Tag Archives: recipe

Crockpot Cinnamon Chicken

Okay – here is recipe #1 that I tried this month for the crockpot.  I am making and posting 3 no matter what the result.  😀

I found this recipe for cinnamon chicken on The Gracious Pantry.

I modified it by halving it, first off, and  using sweet potatoes instead of carrots, and I left out the cardamom because I didn’t feel like peeling and grinding the pods.  I was in a hurry on my lunch break!  The nice thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t require too many ingredients.

Ingredients:

  • 10 ounce sweet potato
  • 1 pound of chicken breasts (that was 2 from this package)
  • 8 ounces of canned tomato sauce (plain – I just used what we had)
  • 7 ounces light coconut milk (half a can)
  • 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Slice the sweet potato pretty thinly into disks or half moons about 1/4 inch?

Layer those in the bottom of the crockpot.  Then place the chicken breasts on top of that.

In a bowl, mix together the tomato sauce, coconut milk and spices:

Pour over the chicken:

Cover and cook on low for 4 to 6 hours.

Lori’s Notes:  Ours had cooked about 5 hours and we were hungry, but the sweet potatoes weren’t quite done, so I recommend going for 6 hours.  I took out the chicken breasts to shred them and John took out the sweet potato slices and microwaved them for a few minutes to finish cooking.  Then it went back in the crock pot to mix.

This was an interesting flavor.  Just like with Indian food, you don’t notice the tomato sauce like you do with Italian cooking.   It tastes totally different. I happen to like the cinnamon flavor in savory dishes (hello koftas!!!), but John isn’t that fond of it.  I will say that this dish needs some salt added to it before cooking.  It was missing that.

The next day, I actually had the chicken and sauce over rice and it was better the next day as the flavors really melded.

I have a small crockpot (4.5 to 5 quart?).  If you have a big one, you may want to go ahead and double the recipe.

I am not sure I would make this again.  John said he would eat it again, but it wasn’t his favorite.  It’s easy, though – big plus!

Holiday working and easy soup

How many of you had to work today? Raise your hand!  I am raising mine.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to  have work to do, but I ended up with pretty much a full day.  I kind of was hoping to have the day off because I worked about 3/4 day on Saturday.

My work schedule has been pretty all over the place lately and I have to admit that I am feeling the effects of being unsettled.  Plus I am feeling tired and worn out. I  need to relax about the work a little bit, but seem unable to do so.  It’s kind of hard to do when you control your own paycheck.

Anyway, I totally forgot to take pictures of breakfast and lunch today.  See? My head is just not quite where it is supposed to be.  Which ideally would be a tropical island or possibly New Orleans, but what are you going to do?  :mrgreen:

Pixie has been enjoying the work on the floors.  It’s opened up all kinds of new places for her to inspect.  Like the intake vent.

I laughed when I took this picture, then she tries to disappear into the vent.  Do not need a kitty in the duct work, thank you very much!  We have to make sure to replace the vent covers after we work on an area or she gets in there.

I did take some photos of dinner.  I made an easy cheater soup tonight. Cream of turkey and rice soup.  Only 4 ingredients, 2 of which were these.

I don’t know if I have ever posted a recipe with condensed any kind of soup before LOL!  I normally don’t cook with it, but the grocery store was discontinuing this organic cream of chicken (who knew this could be organic?) – so I bought a couple of bargain boxes.  If I had precooked rice, this would have been the quickest meal ever, but I didn’t.  I just cooked up a bigger batch to have leftovers later.

I used 1 box of chicken soup and filled the box with 1% milk for a 1:1 ratio.  Put that in a saucepan.  Then I chopped up some cooked turkey we have been feasting on for a while now from the big bird my sister cooked a week or so ago.

Isn’t soup pretty much the last thing you make with turkey leftovers?

Once that came to a simmer and heated through, I added 1 cup of cooked rice.

This was pretty good, I have to say.  And easy.  I like easy.

Plus it helped clean out the pantry.  Always a good bonus.

Pink picture of the day came courtesy of my friend Julianne!

Pink bike would be pretty cool to have, don’t you think?
The Breast Cancer Site

Recipe – Spinach Rice (aka Palak Chawal)

Here is an easy way to sneak in some veggies a make rice not so boring.  Not that I don’t love rice, because I do – but sometimes you want it to be a little exciting, you know?

