Whole Wheat Oat Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar

Hola todos! Como están ustedes? Estoy muy bien. Gracias!

Yo horneé galletas el lunes pasado. Tenía una ganas para comerlas! Me gusta comer postres. Es muy mal para la salud pero los postres son muy delicioso.

Translation: Hi everyone. How are you guys. I'm very good. Thanks!

I baked cookies the past Monday. I felt like eating them. I love eating desserts. It is bad for the health but desserts are so delicious!
I wanted to bake something that was more on the healthier side so that I wouldn't feel bad eating them. I came across a recipe from eatgood4life.com and it looked very simple to make. I just had to make them. Well, I didn't have to but I wanted a healthier dessert. It ended up being really good. My mom likes it too.

Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup olive oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups oats
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dark chocolate chips (as much as you want) 

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2. Line a 9 x 13 pan with foil or parchment paper. 
3. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla extract 
4. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Mix until a dough forms. 
5. Place the dough in the pan and push the dough into the pan, so that it covers most of the pan. 
6. You can add extra chocolate chips on top if you want. 
7. Bake for 25- 30 minutes.
8. Take the bars out and let them cool completely. 
9. Cut them into bars and enjoy! 

Warning: These bars do crumble a little. However, they are delicious! I just had to make these just so that I wouldn't feel too guilty about eating sweets. 

Do you like cookie bars?

What baked goods do you "healthify"? 

Day 5 Health Challenge Update + pb2 cookie recipe + pb2 protein oats recipe

Hey everyone! How are you guys doing today?

I'm doing fine, thank you very much. I went for a nice run around the creek and the park today with my dad. It was nice. The weather is cold but it's also sunny too. I love sunny weather (except when it's humid or burning hot).

After my run, I ate a delicious breakfast. It's something I created myself. I mixed together:

• 1/4 cup quick cooking oats
• 1/4 cup vanilla protein powder
• 1/4 cup PB2 
• 2 packets of stevia 
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup water

Serving: 1 recipe

Calories: ~ 235 calories

Protein: at least 23 grams of protein

I'm sure that if you leave it overnight, the mixture will become thick. I made it right after my run so it wasn't as thick. I was too impatient to wait even 10 minutes for it to thicken up even more (I was hungry!).

Now, here's my update on my health challenge yesterday:

Day 5:
Breakfast:RiseBar Crunchy Cranberry Apple  160 calories
Morning Snack: Orange and coffee 50 calories
Lunch: PitaPit Sandwich (whole wheat pita, spicy black bean burger, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, cilantro, shredded lettuce, craisins), unsweetened black tea 300 calories
Afternoon Snack: BumbleBar Chocolate Crisp, craisins 350 calories
Dinner: brown rice sushi, steamed veggies 422 calories
Night Snack: oats, truvia, ground cinnamon, pb2, dark chocolate 275 calories

Total calories: 1557 calories

This is how my night snack looked. It's suppose to be a pb2 cookie:

It actually tasted pretty good. I also added in a little vanilla extract to it. Here's the recipe:

• 1/4 cup oats
• 2 tablespoon pb2
• 2 packets stevia
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• a dash of ground cinnamon
•  2-3 tablespoon water

Just mix it all  together and it's ready to be eaten.

I also ate a sample of a green protein bar at Sprout's yesterday. It was like 1/10 of the bar, at most. The pieces were so tiny. It was really good though. I think it was the Greens Plus Chocolate-coated Peanut Butter Protein Bars.

Anyway, that's it for now. I have so many nutrition topics I want to talk about. Here's a list of a few that I will write posts on:

• Electrolytes
• Do athletes really need more protein?
• Are supplements necessary?
• What does low-fat, low-calorie, reduced fat really mean?

That's it for now.

Have you ever been tempted by samples at food stores?

What's your favorite protein food?

Election Day, Alternative Baking Company Phenomenal Pumpkin Spice Cookie and Clif Bar Crunchy Peanut Butter Review

As you know, today is Election Day. I hope that those that are eligible to vote, voted this election. Voting is one way to voice our opinion. I know I voted today and I got an I voted sticker. My classmate from last year designed it for a contest and she won. =)  As I was saying before, voting can help make a difference. It's sad that those who are eligible, don't even register to vote.

Anyway, I just wanted to post on Election Day. I ran on the trail along the river, which I haven't been able to do much, but it's nice. I like running in nature instead of running on the treadmill going nowhere. The thing is that I'm getting a lot more tan from being out in the sun. Oh well. Tanning isn't a bad thing. What's sad is that the weather is going to start get cold due to the season, which means  I may have to run inside more.

Along with that, the weather has been unusually warm the past two days. Maybe it's a response to the time change. It's getting darker earlier. Who knows. I noticed it yesterday while I went to eat at PitaPit yesterday with my cousin. It was around 4:30 pm and it was already getting dark. But, yea, at PitaPit, I got the Falafel Pita with the wheat pita. I added shredded lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, and tzatziki. It was delicious! I'm definitely ordering it again when I go back. It's weird. I went to PitaPit twice within 3 days. It's that good! Maybe I should try their hummus pita. Hummus is delicious.

I also had a pumpkin spice cookie for dessert. It's vegan.
The Alternative Baking Company  Phenomenal Pumpkin Spice Cookie was delicious.

