Planning for a birthday party

Today is my husband’s 33rd birthday. We’re having a small party tomorrow with a few of our friends, and I’ve been devising ways to provide a fun meal, but to eat a little healthier at the same time. I decided to make the makings for plate tacos; ground beef, refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, etc. I’ll make the ground beef mixture half ground turkey (because Jeff doesn’t like ground turkey very much) and the refried beans will be half canned pumpkin, which cuts down on calories big time. And I’ll have low-fat sour cream. For me, I may use baked chips, OR high-fiber tortillas and make mine into a burrito instead. The options are endless!

The best part of these switches is that everything tastes the same, so no one notices, but it is healthier, and I can eat comfortably without worrying so much about my points. The thing that may stop me up is the chocolate ganache cake he wanted. Although, it may be helpful that I’m not that big of a fan of desserts in general so I’ll probably have a small piece and be happy.

He wanted peanut butter cookies, so last night, I made a batch, but I changed the recipe a bit. It said to make 1-inch balls of dough, but I used a mini scooper and the balls were quite a bit smaller. Original recipe said it makes 48 cookies, but the way I did it, it made 78. Which is great because since I’m not really into cookies, if I have one, it’s only 77.4 calories, or 2 points.

In my life, I haven’t liked peanut butter cookies since I remember having my first one at my Grandma’s house when I was about 6 years old. I haven’t eaten one since that first one, 21 years ago. I simply love peanut butter, and could possibly live on it, but I don’t think it belongs in a cookie (since I don’t like cookies). I really feel like whoever came up with that was sadly mistaken.

However, last night, one of them flipped over when I was putting them out to cool, and it kind of folded in half, revealing the inner almost-cooked-but-not-quite goodness. And all of a sudden, I had to give peanut butter cookies another try. After all, taste buds do change. And. It. Was. Delicious. Seriously. It was perfectly soft and moist, wow. So while I am enamored of MY peanut butter cookies, it’s apparent that it’s the store-bought ones I can’t stand. Even better for me! After all, I can figure out the nutritional value (or lack-of) with my recipe. So I had extra points left last night, and ended up eating three cookies for 6 points which brought me cleanly to zero. And best for me, I really only liked them when they were still warm and gooey from the oven, so now that they’ve been sitting on the kitchen table to cool, I don’t want them. They’re too hard and crunchy. But perhaps, I’ve found a recipe I can make a couple of times a year to impress (and have a couple of nice warm ones myself).