The World's Easiest and Healthiest Chocolate Chip Cookies

     After almost 3 months of daily recipes, I finally took a real day off without guilting myself into doing 2 posts the next day. My mom and I decided to be spontaneous and take a little road trip without having any plan or even a destination in mind. We did have a little fun, but unfortunately, spontaneity sounds better in theory than in reality. Who would have thought that EVERY hotel in an entire county could be full and that restaurants would even bother taking names for an hour and a half wait? Oh well, it was another live and learn experience. I've been having a lot of those lately. Here's a look at my adventure:

     Anyhoo, tonight I'm posting another one of my sunday night simple recipes. The inspiration for these fast and healthy cookies originally came from Pinterest, but I just glanced at the ingredients and didn't bother to read the directions, so the result is a totally original creation. They're sweet and chewy, but contain no butter, flour, sugar or eggs. Since they're made of mostly banana, the flavor and texture is obviously a little different than a regular cookie, but the definitely satisfy a sweet tooth. I just had 3 for dessert, and feel completely content with no guilt. In fact, these could probably even be great for breakfast! This recipe only makes 6 cookies, so feel free to multiply it to your heart's content, but I always try to make small batches because I'm not trying to feed an army and it's a lot easier to multiply a recipe than to divide it.

INGREDIENTS:
1 overripe banana (Side note: Never throw away overripe bananas! Use them for this or to make banana bread, which I'll share here sometime.)
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup quick oats
a tablespoon or two of your favorite chopped nuts---I used macadamia today.
a big spoonful of peanut butter (I haven't tried this, but almond butter might work instead.)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease a good nonstick cookie sheet.
2. Put everything in a medium bowl and mash/whip it up with a fork until it looks well-mixed.

3. Form little cookies with a spoon and bake for 13-15 minutes. Then let them rest on the cookie sheet for at least 5 more minutes before moving them because the "dough" is stickier than normal and needs some time to set.

Enjoy! And stay tuned for some big things next week. I sort of went on a mental vacation this week, but now I've got to get some bigger cooking projects done before school starts.