E: Vegan Almond Meal Chocolate Chip Cookies & Pregnancy Update

I hope you’re enjoying the weekend! I definitely am. So far, the weekend has included dinner & a movie in on Friday night. On Saturday, I took Body Step, did a little shopping (paint for the baby room & I finally got an iPhone) and cleaned the house. Saturday night, dinner with my parents.  In there, I also squeezed in some baking and came up with a new recipe.

Vegan (or not) Almond Meal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup almond meal
• 1/4 cup all whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 stick earth balance (or butter), softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon flax mixed with 3 tablespoons of water (or 1 egg)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla
• Chocolate chunks or chips

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F

Beat together earth balance/butter and brown sugar. Add in remaining wet ingredients (flax egg (or egg) and vanilla).

In a separate bowl, mix together all dry ingredients (almond meal, flours, baking soda and powder).

Combine wet and dry ingredients and add in chocolate chunks or chips.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoon onto a baking sheet. Bake for ~12 minutes. Let cookies cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet (they will be soffft). Remove carefully and let them cool completely on a cooling rack.

These cookies are a nice combination of crunchy and chewy.

For printable version of recipe, click here.

Pregnancy Update: Week 23

  

Side note: My Dad asked how far along I am on Saturday night. When I responded 5 months, 3 weeks…he looked concerned. I asked if he was calling me fat ;) He said he was just wondering how big my belly was going to get haha. At 5’1”…theres just not a lot of room/places for the baby to go!

This has been a big week so far! She is definitely moving around a lot more and Josh can actually feel her every once in a while. She seems to be very active right before bed. According to the email pregnancy updates I receive each week, she now weighs over a pound! We’re getting things ready on the home front, we ordered a furniture set for the nursery (the crib can be seen here) and picked a theme (beach) for the room. I also had a doctors appointment this week. Everything was measuring right (my weight and size of my tummy) and her heart beat sounded great!! I have my gestational diabetes test coming up and I am not looking forward to it!

I’m thinking about doing a pregnancy update VLOG next week. Please let me know if you have any pregnancy questions! I’m not an expert, but I’ll do my best ;). No question is too silly. Feel free to leave it in the comments or email me at Itzyskitchen at gmail dot com.

What’d you do so far this weekend?

We’re off to brunch with friends and the rest of the day will be spent learning choreography for our body attack/step/pump launches this week and next weekend. I am only teaching a couple of attack/step tracks- but I haven’t taught either class in almost six months, so I’m a little nervous ;).

E: The Other Guys…

Happy Friday!

On the blog, I usually highlight two or three meals or baked goods that I make each week. Of course, there are those other nights, where I still cook meals that I think are yummy, but they’ve either appeared on the blog before or I don’t consider them “blog worthy”. I figured I’d highlight those other guys in this post…

1) On Tuesday night, I made up a batch of shrimp stir fry of sorts. I used the sauce from Esi’s Chipotle-Lime recipe. I ate my shrimp and veggies as is. Josh had his on top of wild rice from TJs. Both bowls were topped with sesame seeds:

  

2) On Wednesday night, I went for shrimp again (yes, I’m still in a shrimp craving pregnancy stage ;)). This time, I made up shrimpy spinach salads. Since it was a snacky afternoon, my salad was a little on the lighter side and contained spinach, broccoli slaw, tortilla strips baked up in the oven, apple & shrimp. The salad was topped with olive oil & vinegar:

3) Thursday night, I made a half batch of a blog worthy meal, Shannon’s pumpkin & black bean enchiladas. I was a littttttle nervous to make this because Josh just started to enjoy eating pumpkin (mostly in baked goods form). The result:

 

Josh had his enchiladas as is and I tossed mine on top of a spinach & broccoli slaw salad. I thought they were good- they have a HUGE kick and a totally unique flavor. Josh gave them a medium rating. I think he's just not ready for savory pumpkin yet ;)

 

And last but not least, on a funny note…I had to go into work for a meeting on Wednesday. I work from home full time and rarely go into the office. I realized, as I was getting ready, that I have no maternity work clothes (which is becoming an issue with pants), YIKES! I threw together some normal clothes and just put on a bellaband. I took a few pictures before hand to make sure I didn’t look too ridiculous ;)

 

Note to self: buy some maternity work clothes ;)

What are you up to this weekend? We’re having dinner with my parents on Saturday night and brunch with friends Sunday morning. Other than that- taking Body Step Saturday AM, cleaning a bit and ??