Experiments in Yummy (While Thinking of My Waistline)

HI Gorgeous People,

 Healthy comfort food: Peanut-Honey-Oat-Date Cookies

One core tenet that’s coming through loud and clear in modern nutritional science is this: whole foods. Or put another way, eating things that have WAY less industrial processing involved in their production.

Another hot topic? Sugar. More and more data suggests that sugar might just be the biggest problem in modern diets—not fats, like we used to think. It’s the inflammatory response our bodies go through when processing sugars, and the random damage that might result depending on your age, gender, ethnicity, genetics, food sources, weight, exercise habits… the list goes on.

This really shows up in the growing epidemic called Type 2 Diabetes, something I’ve personally fought and reversed.

Now, one of my favourite things in life is creating. So, taking the info above, and what I know about baking… let’s get creative and make some cookies. YES, cookies. I want num num, I want variety, and honestly? I’m not giving up certain things—no matter how hard I try. (Believe me, I’ve tried.)

What we want in our cookies:

1. Protein – let’s put in peanuts. YUM.

2. Low or no refined sugar – I’m using honey (organic, from my dad—aren’t I lucky?) and dates (which help avoid blood sugar spikes).

3. Less unknowns and weird additives.

4. Not too much effort – this isn’t a Michelin star kitchen. 😊

Easy Peanut-Honey-Oat-Date Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup raw or blanched unsalted peanuts (Pop them in the oven while it’s warming up to give them a lovely roasted flavour.)

• 1 cup pitted dates

• 1 cup rolled oats (plain—no flavours or additives)

• ¾ cup plain flour

• ½ tsp baking soda

• ¼ tsp salt

• ¼ cup melted butter (just your average salted butter)

• 2 small eggs

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Line a baking tray with baking paper.

2. Grab your kitchen whiz (or get chopping!) and blitz the peanuts, dates, and oats – together or separately, no stress.

3. Add all the other ingredients and mix / whiz / beat until combined, making sure the dates are spread evenly through the dough.

4. Scoop and shape the dough into balls, then flatten them slightly on the tray.

5. Bake for 12-17 minutes until golden.

6. Cool before serving—they’ll firm up as they cool. Like them firmer? Go wild and add an extra tablespoon of oats at the start.

Feel free to experiment with vegan and gluten-free alternatives!

Someone come stop me before I eat the whole batch in one night. 😊

So here I am—I've eaten four. I feel full, the sugar monster is back in his den, and I feel like I just ate something naughty… but I know I didn’t. I get to feel comforted by my food and maybe even a little superior to those days when I tripped and fell straight onto a bar of chocolate—face first.

See, food for me has always meant comfort, celebration, love, and happiness. But it got out of control, becoming the only source of safety I felt—well, apart from hiding in my bed. The truth is, that wiring runs deep: FOOD = COMFORT. That doesn’t just go away. Bariatric surgery made it impossible to binge on quantity, sure, but it didn’t fix the fact that sugar packs so much into such a small bite. It didn’t stop life from throwing sorrow, hardship, unfairness, judgement, inequality, and mistakes my way.

So, recipes like this give me an answer—a way to comfort eat without guilt, to enjoy a treat, and to listen to the quietest voice in my head. Not the saboteur, not that nasty self-talking muppet newsreader… but someone I call the Hamster of Truth. That inner nice guy, who’s finally learning to be kind to himself, even after years of listening to the mean ones.

But you know what? That’s a whole different topic—maybe one for the next blog?

Let me know if you try the cookies and what you'd like me to write about next.

Hugs, all.