Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

There are two questions you get all the time as a newly married couple:

1) How's married life?

2) When are you having kids?

Well I can tell you that married life is great.  I feel incredibly blessed that things are going so well for us.  All of the things you hear about being the biggest challenges in the first year of marriage haven't hurt us.  And with that I just showed you that there isn't a truthful way to give a non-boring answer to that question.

My answer to the second question is that I have 104 kids and counting and am not ready to add any of my own.

A mystical classmate of ours told us that we would have twins by the end of 2014.  (I think he was messing with us...)  Today one of my coworkers told me my hair was looking full and fantastic, was I pregnant?  (She was teasing and I ended up selling her the Pantene Thickening Treatment I'm in love with... She better have been teasing...)  And then there is my recent repeated strong need for a cookie.  It all makes me nervous.

I got home from work today and I HAD to have a cookie.  We have almost nothing with which to make cookies and my car is buried in ice.  Necessity is the mother of invention.  I whipped up these bad boys and my cookie craving has been quashed.  I would like to say that I waited for them to cool even a little bit before digging in, but I did not...

These incredibly simple cookies have very little sugar and no flour.  You could easily make them 100% sugar free by leaving out the chocolate chips, but don't because chocolate is wonderful.  

This recipe is a blend of two great recipes - one is from Shauna Niequist's book "Bread & Wine" and the other is from blogger Shannon Lim.

Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

by New to the Table

Yield: 12 cookies / Total Time: less than 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup quick oats
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 large very ripe banana
• 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350º and line a baking sheet with parchment or silicone baking mat.

In a medium bowl, mash the banana with a fork.  Add peanut butter and stir until well combined.  Stir in vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine oats and baking soda.

Add oats to peanut butter and combine well.  Fold in chocolate chips.

Use cookie scoop or soup spoon to drop large rounds of dough onto prepared sheet.  Do not flatten dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until cookies are golden brown.  Transfer immediately from cookie sheet to rack to cool.

I hope you enjoy these!  I certainly have a much happier tum and am ready to dive head first into more homework.  

If you're a newlywed (or not so newly), what is/was your best response to the frequently asked question "How's married life?"  (One of my pastors suggested "We're just exhausted...")  (;