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Cranberry Pistachio Breakfast Cookies

Need a quick grab and go breakfast treat? Cranberry Pistachio Breakfast Cookies are just the ticket!

I am always looking for a quick and easy grab and go breakfast. Granola bars are great, but I want to know …….and be able to pronounce the things that are in my food.

I know this is odd, but I do not like cooked oatmeal, I love how it smells….must be a texture thing. But, I love it in a baked item. Weird right?

Oatmeal is good for you and can help reduce cholesterol, can help stabilize blood sugar, and may reduce the risk of heart problems when combined with a heart healthy diet. Plus in these cookies it tastes awesome.

While I admit the other items in the cookie may not be the lowest in fat or sugar, they all have certain benefits.

Pistachios…my new favorite nut, as I eluded to in the Pistachio Pudding Bundt Cake post earlier this week…..are cholesterol free, sodium free and lower in fat than other nuts. They have potassium, and fiber. Adding pistachios to carb rich food such as rice and pasta may have a glucose and insulin lovering effect.

Everyone know the benefits of bananas, plus they can replace fat in baking so, double score for the banana.

I know, I know, dried cranberries have sugar, but buy the low sugar variety and keep your consumption at a reasonable amount and it’s all good!

Same goes for coconut. It is enjoying its day in the sun, but as it is high in fat content be mindful of its consumption.

Mixing the cookies was easy. ai used a ring for a mason jar as a mold to ensure that all the cookie were round and of the same size.

Another thing I discovered is that the longer these cookies set the better they taste, the flavor just sorta blend to gather and complement each other.

For this recipe I used as much organic as I could find to increase the benefit. The combo of all the ingredients gives a fiber filled, cookie that keep your sugar level even and a boost of energy to last you for the morning, until that mid morning snack, which could be another Cranberry Pistachio Breakfast Cookie!

Cranberry Pistachio Breakfast Cookies

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Author: Marty Boyd
Yield: 20 1x

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Ingredients

Scale

1½ cups rolled oats
1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
1 tablespoon Chia seeds
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cups coarsely chopped Pistachios
½ cup dried Cranberries
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
¼ cup coconut oil, warm enough to be liquid
1 tablespoon Honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine oats, coconut, Chia, salt, pistachios, and Cranberries. Stir in bananas, oil, honey and vanilla until well combined.
Press 2 tablespoons of mixture into a 2½-inch round cookie cutter onto a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Continue with remaining mixture.
Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until fragrant and golden. Cool on pan.

Salmon Farro Salad

As a food blogger, keeping on trend has become a regular search for me on Google…whats trending in food today?… Gotta keep current! Plus, it get me to expand my horizons…..and apparently my waistline.….lol

Healthy grains are on trend these days. I must confess that I have never really eaten many of the avant-garde grains. No particular reason, just never have. Recently we were at a restaurant and I had a steak that was served on a bed of grains with spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. I was not impressed with the meal per say, but the grains were wonderful, chewy and creamy, and al dente……I wondered what they would be like in a really good dish.

So, I did a little Googling…….here’s what I found……. Continue reading “Salmon Farro Salad”

Autumn Couscous Stuffed Peppers

Autumn Couscous Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed Peppers are a dish found in different forms, and with different names all around the world. Here in the good old USA, they are typically stuffed with a ground beef rice mixture with a tomato base. Recipes are all different, but most involve removing the seeds and membranes from the pepper, then boiling them, stuffing them, and baking them again, covered with cheese…….and they are great!

So, how do you improve on a good thing …….you make it better…….Autumn Couscous Stuffed Peppers!

We had a bumper crop of green peppers at the end of the gardening season……..beautiful shiny green and really large. They begged to be made into stuffed peppers.

Now, I suppose I could have made my good old Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe, but with the leaves changing and that smell of autumn in the air, why not try something……. autumny.

I’m am a huge fan of pearl couscous, and am lucky that our grocery store carries it in the frozen section……yeah! But for this recipe if you don’t have that luxury or you can’t find the pearl type, the regular kind will work just as well. The couscous was my sub for rice.

For veggies, I picked flavors I associate with fall……..fennel,squash,cranberries,and sage…….they blended with the couscous beautifully. Cooking all of it with chicken broth (if you want a total vegetarian dish you can use vegetable broth) and a touch of apple cider vinegar, gave it all a nice glazed quality.

Now, that whole boiling the pepper thing……..not so much. It makes them mushy in my opinion, and there is really no need to go to all that trouble. Just stuff them, and cover them with foil, it steams them instead.

Since the “stuffing” was not saucy, it needed a sauce…….my new favorite sauce…….Creamy Cauliflower Sauce. The only change I made was to use shallot instead of garlic. It was sooooo yummy over these Autumn Couscous Stuffed Peppers. I keep trying to think of ways to use this tasty sauce!

When I started this dish, it was not my intent to make it vegetarian, it just sorta happened. Lucky for all you vegetarians out there…..wait a minute, also lucky for those who are not………and if you are not, maybe after you try this dish you will be……….