First off – I used white jasmine rice for this.  My tummy seems to do better with white rice than brown.  I really don’t know how it will be  or how long to cook with brown rice.  Just so you know.  There are a lot of variations on this dish and I kind of cobbled together what I had in the cupboard.

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • half  an onion diced small
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1 green chili seeded and diced
  • 1 large handful of baby spinach
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 cup of jasmine rice
  • 2 cups of water
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • fresh black pepper

This is how much spinach I used.

In a food processor or bullet blender, add the spinach, garlic, and chili along with 2 tablespoons of water (to help blend it).  Then blend into a paste.

You might need to stop it an push down the spinach a couple times.

In a saucepan, add the oil and heat over medium high heat.  Add in the cumin seeds and cook for a minute.

Then add the onion.  Let this cook for about 5 minutes, taking care not to burn it.

Now add the spinach mixture and the turmeric, garam masala, salt and pepper.

Cook this for a few minutes until most of the liquid evaporates. Then add in the rice and cook for just a couple minutes. Keep stirring this so it doesn’t stick.

Now add the water and the bay leaf.

Bring to a simmer, reduce heat a cover.  Cook for 15 minutes or until all the water is absorbed.

Remove the bay leaf. Fluff up the rice to make sure all the spinach is mixed around and serve.  I garnished with a few cashews.

It turns out such a pretty color!  Calories for this are about 165 calories for 3/4 cup of rice.  Serves about 6. It’s really tasty and looks so pretty and green!

You can experiment with any spices you like or try adding some tomatoes or other veggies along with the spinach and really bulk it up.

Jam making tutorial – Apricot Ginger

I had promised to post this a while ago, but then I forgot!  Jam making actually is very easy.  For some reason, I had this idea that it was an all day process and took forever.  It really doesn’t.  You don’t need a lot of special equipment.  Once you get a few things, you are set for making jam. Most stores will carry a jam making kit with the basic tools that just make life easier.  I got a kit for $15 that included this stuff:

I don’t actually use all of these and forgot to include the jar lifter, which I will show later.  I really only use the funnel, the little magnet tool, and the tongs.

The only other thing you need to purchase initially are the jars and lids.  Unless you give all your jam away, then you need to get more jars. After that, you only need to get the sealing disks because you can reuse the jars and rings over and over.  The sealing disks are only good once.

Now, you can certainly do  sugar free jams and jellies, but I don’t bother with that as I don’t go overboard eating the jam.  The flavors are pretty intense, so a spoonful is all I usually have on something like oats.  You also don’t need to use pectin when making jam, but I do because you can’t mess it up. There are several different kinds of pectin out there and you just want to purchase one based on what you want to make.  There are freezer jams, lower sugar jams, plain old pectin.  I happen to like Sure-Jel.  This stuff always works for me.

The nice thing is that this contains recipes and directions for all kinds of different fruits.

First off, get a large stock pot, put in all your stuff.  Tools, jars, rings – but do not put in the sealing disks. Fill with water and bring to a boil. 

 

On the counter, lay out a dishtowel or two.  I use this as a jar filling station to keep from breaking a jar on the counter if it slips.  You will also need a paper towel.

While this comes to a boil and then proceeds to boil away, I prepare the fruit.  You need another saucepan for cooking.  This jam is apricot ginger.

Ingredients:

  • 6 cups chopped fruit  (or 3-1/2 lb whole apricots)
  • 2 tbsp  lemon juice
  • 4-1/2 cups of sugar (with 1/4 cup of that set aside)
  • 1 ounce of finely chopped crystallized ginger
  • 1 box of pectin

Truth be told here, I cut the recipe in half, even though you aren’t supposed to.  I weighed out the pectin to make sure I had half a box.

My apricots:

You can peel them or not – your preference.  You do need to get the stone pit out and cut into cubes.

Toss the cubes into your pot.  I also decided that some ginger would be a good addition to this, so I minced some crystallized ginger (about an ounce) and added it.

In a small bowl, mix the 1/4 cup of sugar with your pectin, then add to the pot.

Bring this to a boil. Yep, you will cook it with no liquid.  The fruit will make it’s own liquid. It takes a while, and you want to stir a lot to keep it from burning.  I also will use a potato masher to make a more even consistency, but you don’t want a puree.

