Use What You Have Wednesday, or, the Garbage Cookie Post

Use What You Got Bitches!

This week, today is Use What You Have Day.  Thank you, Bethenny, for the best phrase ever.  I decided to try the coconut flour curry chicken recipe.  Yum!  It was not without incident of course.  I only had old wilted green onions, and didn't add the curry powder at the right time, and also was using chicken legs skin-on bone-in so I think they must have needed longer to cook than the recipe called for- so cutting into it at dinner blood squirted everywhere and I then microwaved it thinking I was going to kill myself and my husband from salmonella... three hours later I guess we are both still alive.  Um, it was really good though!  Super! The coconut flour added a really sweet, subtle flavor, and the curry spices were awesome.  All I did was saute frozen succotash veg from TJ's and frozen bell peppers in a little of the curry sauce.  Use What You Got!  Baby S had fun eating the red bell peppers.

Today I also made Garbage Cookies.  I am calling them that because I basically had a bunch of things that were almost used up so I threw 'em in.  The cookie originated from a Vegan Peanut Butter cookie Elana posted.  Hers called for PB, agave, celtic sea salt, spectrum vegan shortening.  So naturally mine had pretty much none of those things.  But, it turned out great!  Not sweet at all, almost salty.  You can tell there's no egg in it- and if vegan isn't important, I'd say add two eggs, it won't be so crumbly.  But these cookies are yum!  And lots of protein.  Here it is:

Garbage Cookies (Vegan, Gluten, Grain, and Sugar Free)
3/4 cup almond flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used less, whatever was at the bottom of the container I was trying to use up)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup sweetener dissolved in almond milk to get 1/4 cup liquid
1 tsp cinnamon (I put cinnamon in every single thing I make, leave it out if you want)
1/2 cup total of the following things I wanted to use up- homemade nutella, PB, and almond butter
2 tbs vegan butter, shortening, coconut oil, whatever
3 tbs flaxseed meal

Combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and cocoa powder.  In blender, add vegan butter, nut butter, vanilla, flaxseed, and almond milk mixture.  The almond milk mixture is my agave replacement.  Blend ingredients until thoroughly combined, then add to dry ingredients.  Spoon using 1 tbs scoop onto parchment lined cookie sheet and bake 10 minutes at 350.

These cookies definitely have the salty/sweet thing going on.  I like replacing some of the flour with cocoa powder- I love cocoa powder in anything!  I have also noticed I usually like adding more baking soda than is called for, same usually goes for vanilla and cinnamon.  Cinnamon has enormous health benefits and also sweetens and warms things up without added sugar.  It made all the difference in my apricot nut energy bars I made today too.  Just apricots, shredded coconut, walnuts/pecans, vanilla, and cinnamon.  Yum!


I'm going home to visit the family on Friday and am really excited!  I'll take S to the beach and she'll probably eat loads of sand.  I'm going to bring home an assortment of all my GFG approved snacks and try to persuade my mom to join the GFG cult.  And I'm super excited because Vera Bradley just had this awesome promotion where you could buy an enormous diaper/tote bag and a duffel bag for like, half off, and they should arrive in time for me to use them!  It's the little things right?  Very excited to travel with actual proper bags, instead of the broken, donated, ripped, ugly, crappy, things I've been lugging around.  Everyone registers for nice luggage when they get married and no one ever gets it.  Like towels and sheets.  No one buys you that stuff.  But now I'll have cute little matching travel gear and all is right in the world.