You mean I can have cookies for breakfast???

One of my favorite cooking shows is Healthy Appetite on the Food Network. This is one of the only shows that specializes in healthy food. Ellie Krieger, the host, always incorporates healthier fats and whole grains in her dishes and eliminates as much sugar as possible, even from baked goods.

A great example is the BreakfastCookies that were featured on today’s show. These great cookies incorporate bran flakes and oats, whole wheat flour, and use only 1/2 cup white flour and 3 tablespoons of white sugar. I bet you could even use honey instead if you wanted to get rid of all the white sugar. She also uses baby food, pureed carrots, which I never would have thought of, but it’s so smart! If you don’t want to buy premade baby food, you could puree your own carrots and store them in a jar for quick access.

This works great for other things as well. I have a jar of pureed ginger that works wonders whenever I want to add ginger to cakes, cookies, or even stir fry sauces. No more dealing with peeling ginger while my veggies burn or having to get rid of the stringy remains. Just puree all of it and then throw in spoonfuls as you need it. It really makes me wonder why I ever bothered to mince or grate it.

I’ve got a multigrain bread rising right now, and it’s actually my first attempt at multigrain bread, so we’ll see how it goes! I’m using this recipe from epicurious.com. I love it because it has so few ingredients. The only change I’m making is to use one third rye flour instead of all white flour. I ran out of whole wheat flour, damn it, but otherwise I would have used that. From the reviews, it sounds like using a 50/50 mixture of whole wheat and regular would work perfectly well, but I’d go ahead and use all whole wheat and add a couple tablespoons of extra wheat gluten to make sure it rose enough. I’ll update with the results soon!