Recipes

Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

Around here, when it comes to food (and everything for that matter), we try to make the best healthy choice that fits our lifestyle… In other words, whatever an almost 3 year old will like too. Because let me tell you, my boy started out eating hummus, and baked salmon amongst other healthy dishes we placed before him, but now he loves to throw around the word “Yucky.”

For him it’s not a matter of not liking something, but not being in the mood. He’ll eat greenbeans one day, and the next, they will be gross! Although he won’t touch hummus anymore, there are some dishes that he loves any day, and I can’t complain because he loves quinoa and broccoli and smoothies. He loves oatmeal, and he loves these oatmeal cookies.

These are great to make ahead and take with you on the days you can’t sit down and eat a bowl of oatmeal. You can eat them room temperature, or we like to reheat them in our toaster oven.

These are super tasty. I found the base recipe on Pinterest-it was 2 mashed ripe bananas and 1 cup oatmeal. You drop the cookies on a cookie sheet and bake for ~15 min at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can add anything to this base recipe. I’ve made them by adding different ingredients…like applesauce, nut butters, chocolate chips, trail mix, chia seeds,cranberries, raisins, etc. You can make so many different combinations. (A little side note when you add more wet ingredients like a nut butter or applesauce you need to add a little more oats) The recipe I share here is our favorite go to combo.

 

 

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 cups of gluten free oats
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter or almond butter (our favorite taste is with peanut butter)
  • 2 ripe mashed bananas (the riper the better)
  • 1/4 honey (sometimes we leave the honey out, the bananas add enough sweetness for our liking)
  • 1 cup of raisins
  • 1 tsp of cinnamon

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees  Fahrenheit.
  2.  In a mixing bowl, combine mashed bananas and oats.
  3. Mix in the peanut butter. I use a soft spatula to mix everything together.
  4. Mix in the honey and cinnamon and finally the raisins.
  5. Grease your cookie sheet or use parchment paper.
  6. Then use a cookie batter scoop to drop  batter onto cookie sheet about 1 inch apart. These cookies don’t expand much if any. If you don’t have a cookie batter scoop, drop about 1tbsp of batter. (We like smaller almost bite size cookies)
  7. Bake for ~15 minutes, let cool and enjoy!

Kale Mushroom Rice Noodles

 

This recipe is vegetarian and delicious! Plus my toddler loves the noodles!! He went back for seconds. We are still working on him eating the mushrooms and the kale.

I saw this recipe on the Giada at Home show. Click here for the original recipe.

We’ve made this dish a few times now each time making it our own. That’s what I love about cooking! Once you get the gist of a dish you can tweak it to the ingredients you have or prefer. For example, if your family needs to have meat to feel like it’s a complete meal… like if I was making this for my dad, I would add some thinly sliced marinated and grilled beef.

This original recipe calls for white sugar and we try to avoid refined sugar, so I substituted the sugar for honey. Also it calls for sweet potato vermicelli noddles- I used rice noodles. I used regular Bella mushrooms and white mushrooms because that’s what I had on hand.

Here is my version of the recipe.

 

Ingredients

 

Sauce:

  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1/3 cup tamari
  • 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
  • 1-1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
  • 1-1/2 teaspoon peeled and grated ginger

Noodles:

  • Himalayan sea salt to salt the water for noodles
  • 12 oz rice noodles straight cut. I used a A Taste of Thai brand,they have vermicelli rice noodles too. (The package is 16 ounces. I made the whole package and made extra sauce, since my son only eats noodles and sauce.)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 4 ounces baby Bella mushrooms sliced into 1 inch pieces
  • 4 ounces white mushrooms sliced into 1 inch pieces
  •  1 large shallot chopped
  • 1 red bell pepper cut into 1/4 inch strips
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 4 scallions chopped
  • 6 leaves of kale, cut into 1 inch pieces  (remove the stem from the center of the leaf and discard stems)

Directions

  1. In a small bowl combine all ingredients for sauce. Whisk together till honey dissolves into other ingredients. Set aside.
  2. In a large pot of salted water boil your noodles according to cooking instructions. When cooked Drain and rinse with cold water and set aside.
  3. In a large skillet heat olive oil to medium high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook for five minutes stirring often. Till mushrooms begin to brown.
  4. Add the shallots and 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook for  another 2 minutes.
  5. Add the red pepper, garlic and scallions to the pan, reduce the heat to medium and cook for an additional 3 minutes, or until the peppers are beginning to soften.
  6. Add the kale and the cooked noodles and saute till kale wilts about 3 minutes.
  7. Add the sauce and toss.