Love and Pumpkin. Preferably both.

I love this girl.

She is Steve's sister, and is alternately called Teen, Bean, Tina, and Christina. If you ever walk into a hospital and see her in the white coat, you thank your lucky stars because you've landed in the best medical care you're ever gonna find. She teaches me so much about how to assemble myself in a semi-cute way, what fearlessness looks like, how to shake off the words others sometimes throw at you, and how to be confident in myself--just the way I am.

For all these things and many, many more: I just adore this girl. I love her so much, I wanted to make her favorite cookies on her most recent visit home. Howeva...

I love her so much, I could not bear to make her cookies with 2, count 'em, TWO sticks of butter. That's like 1/2 a tablespoon of butter per cookie.

Teen's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies.

• 1 C. white flour
• 1 C. wheat flour
• 1 1/3 C. steel cut oats
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2/3 C. sugar
• 2/3 C. brown sugar
• 2/3 C. applesauce
• 2 T. agave nectar (or honey!)
• 1 T. ground flax
• about 1 C. fresh pumpkin puree (or you can use the canned stuff, I just happened to have the real deal in the freezer)
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• chocolate chips in the amount of your liking (I used about 6 oz.)

Combine the flours, oats, spices, baking soda and salt in one mixing bowl. In another, mix the sugars, applesauce, agave, flax, pumpkin and vanilla just until combined. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, about 1/3 at a time. Add the chocolate chips, then spoon onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or not. I like p. paper because it makes clean-up a breeze and I think it keeps the flavor a little more pure, but that's just my craziness.). Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 and try not to burn your tongue.

Here's the best part: I baked about 12 cookies, which was about half the dough, then rolled the rest up in some wax paper, froze it, and sent Teen on her merry way back to NYC with some ready-to-bake, stuffed-with-love, just-a-touch-on-the-healthier-side cookie dough. Or she doesn't even have to bake it--no eggs! Eat it raw if you want to, Teen! I won't tell anyone!

And speaking of 1%... These cookies can swing either way! If you're working your way slowly into the quinoa side of life, tinker with the flour and sugars a bit. If your personal pendulum is presently swinging the way of the pizza, go all in! Use 2 sticks of butter! I promise I'll still love ya.

the meal that made me a vegan.

hunkle josh eating a bodacious bacon beef burger.

it gives people the crazy eyes.

For the past few years, I knew it was coming.

I even told Nick sometimes, told my friends - "I think I'll eventually be a vegan."

Why? Who knows, it just seemed like something lingering inside.

I guess because I'm a little bit of an extremist and to me, the extreme of clean eating seems to be veganism. But maybe not even, because maybe the extreme is raw foodism. But come on, I REALLY like my veggies cooked. In the back of my head, the idea of meat and dairy lingering in my small intestine has just bothered me a little. I know that a good grass-fed burger is entirely good for your soul and not so bad for your body. A yummy organic greek (homemade, even!) yogurt parfait makes me smile to think about. It's all good, all permissible, and I think even beneficial for us. And yet still, somewhere in the back of my head - I knew this was coming.

I was sort of playing around with it as it was. Though it sounds stupid and obnoxious to say, I already considered myself a ovo-flexitarian-who-didn't-eat-dairy. I eat eggs and occasionally eat meat, but don't eat dairy because of an allergy. Unless you're talking about frozen yogurt, and then I'm willing to make myself silk to ingest that stuff. So I wavered. Until this meal.


A simple black bean burger. Roasted Veggies. Staple salad.

But it was so good. So good. So good I groaned a few times.

I'd made bacon-beef-bodaciously-awesome burgers for the rest of the crew, and I wasn't even jeal. Cause come on, look at that BEAN BURGER.

I took about three bites and thought this is the meal that will make me a vegan.

Because if I can eat this and be fully satisfied, I have no business eating meat or dairy.

But here are some more solid reasons for those of you who haven't

tasted a black bean burger than changed your life:

- The "cheating" or unclean eating I do, is always meat or dairy. So being official about stopping consuming them will hopefully only clean up my diet further.

- I'm hoping it will make me more creative with fruits and vegetables in the kitchen.

- A good experiment makes me excited about life.

- Did I mention I like extremes?

- Because in all honesty, there is a big part of me that hopes if I keep running, eating clean, and doing yoga - I'll feel better when I'm thirty than I do at 26. And maybe I'll feel better at 36 than I do at 26. And if not eating dairy or meat helps that, I'm on board.

So, I'm giving it a try. Maybe for a week. Maybe forever.

Are you a vegan? Ever thought about it? Think it's stupid?

I'll be your guinea pig. I'll let you know if I feel better after a week or after two days or if it really stinks and if it's actually just impossible to give up fried eggs, bacon, and goat cheese.

While we're on that subject though, here is the list of foods I already miss:

- eggs

- goat cheese

- bacon

Hm. we'll see how this goes.