Oh yes.  Yes, you read that right.

I made these babies the other night for family movie night, and let me tell you, it’s stupid how good they are.  If you like chocolate and peanut butter, ZOMG.  One caveat: they are messy.  We instituted a rule after last night’s chocolate-crumb-catastrophe; you can only indulge in these cookies outside in the yard.

I had a proud happy homemaker moment making these, too, because I didn’t have any brown sugar.  So guess what? I made my own.  Booyah!  I had read somewhere that you could make it easily with white sugar and molasses, both of which I had.  One cup of sugar + 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses = brown sugar!  It looks pretty good, no?

The cookie dough is really like a cake batter.  The cookies turned out almost like Devil’s food cake.  Super yum.

I know, it doesn't look all that appealing raw...

... but check them out baked!

Then you make a filling with peanut butter, and all is right with the world.

Don’t they look fab?  If you want to make them, I got the recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookies cookbook.  You can find the recipe on her site here.

The family and I recently made a pact.  It came soon after I finished my most recent cleanse, which means I was probably giddy with clean living and health.  We decided that, while we didn’t want to give up dessert after dinner, we wanted to reduce our exposure to processed foods.  So, if we were going to have dessert, it always had to be homemade.

I know.  What was I thinking?

Well, besides the crazy cleanse brain, I think I figured that if I made a batch of healthy (ier?) cookies every few days, we’d be set.  It occurred to me at the time that this plan was totally workable.  Now, it seems a little more ambitious.

So I’ve been trying to put together some healthy cookie recipes.  I have my standard go-to healthy chocolate chip cookies, but sometimes I’m sick of that.  Or I’m out of date paste or brown rice syrup.

This week, I had extra over-ripe bananas.  Even after making a loaf of banana bread.  So I went searching for a banana cookie recipe.  I made one once with oats that came from Bethenny Frankel, but I am kind of morally opposed to anyone who’s been on any Housewives show giving any sort of information to the world.

I did find a recipe in this cookbook I have, called The Ultimate Cookie Cookbook.  It’s one of those off-label looking books that I’m sure I got on sale at a bookstore sometime while perusing the discount racks.  In it, there was a recipe for “Ultimate Banana Cookies.”  Surprisingly, not every recipe in this book starts with “Ultimate,” but this one did, so, go figure.

I adapted it because, well, frankly, it was kind of a terrible recipe.  And written really poorly, too.  It seems like someone took a recipe template and just cut and pasted the details in, without proofreading.  So you get things like, “Add the eggs, making sure each is incorporated before the next addition,” but the recipe only calls for ONE EGG.  Don’t worry, y’all, I fixed it.

They turned out pretty nicely.  Kind of like eating banana bread in a cookie form.  So if that sounds good to you, make these.

ready for the oven

Ultimate Banana Cookies

• 1 1/2 sticks butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup superfine sugar (I’m pretty sure you could use regular sugar here)
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 3 medium bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup ground flaxseed
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• chocolate chunks
• sanding sugar or table sugar, for coating

In a large bowl, cream butter until it is light and fluffy, then add both kinds of sugar.  Beat until light and fluffy again.  Add in the egg, mixing until completely incorporated.  Stir in mashed bananas and vanilla; set aside.

In a small bowl mix together flour, flaxseed, baking powder and baking soda.  Add these dry ingredients to the butter mixture.  Stir in chocolate chunks.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375°.  Form tablespoon-sized balls of dough and roll in sanding or table sugar.  Place on a baking sheet about 2″ apart.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tops are just becoming golden.

Now, I do have to admit that I had some extra help in adapting the recipe, so I can’t take all the credit.

Special thanks to Remarkably Domestic Zalia.

Last night, I ventured out into new territory and made a chicken dish for dinner.  Having been a vegetarian for many years, I have only cooked chicken a handful of times.

I should probably say a word here on why my vegetarianism has slowly faded over the past few years.  Really, it boils down to two things: my family’s health and my waistline.  I have two little boys, and after doing some reading on soy, I started getting nervous about feeding them too much of it.  Also, I was using a lot of veggie burger-type foods, which are pretty far from the natural form of soy, and I wanted to try to eliminate the really processed stuff in our lives.  So I started feeding them some organic poultry.  For a while, it was just this locally-grown deli turkey that I would give them in sandwiches for lunch.  I’ve been a vegetarian for essentially all of my adult life, so I’ve never learned how to cook meat.  Recently, though, I’ve started to try to branch out, so I’ve been teaching myself via the internet, my mom, and some friends how to cook chicken.

Moreover, my waistline has started to expand as I get older and all that pasta and bread gets metabolized differently.  It’s as if my body has decided that I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of pasta already, so it’s just going to store all those carbs on my hips.  So I’ve been trying to eat a little more protein and a few less carbs.

All that build up for a simple chicken dish!  I found a recipe in Everyday Food for breaded chicken cutlets, and I had an idea for a nice salsa to spoon over the top.  Initially, I thought of it as a vegetable and fruit salsa, but my seven-year-old pointed out that there really aren’t any vegetables in it, since tomatoes and avocado are actually fruits.  Thanks, smarty pants.

Breaded Chicken Cutlets

(adapted from Everyday Food, March 2009)

makes 4 cutlets

• 4 organic chicken cutlets
• ½ cup white whole wheat flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups fresh whole wheat bread crumbs
• ¼ cup flaxseed meal
• ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 4 tablespoons canola oil

To make the bread crumbs: Pulse two or three pieces of whole wheat bread in a food processor until finely ground.

Mix together bread crumbs, flaxseed meal, and Parmesan cheese in a wide bowl.  Set aside.  In another wide bowl, scramble the two eggs.  Set aside.  Pour the whole wheat flour into a third wide bowl.  Line the three bowls up on the counter: flour, eggs, and then bread crumb mixture.

Dredge a cutlet in the flour, coating both sides well.  Then dip the cutlet in the egg, coating well, and then the bread crumbs.  Pat the crumbs onto the cutlets to make certain they are covered relatively thickly.  Repeat with each cutlet.

Heat canola oil over medium high heat.  Place cutlets in the pan without crowding them—you may need to fry them in separate batches.  Fry until the bottom is crispy and brown, about 5 minutes.  Turn the cutlets over and fry the second side until brown, about another 5 minutes.  When the inside of the chicken reaches 165° or the insides are completely white and opaque, remove them from the pan.

You can make the salsa while the cutlets are frying.

Fruit Salsa

(enough for 4 cutlets)

• ½ ripe mango, diced
• 1 kiwi fruit, diced
• 12 cherry tomatoes, cut in halves
• ½ avocado, diced
• juice from ½ lemon
• pinch salt

Mix all the diced fruit together.  Squeeze the juice from the lemon over everything, and add a pinch of salt to taste.  Mix together, and spoon over chicken cutlets.