Green Swamp SoupKid, Earth and Time Friendly Recipes

I got the idea for these cookies out of pure necessity. I bought a HUGE bag of trail mix for my kids and, well, they didn’t like it! Being the master of mixing all things healthy into everything from cupcakes to pizza, I thought to myself, “I’ll bet they’d like this a whole lot better mixed into some cookies.” And, viola, I had my new recipe.

I basically took the tried and true oatmeal cookie recipe right off the Quaker Oats package lid and altered it slightly, using a little less oatmeal and 1 1/4 cups of trail mix. I got my trail mix at Roots Market, and it contained peanuts, almonds, craisins, raisins, pumpkin seeds, carob chips and dried apples.

The kids gobbled them up, and then I took some into work for the real taste test. Here’s one review:

“Very good. Crunchy and chewy all in one. And it doesn’t taste like a healthy cookie. (I have made some that aren’t very good — not a lot of flavor.) But these have a lot going on.”

So there you have it. Crunchy. Chewy. Non-healthy tasting and they used up my unwanted trail mix!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups old fashioned Quaker Oats
1 1/4 cups trail mix

Directions:

1. Heat over to 350 degrees F.

2. Beat together butter and sugars until creamy.

3. Add eggs and vanilla; beat wel.

4. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well.

5. Stir in oats and trail mix; mix well.

6. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

7. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until golden on the edges. Middle should be soft. Allow to sit on baking sheets for one more minute.

8. Remove to wire rack to cool.

Makes about three dozen cookies — IF you don’t eat the dough.

Feast your eyes on the feasting table.

Middle Eastern food is one of my absolute favorite cuisines, so it was important to me to make sure my kids liked it from day one. We make homemade hummus here on a fairly regular basis and use pitas for everything from pizzas to sandwiches. However, this post is focused on several recipes and ideas that you can use to create a full-on Middle Eastern feast!

The basis of this particular feast is chickpeas, of course! I received some sprouted chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans, from my friend, Cara Ullrich. Cara works at Roots Market, and is a bona fide food guru. She explained to me that sprouted garbanzos contain much more protein and nutrients than your average canned variety, and are also much more flavorful — and she was absolutely right! These beans made some of the tastiest hummus I’ve had to date! NOTE: If you can sprout your own garbanzos, I highly encourage it. However, you can used dried or canned garbanzo beans to make the hummus included in this post.

The next item on the feast menu is falafel. I’m seriously CRAZY about falafel. In fact, I had some leftover from the feast and I ate with some Sriracha sauce for breakfast (but I seriously never eat anything considered “normal” for breakfast).

Unfried falafel patty.

Falafel is a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas and/or fava beans. Wikipedia tells us this is a popular fast food in the Middle East and I so wish this were the case here (although they do serve some great falafel at the Pita King in Waterloo). You can make your own homemade falafel, but this takes time.

Instant falafel -- just add water!

For my personal feast, I opted to use the Fantastic Foods boxed mix, simply because it’s easy and delicious. If you want to make your own falafel from scratch, here’s an excellent recipe from Epicurious.

Now, onto the fun part — the tzatziki sauce! My version of this is probably not technically tzatziki, but I’ve found a combination of flavors and textures that everyone in the family, especially Chris, loves. My sauce is pretty simple — just Fage Greek yogurt, green onions, fresh lemon juice and a little garlic powder. Chris literally ate every bite of the batch I made and practically liked the serving dish!

So, how do we serve all of this stuff? Creatively. I will be blatantly honest right now and say that the kids aren’t big fans of falafel. This is really frustrating to me, since it IS a version of fast food, is brown and fried and very nearly resembles a chicken nugget. So, I tuck these little critters neatly inside a warm pita, add some fresh spinach and slather lots of tzatziki and hummus all over it. The kids can have more hummus, tzatziki and pitas after they try their sandwiches.

As for mom and dad, we make several different types of mini sandwiches out of our pitas — falafel/tzatziki, hummus/chili garlic sauce, falafel/tzatziki/hummus/chili garlic sauce.

Because this post contains so many recipes, I have created individual pages for each and linked to them below. For the falafel, either follow the recipe above or buy the Fantastic Foods mix! Even if you don’t make the feast all at once, I encourage you to try at least one of these recipes and introduce this delicious and nutritious cuisine to your family.

Our friends, falafel and pita, waiting to be slathered in tzatziki and hummus.

Middle East Feast Menu

1 package whole wheat pita (you can make these into pita chips as well)
1 package Fantastic Foods falafel mix
1 large bunch or bag of fresh spinach
kalmata hummus recipe
tzatziki sauce recipe
Sriracha or chili garlic sauce to taste