Side step here. At this time, I will remove the jars and rings and put them on the towel to dry out.  Turn the heat off on this so the water is not boiling any more.  Then add the sealing disks to this hot water. You don’t want to boil the sealing disks until they are actually on the jar or you will ruin the seal.

Once the fruit mixture comes to a rolling boil – which means it continues to boil even if you stir it – then add the rest of the sugar (4-1/4 cups).  Stir constantly and bring back to a rolling boil. When it hits a rolling boil, turn the timer on for 1 minute and cook, stirring constantly.  Then remove from the heat.

Now you are ready to ladle into the jars.  Use the jar funnel – very handy.  You don’t need the jar funnel, but it really keeps the jars clean and makes filling quick and easy. Ladle in the jam until it reaches the bottom of the funnel, which also happens to be right where the ring ridge is on the jar.  Pretty neat how that works out.  Do not fill the jars more than this. You need head room to make a seal.

Once you have filled all of your jars, dampen the edge of the paper towel and run it around the edge of the jars to make sure there is no jam on them.

Now using the little magnet tool, snag a sealing disk from the hot water.

Then lay it on the top of the jar.

See how handy that is? You keep things nice and clean by not touching the lids with your fingers.  Clean as they may be, best to be safe.

Turn the heat back on for the water to bring it back to a boil.  Now you will put a ring on each jar.  Do not forget to put the rings on the jars!  The jars are hot, so use a hot mitt or something – unless you have hands made of silicone. You just need to hand tighten the rings, not really crank them on there.

Now use the jar lifting tool (the one I forgot the picture of) and use it to lift the jar and place it into the boiling water.

When all the jars are in the pot, boil for 10 minutes (unless you are at altitude, then it is 12, I think? Check the instructions).

Remove using the jar lifter and set all jars back on the towel.  As the jars cool, you will hear a little pop of the vacuum seal happening.   Let the jars cool completely and label them.

Couple notes.

–  Make sure you have 2 inches of room over your jars with water in the pot.

– I like to put a trivet into the bottom of the pot to keep the jars from bouncing around as the water boils.

– You will likely end up with a jar that is not completely full.  Do not waste a sealing disk on this jar as you can’t seal it properly. Just refrigerate this and eat it first!

 

– You can test the seal on your jars after they have cooled by pressing your finger into the center of the lid.  If it pops up and down – there is no seal and you need to eat that jar right away.

Cold Brewed Coffee on a hot muggy day

Heat wave!  This northern girl doesn’t like such heat and humidity.  Not to mention what it does to my hair! 😀  One nice thing about really hot weather?  The gym is empty.  Not sure why because going into the air conditioned gym this morning was like a little slice of heaven.

Today was lower reps and higher weights for this set.

Exercise Set/rep/weight
1. Crunches on stability ball 2 sets of 15
2. Complex: High Pull, Front Squat/Push Press, Back Squat, Good Morning 4 sets of 8 each exercise with 20# bar
3A.  Deadlift 4 sets of 5 with 95# bar
3B. Dumbbell Overhead Press with rotation 4 sets of 5 with 20# DBs
3C. Single Leg Squat 4 sets of 5
3D. Bent Over Row 4 sets of 5 with 55# bar

I would have set off the lunk alarm at Planet Fitness with the deadlifts by the 4th set.  Good thing I don’t go there  😈

It was already quite warm when I got back.  I made up cold-brewed coffee for today. It takes a little forethought, but soooooooo much better than brewing coffee and putting ice in it or saving old coffee in the fridge.  The night before, take 1 cup of ground coffee and put it in a container with 4 cups of water.

Stir well.

Stick in the fridge overnight and then filter it the next day.  A french press would be faster.  This is the most time consuming part because you have to wait for coffee to filter through. This is just the basket from our Bunn on top of the carafe.  It works pretty well.

Voila – beautiful and flavorful cold-brewed coffee (with milk)!

I had made up some banana custard oats as well and let them sit out to get to room temp.  I know it sounds gross, but I didn’t want hot oats and overnight refrigerator oats aren’t my thing.

Pixie is hiding from the heat.

