Life with more nourishing food so far has been really delicious and satisfying, it has even had plenty of variety and plenty of sweets. But it isn’t without some sacrifices, particularly in the realm of special treats. The other night my dreams were all about being at a bakery and eating sticky sugary white flour treats, and it seemed like I should give myself something to fulfill this craving rather than let my subconsciousness obsess over it. I give in sometimes, I do; but it would be really great if I didn’t have to. I would really like to go to the grocery store and find a cookie that fits my sense of a food worth eating; worth it in terms of taste, and the soul-satisfying experience of a yummy treat, and not needing my body to deplete its hard earned resources to help the food go through.
Nourishing Traditions has plenty of treats and snacks that are all delicious. I am getting the hang of a lot of the techniques, but one practice has got me stuck and stopped a lot of my baking. To really meet the nourishing standard, any quick breads are made with flour that has been soaked over night. It’s easy to just write this practice off as too much time to ask for muffins. What actually gets me is the expense of the soaking (cups of buttermilk each time) and I plain forget or don’t give myself the time (as I think the desire to bake a treat is often an in-the-moment kind of thing).
Luckily, at a particular treat-craving moment, I had all the right stuff to make totally nourishing and absolutely delicious cookies.
From the creation of our camping trail mix (see below) we had many cups of soaked-and-dried nuts (What Ms. Fallon calls “crispy nuts”). These nuts have had the enzyme inhibitor (the natural preservative that you don’t want to be eating) soaked out of it, and the crispy put back in through a long time in a warm oven; enough to make them crunchy but not to kill all of those good nutrients the soaking released. The pumpkin seeds were outrageously good as were the almonds. The peanuts just didn’t really get eaten as the flavor wasn’t great on their own. So I ground them up and used them for the base of these flourless peanut cookies.
They are made by blending all the ingredients in a food processor until you get a nice mealy dough that you will form into walnut sized rounds.
This is a cookie I have don’t think I would be able to find pre-made. The approach of nourishing traditions exists in this area between organic foodie eats and vegan/raw fare. The vegans have made cookies with the right kind of sweetener and often some kind of alternative flour that is more easily digested, but they use vegetable-based oils that are not great like soy or canola (why they don’t use coconut at least I don’t know…). Raw food teats often leaves out the flour for something like the ground up nut base, but I can’t ensure that they have actually soaked the nuts, which is sort of the whole point, otherwise you might as well use flour. The organic foodies have the eggs and milk and butter but they use white sugar and flour (organic is fine, but I want to go beyond).
The ingredient list on this cookie’s package would read like so:
Soaked and dried organic peanuts, organic cultured butter, arrowroot powder, dehydrated cane sugar (unrefined), organic fair-trade vanilla, sea salt.
Tell me if you’ve ever bought a cookie like that…
P.S. You have to let them sit to set, then they are as chewy and tasty as any other.
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