Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

Dunk worthy gluten-free peanut butter cookies with quinoa flakes.

Quinoa Flakes + Cookies = Perfect Match

You know how I feel about cookies (I've confessed my love before in my Ode to Cookies love fest, Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies).

Because a good cookie is no small thing.

Especially if you must live gluten-free. Double that if you must live dairy-free. And triple that if you live egg-free.

Holy Mother of Muffins, it ain't easy. 

The gluten-free wheat-free vegan lifestyle is a hefty, sometimes tortuous challenge. But the ugly truth is more and more of us are discovering we are not only blessed with celiac disease (yes, I use the word blessed ironically; you do remember irony, don't you, it got you through grade school) but we have the incredible fortune (more irony) to develop additional food sensitivities due to the insidious damage celiac disease wreaks on our innocent little villi, those dutiful nutrient grabbers who not only keep us well fed through proper absorption, they appear to be the first line of defense against the dreaded leaky gut syndrome that allows food proteins to invade intimate territory and cause serious mayhem with our immune system.

To read more about celiac disease and its new found dangers, I urge you to read this article by Dr. Mark Hyman on Huffington Post: Gluten: What You Don't Know Might Kill You. Yes, I know, serious bummer of a title, but Babycakes, do read it, because celiac disease is dead serious stuff. And it is vastly under diagnosed.

Millions are suffering various nagging (and often awkward) symptoms. Needlessly.

That, Dearheart, is scary.

Good thing we have cookies.

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African Peanut + Sweet Potato Soup

FLAVOR!

Happy New Year, Gentle Reader. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. And it's time for a black-eyed pea recipe. One of my favorites, with African inspired flavors. Serving black-eyed peas and beans at the start of a freshly birthed year is serious good mojo in some circles.

At least that's what they tell me.

Why eating a plate of legumes on New Year's Day brings luck I've no idea, but someone somewhere decided these humble little nuggets of vegan protein were a good and fortunate culinary choice. So why not?

Rather than rummage through cookbooks searching for Southern Hoppin' John recipes or Italian white bean escarole stews I turned instead to the sun drenched flavors of West and North Africa and reprised a stew that is spicy and hearty and peanutty. If you cannot use peanut butter try sunflower seed butter. It is no less fabulous.

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