Poor girl. I almost have a mind to take her to the groomer and get her shaved for the summer, but I don’t know how she would handle it.  Our AC downstairs does okay, but it really only gets down to about 77 degrees since we just have the one for the whole downstairs.  I don’t know how you Gulf states people can handle it.

Lunch time:

Loving the ground turkey again.

The day went pretty fast with work today.  This whole week went fast.  I took a break for an iced latte.

Hot or cold. Is there any way coffee is bad??

With the heat, I wanted a nice cool dinner.  I had made up some blueberry topping and put it in a bowl with some Cascadian Farm Oh’s and greek yogurt.

This was awesome!  Almost like a dessert 😀

We need to wait until the sun goes down before walking for a little ice cream tonight.  First up will be a movie.  Anyone remember the old Hobbit cartoon from the late 1970s?

Memories.  It’s not a 70’s feature without the guitar playing folk singer!

 

Hope you all are staying cool.

The Great Veggie Experiment – Swiss Chard!

One of my goals this month was to try 2 new veggies.  Well, the month has been getting on and I needed to get to it!  I was at the farmer’s market on Saturday and  saw all these pretty fresh greens.

I know I am in the great internet minority, but kale does not do it for me.  I just don’t like it (sorry Roz!).  I talked with one of the farm ladies about the swiss chard.  It was so colorful that I wanted to give it a try.  She said it would be less bitter than the kale and less tough.

Recommendations were to chop the stems up small and  cook lightly with olive oil and garlic.  Sounds simple.

According to wikipedia, chard is one of the healthiest veggies chock full of vitamins A and C, plus iron (which is why the stems are red – pretty cool).

My recipe:

Serves 1. (John was not interested in the chard)

  • 5 to 6 stems of swiss chard
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil (I used macadamia nut oil)
  • 1/2 clove minced garlic
  • salt and pepper to taste

I chopped up the stems small and did ribbons of the leafy tops.

I am not a huge fan of the garlic, but I don’t mind roasted garlic.  So, we bought a jar of that to use.

You can use fresh if you like.  I like the milder taste of this stuff.  I used 1/4 teaspoon, but use as much as you like – especially if you are not meeting with anyone after eating it 😀

In a large pan, heat the oil and add the garlic over medium to medium high heat.  Cook for a couple minutes and then toss in all the greens.

Cook for several minutes folding the greens around with tongs until they are lightly wilted.  I removed the leafy parts first, which just picked right up with the tongs, and left the stem parts in for another couple minutes to soften them up a bit.

Then onto a plate.

I love how these kept their color!  Sometimes I wish that I actually liked eating veggies as much as I like the idea of eating veggies because they are pretty.

The verdict?  Not bad.  They were not really bitter (yay!) and seemed to have a milder flavor than sauteed spinach, plus they did not get as slimy as sauteed spinach.  The texture is somewhat chewy, but less chewy than kale.  I probably will not add chard to my veggie rotation very often, but I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at it if offered to me.

Soggy Bagel Day and Cheesy Chickpeas

Never, ever trust weather.com.  They lie!  The forecast was for upper 50s and cloudy this morning with 0% chance of rain.  So, that meant biking for breakfast!  There was maybe a touch of mist while riding there, but the temps felt pretty good at 58.  We arrived to our destination and it started to rain while we were sitting inside! D’oh!

I did enjoy my bagel, though!

John had coffee cake, which you can see in the background.  They make awesome coffee cake at North Country Cafe.

It stopped raining mostly, so we headed home.  Then the mist began again and then rain.  It was a dreary and icky ride home!  I went slower because of splash back from my tires, slower braking times and then the car/truck blow back (yuck).

Soggy rider!

Hey, at least we got 12 miles in, right?  After a morning of work, I made up a quick lunch.  I sauteed some broccoli in coconut oil and added in ground turkey, 1/2 cup of white rice and some orange ginger sauce (LaChoy).

This came out to be a pretty tasty lunch!

I loved how the sun came out in the afternoon.  It was supposed to be cloudy all day, but then we already know how accurate the weather forecast was today  🙄

John presented me with my afternoon latte:

I had some cookie nibbles today as well.  John made up chocolate cookies for his poker game, so we taste tested the deformed ones.  Yum!  John is quite the baker.

