Waiting…& Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Lactation Cookies

January 15, 2018January 15, 2018 ~ atastytrip ~ 2 Comments

In case you can’t tell from the title of this post…. no baby yet 😦 We are now only 3 days out from our due date and not much seems to have changed, although according to my doctor things are still moving in the right direction, so at least there’s that! I’ve cleaned all I can clean, run all the errands there are to run, done all the laundry there is to do and the nursery is completely finished. Nesting is officially complete so now we wait…and wait…and wait.

If our girl doesn’t arrive before her due date we are going to discuss inducing (induction?). My OB doesn’t like for you to go more than a week over your due date, and although I was initially very reluctant, I am becoming more open to the idea of being induced. I am not terribly uncomfortable physically but emotionally the anticipation and waiting has taken a toll and I am ready for a change. Above all else I am thankful for a still healthy and growing baby girl and that is the most important thing!

One thing that made the waiting slightly harder (but also so very exciting!) is that my good friend Lindsay who was due a few weeks after me had her baby boy a few weeks early on Tuesday! He is absolutely darling and they are both happy and healthy despite his early arrival. Seeing her little one definitely made me more ready for the arrival of our own, and I think finally made it more real for Robert! I’m still not sure he quite knows what he’s in for (um do I even know? Probably not) but I think he’s going to be great in the moment!

When my friends give birth or are going through a major life event I am a big believer that the most helpful thing you can do is bring a meal. Bring a meal, then leave, to be precise. Not bring a meal and stay to share it or bring a meal and stay to be entertained for a few hours. I imagine that new parents have quite enough going on and often family around to entertain so I like to drop something hot off, hold the sweet babe for a minute if they so wish and then merrily be on my way. It’s been a tried and true formula that most people seem to appreciate so I highly recommend it.

I have a few go to recipes for times like these; Chicken and vegetable casserole, Sausage and Tortellini Soup (Can be prepared Gluten Free if need be!) and most recently Chicken and Poppyseed Casserole. None of these recipes qualify as health food but all are delicious and comforting which is exactly what you want during a time like that. I typically add a bagged salad to the casseroles to be made at their convenience, or a loaf of fresh bread to the soup and in the case of new mamas, I always bring lactation cookies. Continue reading →

Almond Lace Cookies

February 12, 2016 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

I am interrupting your regularly scheduled Italy recaps to bring you a recipe.

And it’s not just any recipe, it’s a Valentine’s Day recipe!

Yep. You heard that right. For once ~~and maybe the last time so don’t get used to it~~ I am attempting to be a good food blogger and give you a seasonal recipe. How people are on top of it enough to start giving you football food recipes a month in advance of the super bowl is beyond me, teach me your ways! So lets just start with this admittedly anytime cookie recipe that I have dressed up in pink and red thus qualifying it as a Valentine’s Day treat and agree that I’ll work on it. Ok?

Full disclosure: I kind of love Valentine’s Day. First of all, I’m a sucker for greeting cards so that makes me a fan by default, but there’s more to it than that. There are so many Valentine’s Day haters out there that it’s easy to jump on the anti hallmark bandwagon, but I refuse. I mean really, who can honestly say that they hate love? Maybe you hate being single on Valentine’s Day, but you can celebrate any kind of love, and you should! Even if you are significant other-less, Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to drink wine and eat chocolate with your friends! Heck, treat yourself to a fancy dinner with your best friend, or your mom! I mean, you love her too right? So why not celebrate it! There is more than enough hatred and criticism to go around on this earth. When given the chance to celebrate love and pass out cheeky conversation hearts, take it!

Continue reading →

Healthy(er) Chocolate Chunk Banana Oat Cookies

September 5, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ 1 Comment

Hi! Happy Labor Day Weekend! I have had quite the interesting last few days….

I went to the gym on Thursday after work to run and had a big time treadmill accident 😦 Before you start laughing, it was only half my fault and apparently happens a lot more often than people realize. Or maybe people are just trying to make me feel better by sharing treadmill horror stories? If so, it’s working, keep ’em coming!

In a nutshell, I was waiting for a treadmill (all full of high school kids since one of our local school’s track teams practices there) and a boy jumped off the front of his and jogged away. The treadmills at my gym are all in a row so you can get on/off from either the front (a squeeze) or the back. I saw him hop off, thought “oh good, an open one!” and hopped onto it from the back. I didn’t look down (my mistake) and thus failed to notice that he hadn’t stopped the treadmill, and had instead left it running at a very high speed (his mistake). Needless to say I was immediately flung off the back of the treadmill and skinned both ankles and my knee in the process. The treadmills also back up to a wall with only about a foot of space in between wall/treadmill so once I was flung off, I basically became trapped in a sitting position between the wall and the still running treadmill until I was able to stand up. It was only for a few seconds but it managed to take a lot of skin off several areas of my back and leave some nasty treadmill burns. I would share a photo but it’s pretty yucky and no one really wants to see that. So the moral of the story is… working out is hazardous to your health!

Only kidding of course 🙂 The REAL moral of that story is always look down before you hop on a treadmill! And NEVER leave one running when you get off… SO dangerous!

Continue reading →

Healthy Coconut Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Monday! I know most Mondays aren’t all that happy but a batch of cookies should improve it drastically. Cookies almost always improve things drastically right? Especially cookies that have the words healthy AND chocolate in their name.

I first experimented with these cookies a few weeks ago when I had some leftover chocolate bars after some serious s’more making. I’m not typically a baker, but I was in the mood for something sweet and not terribly bad for you. I decided to try and make these as figure friendly as I could while still passing the Robert test. The Robert test means I can feed him a cookie (or a pancake) and he just says “yum, that’s really good” instead of “Yum that’s really good but I can tell it’s healthy because it’s not very sweet/got a weird texture/is really flat for a pancake/etc”. What can I say, health-ifying baked goods isn’t ALWAYS a great success. Luckily these passed the Robert test with flying colors and he immediately ate 4 of them. I have since made them several times, including a batch to take to our dear friends and brand new parents Ben and Annie! We went to deliver casseroles and cookies and meet baby Cooper over the weekend once they were home from the hospital and my goodness, she was even tinier and more adorable than I ever could have imagined!

So sweet! Robert loves babies and it was pretty precious to watch him hold her, and even more precious to see how excited he was for our friends. SOMEDAY we will be ready for one of our own and I know he will be a fantastic father. For now he will have to settle for Renly… and cookies

So what exactly makes these cookies so healthy you may wonder? Well for starters, there is NO refined sugar, they are sweetened with just a little honey and whatever you choose to mix in. I chose chopped dark chocolate and coconut, but you could use nuts, raisins, dried cranberries, even M and M’s, whatever your heart desires! There is also no dairy in these cookies, no eggs or butter and no oil! I replaced all of the above with unsweetened applesauce and it worked! Hooray!

Confession: Often Sometimes when I bake I don’t read the recipe all the way through. I know this is the cardinal sin of baking, hence why I am not the best baker and don’t do it often. Cooking is a lot more forgiving, baking, well, let’s just say that if I had a dollar for every time I have started mixing ingredients only to realize that whoops, should have separated the wet from the dry first…well, yeah, I’d have a lot of dollars.

Continue reading →