming, because he's very good at waking up at exactly the least convenient moment possible.

I grab him and take him into my room, where I continue to get dried off and dress. I hear some faint sounds from Toddle Moo's room but this does not worry me. After all, he often plays in there for a bit before settling into his nap. However, a few minutes later, when I've brushed my hair and gotten Baby Moo fully calmed down I hear something that puts a chill in my heart: the sound of splashing.

Now, there is only one thing in our house that a toddler can splash in that does not require turning on water first (Which I very much did not hear!) and that would be the toilet.

I enter the boy's bathroom and find Toddler Moo, once more in just a shirt, dunking his diaper in the toilet. (He does get full points here for remembering 'Poop goes in the potty.') He is covered in poop. While taking off his diaper he's gotten poop up to his elbows, on both legs, and feet. His socks and shirt are smeared with it. The bathroom is not exactly a bastion of hygiene either.

I gingerly peel his clothing off and toss him in the tub to hose him off. (It is about this time that Baby Moo notices that I am no longer in the room with him and begins to scream.) I hurry through the washing to so I can try get to the baby.

I'm heading into Toddler Moo's room when the smell of poop almost knocks me over. In addition to getting poop all over himself, and the bathroom, he somehow managed to get it all over his bed as well. (Interesting side note, although the quilt and sheets were smeared, not a single stuffed animal, a whole zoo of which live on his bed, had even a molecule of poop on them.)

At that point I was just about to join Baby Moo in screaming.

But I don't because Toddler Moo is so happy about getting the poop in the potty. Plus he was deeply satisfied at staving off nap time for an extra half hour, and he got some brand new sheets to sleep on.

Moral of the story: Be very specific about how you want that poop to end up in the potty when talking to a two-year old.