My friend sent me a recipe for vegan cookies and I decided to run with it and experiment with some things.  Was that a good idea? I think experimentation as a general concept is great – it’s super to try new things and yadda yadda yadda.  But “be prepared” is the lesson here because sometimes your experiments will look like crap (both literally and figuratively).  How did they taste?  Well, I’m the only one who has ventured to eat them.  I think they taste decent enough but the reason I keep popping them in my mouth is because they are nutritious, low-cal and because, damnit, I’m stubborn and not going to let them go to waste!

I thought about whether I should actually post the recipe.  I mean, if I’m saying they only taste “decent” and look like crap, why bother?  I then remembered that some people are masochists and others like a challenge!  So take this recipe and make it better!  Or recreate it to torture yourself (haha!)!   Here you go!

Ingredients

• 3 medium bananas – 315 calories, 1.2 g fat, 9.3 g fiber, 3.9 g protein
• 1/3 cup Trader Joe’s unsweetened apple sauce – 50 calories, 0 g fat, 2 g fiber, 0 g protein
• 1/4 cup Trader Joe’s roasted, 50% less salt, whole almonds, chopped – 180 calories, 16 g fat, 4 g fiber, 7 g protein
• 2 cups Quaker oats – 600 calories, 12 g fat, 16 g fiber, 20 g protein
• 1/4 cup corn meal, medium grind – 110 calories, 1 g fat, 5 g fiber, 2 g protein
• 1 scoop Amazing Grass Chocolate Green Superfood Drink Powder – 70 calories, 1 g fat, 2 g fiber, 2 g protein
• 1/2 a Trader Joe’s 120 calorie pack of dried cranberries, a little less than 1/3 cup – 60 calories, 0 g fat, 0.5 g fiber, 0 g protein
• Total: 1,385 calories, 31.2 g fat, 38.8 g fiber, 34.9 g protein

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Mix all ingredients together
• Place by rounded teaspoonful onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and sprayed with cooking spray
• Should be done in 15-20 minutes

Makes 36 cookies. Nutritional content per cookie = 38.50 calories, 0.87 g fat, 1.08 g fiber, 0.97 g protein

Now on to something else, cookies got me thinking about the Cookie Monster

The cookie monster got me thinking about hunger and then I was thinking about “Hunger” the Weight Watcher’s little monster who is hunger personified

Interesting resemblance between the Cookie Monster and Hunger, no?  Maybe this makes me sound like a little girl (which, let’s face it…) but I think the little Hunger monster is so adorable!  I remember thinking about the Hunger monster when the commercials first came out.  At first I shook my head and wanted to call the WW marketers and forewarn them that they would get a huge backlash for personifying hunger.  I could just hear viewers calling them and angrily asking, “how could you demonize hunger? Are we supposed to fear eating? Do you want us to starve ourselves?!”  Then I took off my marketer’s crisis avoidance hat, and thought “aww but he’s a cute little guy!” I can see people using him as a mascot.  Taking him to baseball games and to family picnics (no? that’s just me?).  See an interesting blog post here on blog site – The F-Word – the comments are what I found most interesting as the debate about our Hunger monster goes on.  What do you think?  Is he just a cute little mascot that in an ideal world will help us subconsciously link hunger with cuteness?  Or is personifying hunger in a villainous light an awful thing to do to people struggling with food issues? Or is this the greatest marketing tactic ever (as I’ve read you can now buy Hunger at WW meetings…)? Does anyone else find this all a tad bizarre?

Here’s one of the WW commercials with Hunger:

I must admit when Hunger played the trumpet I wanted to pull him from the screen and give him a big smooch! He is too cute!

All this talking about stuffed little cute monsters got me thinking about my favorite stuffed animal, Rhino, who my boyfriend got me.  Then a romancing occurred right before my very eyes…but I don’t think Rhino was too happy with it…

Have a wonderful day my friends!

Tags: calories, Cookie Monster, hunger, nutritional information, recipe, trader joes, vegan cookies, weight watchers