Fake "Cookies" & Vegetarian Dinner

There is something you need to know about me. I'm not very good at following instructions. My style of cooking is to read a bunch of recipes and take inspiration from different places and create my own meal. So recently when I got into baking, I thought I could do the same thing. I've always heard you have to follow recipes exactly but I figured I could improvise. Tonite I wanted to bake healthy oatmeal cookies. But the recipe I printed out called for 3 ripe bananas and I didn't even have one. So, I had a couple magazines in the kitchen and found a coconut cookie recipe. But I also wanted to add oatmeal (and maybe some chocolate chips). So here is what I did.

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip-Coconut Bars

Ingredients:

1 cups butter, softened
1 cups of granulated sugar
1 cups firmly packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1.5 cups quick-cooking oatmeal
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 package of chocolate chips
1/2 cup of shredded coconut

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Beat butter, sugar and brown sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth. Sift oatmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. Add to creamed mixture and mix until well combined.
3. SEE this instruction! I didn't follow it. I wasn't paying attention and instead added all the ingredients at once and mixed it with my hand mixer. So needless to say, it wasn't smooth AT ALL. I totally blew it. So I added in my chocolate chips and coconut and threw it all in a baking dish. Maybe they would turn into Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip-Coconut Bars? That was the hope. Lucky for me, it worked.
   
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until golden brown around edges. Here is my sample:
   

On Thursday night, I tried to convince Dave to go out to dinner, but he was too tired. I warned him that I had no meat left in the house and that dinner would be a "vegetarian meal." That didn't deter him so I went on with my plan to make Lentil Veggie Burgers with Zucchini Pancakes and Kale Chips. Here's what I did for the Burgers.

Lentil Veggie Burgers

Ingredients:

1 Package of Trader Joes Steamed Ready to Eat Lentils
3 Carrots, Shredded
1 Small Red Onion, Diced
1/2 Large White Onion, Diced
1/2 Large Red Bell Pepper, Diced
10 Chives, Chopped
2 Stalks of Celery, Diced
1 Cup of Bread Crumbs
1/4 Cup of Soy Sauce


Instructions:

Mix together in large bowl and form patties. This step, unfortunately, didn't work for me. They didn't form patties so easily so I ended up putting them in a baking dish and baking at 375 for 10 minutes then formed my own patties when they got out. I added them to a Arnold Wheat Thin bun with fresh tomato slices (this tomato was from the Farmers Market and it was 1 whole pound!) along with Red Onion, Ketchup and Mustard. Dave and I both really liked them, I just wonder how they were supposed to stay together. Egg? None of the recipes I looked at called for egg. hmmmm....

Well in addition to the Burgers, I made what else... Kale Chips! EVOO, S&P and Red Pepper Flakes with Zucchini Cakes that were made with shredded zucchini, parm cheese, egg and bread crumbs.


For dessert I had half a Skinny Cow Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream Cookie and a cookie bar with Almond Milk. In looking at the ingredients for skinny Cow, they actually aren't good for you- lots of gross fake processed products. I won't be buying these again : (

It's almost the weekend!