I made up a thrown together dinner tonight that actually tasted quite good.  I had a few cans of things in the pantry that I wanted to use, so I came up with Cheesy Chickpeas!  I know it sounds weird, but it came out really tasty.

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon of oil (I used macadamia)
  • 1 clove of finely minced garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • black pepper to taste
  • 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
  • 2 tablespoons of diced green chilies
  • One 15 oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 2 oz of shredded cheese (I used cheddar).

In a medium saucepan, heat the oil.  Then add in the cumin seeds and cook until they sizzle (just a couple minutes).  Add in the garlic, chickpeas, tomato paste, green chilies, salt and pepper.  Cook this mixture for about 5 minutes over medium heat.  I might add as an aside that just stopping the recipe here is actually really tasty.

Add in the half cup of water and bring to a simmer for several minutes.  Slowly stir in the cheese  so that it has a chance to melt.  Don’t go using any fat free cheese here; you want it to melt.  When the cheese is melted, serve and enjoy!

I loved this.  I was kind of like a southwestern-ish style chickpea.  I had mine with some mango on the side.

The whole batch is about 955 calories, so divide as you wish. I ate about half as this was my entree for dinner.

Tomorrow is more new lifting moves and I am excited!  I get to do one of my very favorite moves – the stiff-legged deadlift!

Question:  What is your favorite way to eat chickpeas?

Lemon Poppyseed Protein Cake

John made a recipe that he tweaked from Ask Georgie for Lemon Poppyseed Protein Bars.  I called them cake because his version came out more like this.

We had this for breakfast a month or so ago.  You could also have it for dessert!

The original recipe is here, and this is what John did. **

Dry ingredients
• 1 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour
•  2/3 cup sugar
• 30 grams plain whey protein powder (2 scoops)
• 2 tablespoons poppy seeds
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:
•  1 cup of 1% milk
•  1/2 cup regular sour cream
• ¾ cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 tablespoon  oil
• 2 ½ teaspoons lemon extract
• 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Coat a 9 x 9 inch square baking pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients and set aside.

In another bowl, mix all wet ingredients together really well.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, then pour in the wet.  Fold the mixture together until moistened. If you over work the batter, these will be tough.

Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for 40 – 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  You may need to keep checking this.

Cool and cut into 9 pieces – cause I like the pieces big and I told John no more than 9 pieces in a 9 x 9 in pan  :mrgreen:   The texture is very moist.  It is definitely best served a little warm, so heat up your leftovers a little bit.

Nutritional Stats:  Based on 9 pieces.  Your results may vary based on protein powder and sour cream/milk. 

Per piece:  207 calories, 5.3 grams of fat, 29 grams of carbs,  2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of protein.

**(Changes made: Georgie uses Splenda, vanilla protein powder, and adds lemon zest.  John substituted the fat free greek yogurt with both the milk and the sour cream.  He used unflavored whey protein. He also used a smaller pan for thicker pieces.)

I topped mine with a bit of coconut butter.  😀

Sourdough English Muffins

I was a little nervous about trying to make english muffins, and I really don’t know why because they weren’t that hard!  I did want to use my sourdough starter, though.

You can use this recipe with yeast if you don’t have/want to use sourdough starter.  The technique is the same once the dough is made.

I pulled my starter out of the fridge and fed it a few times to make sure it was still alive – and it was!  So, I was set for this recipe to try.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup sourdough starter (fed and stirred)
  • 1 cup of 1% milk
  • 2 to 2-1/2 cups of flour
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda (not powder)
  • cornmeal for dusting

The night before you want to make the muffins, take your well-fed starter and stir it to remove the bubbles.  Then measure out a 1/2 cup.  This is Breadipus Rex!  You do have to name your starter, you know.

In a bowl, mix the 1/2 cup of starter with 1 cup of milk and 2 cups of the flour (don’t use all the flour).

Mix really well, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit overnight.

I woke up the next morning and was pleased to see there was some action overnight  😉

To this, add the 1 tablespoon of sugar, the 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and the baking soda.  Now here is where I goofed.  Since I had not had any coffee yet, I added baking powder instead of soda.  So, I decided to go ahead and also add the baking soda!  You don’t need to do this, but just to let you know it didn’t hurt anything.  Maybe it helped, too. Who knows.

