It's a Dessert Smorgasbord!

First off, yes I am still on my diet.  Second off, hubby bought another package of those crappy sugar-free cookies--which means he needs something sweet, preferably chocolate.  Finally, I am starting to feel guilty about leaving to go on my summer roadtrip without him.  Which all leads to heating up the oven and taking advantage of an hour and a half of time before I had to start dinner. 

The above recipe is out of the Flat Belly Diet Family Cookbook (which I recommend).  Here's a link to the recipe on the Prevention website for the Oatmeal Cookie Bars.  I made them with whole wheat flour (not whole wheat pastry flour), I used EVOO instead of Canola as it was out and it only called for 2T and instead of melting the semi-sweet chocolate adding milk and more oil, I just used dark chocolate chips mixed into the batter.  Two thumbs up from us!!!  I baked them in a glass pie dish instead of an 8" x 8" pan and they took 14 minutes to brown up nicely.

The next recipe was from Jillian Michaels' "Losing It".  The recipe can be found here Fudge Brownies at the Catz in the Kitchen blog (check out her recipe index...YUM!).  I didn't substitute much--used regular whole wheat flour instead of white whole wheat flour and regular baking soda.  But again, both Rod and I liked it as a substitute for my regular full strength sugar, white flour and butter brownies.  They took a little longer to bake than the 25 minutes called for--but as you can see I don't own an 8" x 8" baking pan...so I used one a bit smaller and less rectangular! 

The last dessert I made was a batch of Crunchy Peanut Butter Cookies  again from the Flat Belly Diet Family Cookbook and detailed on the My Favorite Everything blog.  On this recipe I substituted dark brown sugar for the light...and I thought the recipe must be wrong.  It has no flour.  I did refrigerate the batter for about 15-30 minutes while waiting for the oven to free up so that may have helped them firm up enough to roll into a ball.  I baked the first tray for 11 minutes, but, I only did the minimum 10 minutes on the next batch and was happier with them.  I can tell you these were good and they made Rod happy even without the chocolate! 

So after all that I made ANOTHER recipe from the Flat Belly Diet Family Cookbook--this one Spaghetti with White Clam Sauce which is on the Rodale recipe site.  I made a ton of changes to the original recipe including:  whole wheat pasta instead of multigrain, half clam juice with the rest made up with water and 1T oyster sauce, dried basil instead of fresh at the end, half the garlic and half the olive oil.  It wasn't very saucy, but, I probably lost track of how long I reduced it with all the work going on in the oven.  But, the dish was very flavorful and Rod like it!