Busy week ahead, so I'm cooking tonight

It's going to be a busy week, so tonight I took some time to cook and bake a few things:

First I made 2 kinds of turkey sausage. Hubs wanted apple sausage, so I made a pound of onion/apple sausage and a pound of regular sausage. I'll do separate posts with the recipes.

Next I started the fermentation process for some kefir I've been wanting to make. I bought some freeze dried starter grains (it's not grain, actually; it's yeast and bacteria) at Whole Foods (they were like $5 off, so only $.97 for a pack of 6) yesterday. I heated up some organic whole milk, let it cool to about 75 degrees, then poured some into 4 different containers into which I'd already put one pack each of starter grains. Now they sit, covered, for about 24 hours while the kefir starter grains "wake up" and ferment the milk. After that, I think I drain off the excess liquid and voila! My very own live and active starter grains. Throw them in some milk and let them get to business.

Then I made banana/strawberry egg-free and grain-free muffins. They are actually in the oven right now, and I'm not sure they are going to make it. This happens frequently to me when I try baking without eggs. It's really a gigantic pain in the ass, but I figured that since this particular recipe didn't call for eggs, there shouldn't be a problem. We shall see. I'm not opening the oven door for another 20 minutes...

I'm also going to bake some pumpkin-zucchini egg-free and grain-free muffins. And possibly some of those delicious brownies.

I'm feeling a bit sad right now, but it's nothing I want to talk about. It's something that's been going on for years, and it's something I guess I just have to deal with. As much as it sucks...

And tonight...I made chocolate chip cookies

I tweaked a recipe for some higher carb cookies and mine turned out pretty good. The original recipe called for honey and dates to sweeten, as well as 1/2 c of chocolate chips. Instead, I used 1/4c xylitol and 1/4c stevia, then halved the amount of chips.

So my recipe looked like this:
1/2 c organic butter
1/4 c xylitol
1/4 c stevia (I use Stevia in the Raw; I find it to be less bitter than others I've tried)
2 eggs
1 1/2 T organic vanilla extract (I used less than the original recipe b/c it's very strong)
2 c almond flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 c Ghirardelli Double Chocolate all natural chips (I put them in the food processor and chopped them up instead of leaving them whole so the chocolate flavor would be throughout the batter, raising the overall sweetness without raising the carbs/sugars)

Cream together the butter, xylitol and stevia with an electric beater (or stand mixer).
Add eggs and vanilla; mix with beater.
Add flour, baking soda, salt; chopped chocolate chips; mix until combined.
Drop by teaspoon on a WELL GREASED cookie sheet (I used coconut oil).
Bake until the edges start browning...maybe 6 or 7 minutes at 350 degrees.

This made a total of 40 cookies!
NOTE: Leave room between the cookies on the baking sheet. They spread out quite a bit, and were flat-ish when finished baking.

ALSO NOTE: These cookies are not as sweet as regular cookies. You may have to adjust to the level of sweetness in them. I think they are delicious...one of my kids loved them, the other (more picky) one said they weren't sweet enough.

Nutritional breakdown per my calculations (please do your own!):

Per 1 cookie (40 per batch)
calories: 46.15
fat: 4.3g
saturated fat: 1.9g
carbohydrates: 2.3g
sugar: .48g
protein: .35g