Anyway, after this is mixed in, you can either turn this out on a well-floured board and knead for 5 minutes adding the remaining flour to keep the dough from being too sticky.  I dumped mine into the Kitchenaid and used the dough hook to knead.  I only needed about 1/4 cup of flour as our humidity is really low right now.  The trick with bread is to not add too much flour.  Many people put in flour until the dough is dry, which will make a heavy and dense loaf.  The dough should be slightly tacky.

After kneading, sprinkle the board well with flour.  Dust the top of the dough with more flour to roll out.

You might need to let the dough rest for 5 minutes or so to relax a little.  Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out about almost a half inch or so.  Then use a cutter dipped in flour to make circles.  I used a drinking glass, since I don’t have a biscuit cutter.

My suggestion is to find something that is 3 to 3-1/2 inches in diameter.  This glass is only 2, maybe 2-1/2 and the muffins were smaller than I would like.  Live and learn.    Reroll the scraps and cut again.  You also can just make small dough balls and flatten them if you don’t care about the shape (which I did with the last few scraps).  Or use a pizza cutter and make square muffins.  Then you only have to roll the dough once.

Lay out a piece of parchment paper or a cookie sheet and dust it with cornmeal.  Place the little circles on this surface.

Cover these babies with plastic wrap and let sit for 45 minutes.  I am not really sure why, because they do not rise much at all.  In fact, I was wondering if they were going to turn out.

Next is to heat a griddle to medium.  And I do mean medium.  The low side of medium.  Heat management is crucial to cook these.  Once the griddle is heated, brush with oil and lay out the disks.

I really didn’t think these were going to come out since they were so flat, but they started to puff up right away!  Cook on the first side for 5 minutes or so.  This is why you want to be on the lower end of the heat or they will burn and the middle will be raw.  Heat management, people!

Carefully flip the muffins over:

Almost over done on this side.  I had to lower the heat.  Cook for another 5 minutes or so until done.  I found that a good test was to poke a fork at the side of the muffin to make sure that part was not doughy.

Cool on a cooling rack.

Now you all know to never use a knife, but to  fork split  your english muffins, right?

I poked a fork around the edges of these before bagging half of them to freeze.

Split open:

Squeeeeeee!!!!!  I was really happy to see this!  I’m feeling might proud of myself, too  :mrgreen:

Calories for the 2 inch muffins is about 100 each.  If you do a bigger size and get 12 muffins out of the batch, they will be about 120 each.  I have to do an exact count on them, but this recipe is pretty lean.

Recipe: Flourless chocolate chip cookies

I found this recipe on Pinterest when I first started pinning and it didn’t take long for me to make them.  The original recipe is from Recipe Girl and I edited a bit for our smaller household.

 Easy enough and the ingredients were already in the house!  Double score.

Ingredients:

Note – I like to go by weight, especially when baking.

  • 180 grams powdered sugar (1.5 cups)
  • 35 grams unsweetened  cocoa powder (1/3 cup)
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 45 grams liquid egg whites  (3 tablespoons or 1 to 2 egg whites)
  • 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 90 grams  semi-sweet chocolate chips (1/2 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Sift together the sugar, cocoa and salt.

Mix well.  Add the vanilla and the egg whites. Stir well.  This is the point where you need to judge if you need to add more egg whites or not.  It does not take much to change the consistency, so don’t add a whole white if you are using the whites.  It is much easier to do this with the liquid egg whites. You want a stiff, brownie-type batter.

If the batter is too liquidy, then the cookies will spread out too much when baked.  Stir in chocolate chips.

Using a small disher, portion out 11 cookie balls onto the cookie sheet.   I use a disher that is probably 1/8th cup?  This size:

You might actually get 12 cookies out of this, but I ate some of the batter 😳

Bake 14-15 minutes until the cookies are cracked on top.  They will spread and flatten a little bit.

Remove parchment paper to a cooling rack. Let cookies cool completely before removing from paper.  Trust me on this.  They are too fragile to move until they set up.

Delicious!

The cookies are very delicate with a slightly crispy outside and kind of gooey inside.  Store in an airtight container on the counter.  I find the next day they are wonderful popped in the micro for 10 seconds before eating.

For 11 cookies, the stats per cookie are:

124 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbs, 1.5 grams of fiber, >1 gram of protein.