Beginnings Always Start With Cookies

So I'll admit it, I'm really bad at keeping up with blogs.  I tried it two years ago after getting married and failed miserably after just two posts.  I honestly never thought about posting and my pictures and ideas fell to the wayside. In the last few weeks that has changed, however, as I have watched my wonderful husband begin his own writing blog.  He has been so inspiring in his pursuit of growing as a writer and sharing his passion that I caught his bug.  You should check out his blog and the amazing things he has already written and leave him a comment - he'll love it! 

I'm not an amazing writer like my husband, but I enjoy sharing experiences, pictures (especially those!), and adventures on my new journey of mommyhood.  My beautiful, growing baby boy captured my heart long before I ever saw his face, but its every single day since meeting him that my heart as grown more and more in love with one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me.  As I type my 5 month old baby boy is sawing some Z's through the baby monitor - how grateful I am for a sleeping baby! Words cannot express how much I love this little man and, to be honest, I can't help but share a million pictures of him. So you will see lot of him on here!

Baby Evan started his own journey of solid foods this month.  After two weeks of trying rice cereal on for size, we decided to try some avocado.  He just wasn't sure what to think of it.

We'll keep trying and see how does in the coming weeks - I'm thinking sweet potato is next. So anyway, now you're probably wondering why the title of this blog has anything to do with cookies. Way to be patient! Because there was no way my little man was going to eat a whole avocado, let alone more than a teaspoon or two.  And I didn't want it to spoil in the mean time, and having gone off dairy for the mean time (to see if it will help settle little man's stomach - more on that another time), I decided to try avocado as a substitute for butter in some yummy cookies - banana oatmeal cookies.

They are amazingly simple to make and delicious to boot! You can find the recipe here. Though her recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of butter, you can substitute mashed avocado 1:1 for the butter.  So that's exactly what I did.  I was a little worried when the batter was fairly bright green at first, but after stirring in the oats and nuts, you'd never know there was anything green about these cookies.

In the oven they went at 350 degrees for 10 minutes and the whole placed smelled like banana bread - delicious.  I barely let them cool before I dug in.  I'm pretty sure there are about half of them left even after baking them only this afternoon.  Seriously yummy! They were dairy free, low fat, and smelled divine coming out of the oven.

Do you ever cook with baking substitutes?  I was amazed how many different ways you can substitute various ingredients out to make recipes lower fat and healthier.  Apple sauce is one of my favorites, and I'm excited to experiment with avocado in the future to see what else I can come with.

So there you have it - grammatically correct or not - here's to a good beginning and to hopefully many more simple life adventures to share.  

God bless!