Today is my last official day of maternity leave, and I celebrated by baking chocolate cookies!

And while they’re in the oven, I washed the dishes I didn’t wash last night because I fell asleep sitting up rocking the baby to sleep around ten. Then I folded as much laundry as I could before Little A woke up. Par-ty!

Okay, so the real reason I baked chocolate cookies on a Tuesday morning is because:
1. I had a big bowl of chocolate cookie dough in the fridge that I made yesterday with my two-year-old “for Shabbos” as consolation for taking her to the doctor for an eye infection that he said I didn’t really need to be keeping her home from preschool for. 😦
2. Baking the dough was the best way to get myself to stop eating it because we all know that cookie dough tastes better raw.
3. Also, we have new neighbors I haven’t officially welcomed to the building yet, and I didn’t want to knock on their door empty-handed, but the mint chocolate-chip cookies I baked last week disappeared before a plateful made it upstairs.

So, which is the real reason I started my day baking cookies? Probably a combination of the above, plus an excuse to sneak a little more cookie dough.

These cookies actually didn’t come out tasting so great. They’re soft and fluffy,  more like cookie-shaped mini chocolate cakes. Which are not a bad thing. Unless you really want a dense, chewy cookie. Or a crunchy cookie. So, I am not posting the recipe for the cookies in the picture above now.

Instead, I’m sharing with you what I should have been eating instead of chocolate cookie dough, what I really wanted to be eating if you would have asked me before I touched the bowl of cookie dough. I took these pictures one day last week when I actually did eat my favorite fruity power breakfast bowl.

The Rambam said it centuries ago, and modern nutritionists say it now, that it’s healthy to eat fruit in the morning. When I start my day with sugar and starch (like cornflakes or cookie dough), I just don’t feel as good an hour later as if I start out light with fruit and protein. (To be honest, I ate a container of unsweetened yogurt for breakfast before baking cookies.) About a year ago, I devised this breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and seeds, and it’s still a favorite. It’s both light and filling and keeps me going for hours. It can even be fast and portable if the fruit is chopped and put into a container ahead of time.

You need 2-3 pieces of firm, sweet, seasonal fruit. Apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, persimmons, mangoes, pomegranates, bananas, and plums all work. Citrus fruit is too runny for this. It will make the yogurt runny. Here, I used a pear, a persimmon and some pomegranate seeds.

Chop into fruit-salad size pieces. Pour a container of low-fat, unsweetened yogurt on top.

Sprinkle with raw pumpkin seeds and chia seeds for extra fiber and crunch. I used to add granola for crunch, but then I realized that the seeds are much healthier and serve the same purpose without added sugar, oil, or starch.

Oh, that looks so good, I think I’ll make myself a fruity power breakfast bowl for lunch!

Recipe:
2-3 firm, ripe pieces of fruit
150 ml unsweetened yogurt
1 T raw pumpkin seeds
1 tsp chia seeds

Chop fruit, top with yogurt, sprinkle with seeds, and enjoy!