Vegan Cookies Make Everyone Happy!

As I've been doing this budget eating and going through my pantry I notice I have a lot of oatmeal. I do this every so often where I'll see a bunch of gorgeous oatmeal pictures and I'll decide I'm going to eat more oatmeal. The problem is I'm more of a savory breakfast gal and I think I only like to look at oatmeal. So I decided I wanted to make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to take to work and leave out for my coworkers. I did buy chocolate chips which were not in my budget, but I only tested one cookie to make sure they were good so I don't feel like I super cheated. And I cheated for the animals anyway. I believe good food speaks for itself and I wanted to open some minds. And weirdly enough I actually wanted to bake!!
I  just made the cookies with no real recipe. I  made some oat flour out of some of the oats, and combined that with whole oatmeal and then just added the usual suspects like brown sugar, coconut oil, vanilla and two flax eggs. I tasted the batter and when it tasted like delicious cookie dough I knew it was ready to be baked! I have a coworker who doesn't like oatmeal and chocolate together(??!!) so I took out some plain dough an added frozen blueberries for her.

The cookies to the right are the oatmeal blueberry cookies. These were a HUGE hit!! I saw some looks when I said the cookies were gluten free and vegan. We all know the look of "these are going to suck" An I love the look of surprise when it doesn't suck!! I heard people saying to each other "wow, these aren't bad!" I have to admit the pride was real because baking is not my specialty! I joked with one of the supervisors that I was ready to start the vegan division of the bakery. He said all the bakery stuff comes frozen and they just bake and decorate. LOL. Why do they even have all those huge expensive ovens??

This was about forty five minutes after I set them out. Crumbs! Vegan cookies make everyone happy!

Then on my first ten minute break I noticed they had all but licked the foil of all crumbs, meanwhile the samples of the non vegan chocolate chip cookies from the bakery still had quite a few in the bag!!
This proves that vegan and homemade are always going to win!!

This was my budget dinner last night. I had like three different sauces in my fridge that were almost empty so I combined them all and hoped for the best. I mixed a little spicy peanut sauce, a little Kung Pao sauce and some other kind of garlic-y hoisin sauce with some sriracha, a dash of soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil. I poured it over my rice, tofu and avocado bowl and savored every bite. And even though I have this meal often, different sauces always change it up and keep it interesting.

The squirrels and birds were out enjoying the beautiful weather we had yesterday and so of course that gave the girls hours of entertainment! Etta is on the table waiting her turn. Usually all five can fit on the windowsill but Roxy was wanting to constantly lay down and take up extra space. Just her usual diva antics