All in a day's work

About a year or so ago, my husband brought home a diet book that he was excited to try. Always leery of anything telling me to cut food intake (I will CUT YOU over some food. Don't mess with me), I resisted. I gazed at the recipes, which consisted of about 80% of the book, and was surprised at how yummy they looked. So I started to read, and was appalled at the information I was gaining. The book talked about the amount of sugar that can be found in packaged foods. Shocked at how much sugar was in things I considered "healthy" like pasta sauces, crackers, even milk; I went through my pantry and threw out at least half of it. I couldn't believe what we were eating. It was a huge eye opener for me. This just kind of snowballed to where I am today - packing as much real, whole, natural foods into our diets as I can.

Recently I stumbled across this great blog that was written by a girl who revived my spirit to eat more raw foods. I think the biggest trouble with "healthy eating" is that I feel like I can't eat sweets, which is my downfall. I feel like a failure if I make something that isn't quite good for us. But a girl just NEEDS a cupcake sometimes! This girl has the same problem with sweets being what she craves, and she's come up with brilliant solutions to curbing them and eating healthy at the same time. Because frankly, telling me to replace my chocolate with broccoli is crazy. (I WILL CUT YOU!) Sorry. It doesn't fit.

With the girls in school, I find that I have more time to make food that I wish I could have made before. Which is nice, considering they are getting awfully picky where their lunch is concerned and I refuse to buy processed foods.

So the other day I made these little gems. Raw peanut butter "cookies". Oh me oh my. They are so yummy and really do hit the cookie spot. My girls gobbled them up. Ok, they aren't technically completely raw, but raw enough! You could easily replace the peanut butter with almond butter and leave out vanilla.

In her blog post I believe the girl says she was snacking on them "all week". They didn't last 24 hours at my house, but I'm counting that as a good thing. :) If you're looking for a good for you treat that is really yummy and tastes like dessert, definitely try these. You can make them in about 5 minutes flat (bonus!) and they are so good for you (double bonus!).

Now I'm off to finish putting the sweet potato crackers in a container and the black bean hummus in the fridge.