 It's one of my favorite pumpkin products (besides pumpkin pie!). This cookie is amazing. I mean, the espresso chip cookie was delicious too but this cookie, without having chocolate, is the best. I may even eat this instead of some other choco chip cookies I've eaten before. Best of all, it's healthy (except for the sugar). It had a great pumpkin flavor. The texture's soft and chewy when you bite into it. The spices just blend so well together with it.


And, today, after running, I ate the Clif Bar Crunchy Peanut Butter.

This is the first  Clif Bar flavor  I've tried ( a while back) but never ate again until today. My friend always eats this for breakfast and she gave me one one day to try. It's delicious! It's soft and chewy with an oatmeal chewy mixture. The texture is just like any other Clif Bar texture. You also can feel the crunch from the peanuts they put inside it. It's peanut or peanut butter in every bite! It's delicious. It's great for peanut lovers


So, did you guys cast your ballot?
What's your favorite energy bar and dessert?
Do you ever want to try vegan products?

Vegan Apple Cobbler Cookie, Vegan Cinnamon Crisp, Maria Berta Classic Biscuits, MaraNatha All Roasted Natural Almond Butter, Unsweetened Almond Breeze Milk, Kashi Cinnamon Harvest, Rice Chex, Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Granola Thins, Adonia Vanilla Greek Frozen Yogurt, Snicker's Almond Bar,

Hey everyone! How are you guys doing today? I'm doing fine, thank you very much. I have so many things to review today, as you can see from the long title. I'll try and make this quick, since I have other things to do too.

Vegan Apple Cobbler Cookie

As you can probably tell, I'm getting obsessed with trying out vegan pastries. I bought this one yesterday at my school's bookstore cafe.

This cookie was big! I really enjoyed it though. It had oatmeal, raisins and apples. It was moist, soft and sweet. There was a bit of a crunch with the oatmeal, which was nice. It's probably one of the best non chocolate cookies I've eaten.

Vegan Cinnamon Crisp

I actually bought this vegan cinnamon crisp at a local bakery today. It's one of their few vegan pastries. I was craving something cinnamon without the saturated fat from the cinnamon rolls, so I chose this. It was delicious! It was sweet, crispy and had a lot of flavor. It had just the right amount of cinnamon.

Maria Berta Classic Biscuits

I love these biscuits. Only 5 for 117 calories. That's not bad, considering their size. The taste is also great too. Just like a regular digestive biscuit. Crunchy and slightly sweet. I ate some with MarthaNatha All Roasted Natural Almond Butter. Delicious!

MarthaNatha All Roasted Natural Almond Butter

I think I've reviewed this almond butter before but I just have to review it again. It's tasty! It's creamy and it has great flavor. I don't know how to describe it. It's just delicious. You do have to stir it up though.

Unsweetened Almond Breeze Milk Vanilla and Kashi Cinnamon Harvest

I just had to buy the Cinnamon Harvest cereal. It's just too good! Cinnamon, sweet and healthy with lots of fiber and whole grain. The thing is that it's a bit higher in calories. That's why I wanted to try it with the unsweetened Almond Breeze milk, which is low in calories. It was delicious! The milk itself is nice and creamy. With the cereal, it  was delicious!

Rice Chex

I love Chex cereal. These were yummy! They're also gluten free. They're nice and crispy with a lot of flavor. It's hard to explain it. It's like a corn potato chip flavor. It's really yummy though and I eat it plain! You can make stuff with it too, if you want.

Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Granola Thins

 These granola thins are delicious. Crunchy, sweet and chocolatey. It's a nice treat. The downside is that they are small and messy.

Adonia Vanilla Greek Frozen Yogurt

I love frozen yogurt, so why not try frozen greek yogurt? This was delicious. Nice and creamy. There was a bit of an artifical vanilla flavor but it was still pretty good. I made a float with a diet coke. Delicious!

Snicker's Almond Bar

Oh boy. Chocolate candy. They're so high in calories but so delicious! I decided to try this almond one, hoping that it's "healthier." Well, it's not but I can at least pretend it is at least a little bit healthier. It was delicious. Chewy, caramel, chocolate with a crunch from the almonds. Delicious. If only they used dark chocolate. That reminds me. We still have tons of chocolate candy left from Halloween. We didn't have very many trick or treaters this year due to the weather. I'm going to make M&M cookies with the leftover M&M's we have.

Anyway, back to today. I bought some things from the store today. Here's what I bought:

I just had to get the dark chocolate kettle corn because it's dark chocolate and it's popcorn. It's only 130 calories form 1 and 2/3  cup! Such a good deal for the calories. I bought the pretzels so that I can make my own dark chocolate covered pretzels with the dark chocolate chips I have. I may even sprinkle some shredded coconut when I make them (whenever that may be). I love candy corn, so I bought it (I'm the only one that likes it in my family, so they don't buy it). I also bought a LUNA bar, since the store I went to, they sell them at one of the lowest prices I've found for LUNA bars.

I was so surprised to see this at the store. I didn't they they made this flavor yet:

haha. My friend and I were talking about this yesterday, saying that they would probably make this in the future. But, hey, it looks like they've already made Dark Chocolate Peanut M&M's. I'm going to buy them next time, after we finish all of our snacks.

Anyway, do you like chocolate and coconut together?

By the way, hoy es el Dia de los Muertos!