Week Two: Dietary & Lifestyle Restrictions
We love eating all the vegan food we can, but it’s good to learn how to cook for those who may have allergies or intolerances — and challenge ourselves in the process.

It’s been a tasty week in our household! Aside from all the yummy, oat-y treats we’ve been eating, we’ve had a few really tasty dinners. On Thursday night I roasted up some  roasted corn on the cob along with tofu marinated in this garlicky, herby delight. Served alongside some kale sautéed with cherry tomatoes from the garden, it all made for a healthy, veggie-forward, and immensely flavorful meal. A couple hours after eating, I decided that a delicious dinner like that one deserved to be followed up with dessert. It would be rude not to, right?

I didn’t want to spend too much time on a fussy, complicated treat, though. So I I turned to the queen of simple, relatively healthy, allergen-friendly vegan desserts: Chocolate-Covered Katie. Her healthy sugar cookies come together super quickly and make a perfect treat when you’re peckish at night, so I figured I should give her chocolate chip cookies a shot. I whizzed up some oats my VitaMix’s dry container to make flour; all the other ingredients are pantry staples.

The eagle-eyed among you (hah) will notice that my cookies look nothing like the ones on Katie’s website. There’s a good reason for that. For one, I didn’t quite pulverize the oats finely enough, so they didn’t quite become the texture of flour. (I actually enjoyed the slightly grainy texture!) More problematic was my failure to chill the dough for two hours. It was already 8 p.m. and I was craving sweets, so I forewent the full chill in favor of an abbreviated 15-minute fridging. That’s probably why they spread so much. They were still delicious.

Although these cookies don’t have the buttery richness you find in traditional choc chip cookies, they were still quite satisfying… a more than adequate follow-up to our tasty dinner. I think you could even replace the oil with vegan butter if you wanted a more traditional flavor. I’m happy to add these to my arsenal for a fuss-free, allergen-friendly vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe!