Matthew and I are just finishing week 2 of a 28-day “diet” regimen called The Fast Metabolism Diet. It’s okay…lots of groceries and lots of cooking, but we’re eating a lot of super foods and it’s good for us. The way it works at its most basic is this: each week is broken down into three phases. Phase one lasts two days and is heavy on grains and fruit, stuff that’s easy to digest and that makes tummies happy. Phase two, also two days, is the protein phase. Phase three is three days long and allows us to eat all kinds of yummies like almond butter, avocado, coconut, olive oil, salmon – the good fats.

The hardest part for me is the part where we can only eat protein and vegetables – I’m a lacto-ovo pescetarian but I hate all fish except salmon (which we can’t have during the protein phase because it’s too fatty) and tuna, and I hate egg whites (we can only have the whites during said protein phase).

Right now we’re in phase three, and as a lifelong die-hard sugar addict, I need a cookie or people are going to die. But what to do? This diet doesn’t allow sugar, dairy, or regular flour. So I improvised.(And I’m cheating, a little – we’re not supposed to have brown rice anything in phase three, but again, it was either cookies or murder, so between the two, I figured cookies were a better option. Plus these are a damn sight better for you than regular cookies loaded with sugar and dairy. As long as they come out as cookies and not some lumps of failed kitchen science.)

Here’s a transcript of me talking to myself in the kitchen.

Okay, we’re gonna put in…this much brown rice syrup….no…a little more. Now, thiiiiisss many egg whites…yeah, that looks good. Mixa mix…okay. Now we need some coconut…yup…aannnnnnnddddd this much rolled oats. Now we need some extracts…uh…a little drop of almond extract, that’s good, and let’s do…..that much vanilla. Right, that’s still too watery. Ummmmm, spelt flour. Yeah, okay, shake in some spelt flour, mix again….looking better….you know what, since we’re experimenting anyway, let’s go whole hog and throw in some cocoa powder. That’s right, folks at home! We’re going to throw in the cocoa powder!

At this point, Matt was kind enough to chime in from the other room with “You don’t have a studio audience.”

My reply, naturally, was “You don’t have an imagination.”

And I continued to mix up my cookie batter, adding alternate rolled oats and spelt flour and a final splash of coconut until it actually looked like cookie batter.

I’m guessing the recipe would be something like this:

– About 2 tablespoons of brown rice syrup (I took a non-measuring “tablespoon” from the drawer and heaped it with brown rice syrup but that stuff is runny). Maybe 3 TB?

– I want to say like 1/3 cup of egg whites from a carton. Ish.

– Maybe a cup of old fashioned rolled oats?

– Probably 1/3 cup of spelt flour

– Also probably 1/3 cup of shredded, unsweetened organic coconut (also really good on fresh pineapple!)

– A heaping not-really-a-tablespoon (see above) of dark cocoa powder

Mix that shit together and keep adding dry ingredients until it looks like a thick oatmeal cookie batter that sticks to itself and makes kind of a sticking squelchy noise when you attack it with your spoon. My batter made 11 1-inch-ish cookie dough balls, which I flattened slightly before putting on a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Now I’m just gonna bake for 15 minutes at 350 and hope for the best!

I’m going to be simultaneously psyched (because cookies!) and bummed (I don’t actually know the recipe!) if these come out amazing. Which they probably will because I’m awesome.

I’ll keep you posted ;).