Silly me. I thought as my kid got further into school, making lunches would get easier. Like, I’d develop mastery in the things that started as challenging, perplexing or vexing. Alas, it seems the opposite… school lunches just get harder. To wit: I spent Sunday making and baking food to ease the week – baked sweet potatoes and potatoes for easy integration into dinner, chocolate brownies for mental health support, and with only one egg left in the house, I opted for 4 dozen energy balls, instead of muffins.

Thinking I had won, I quickly deflated back to the starting square when his new teacher emailed a greeting and a reminder, “no nut butters please.” So the peanut chocolate energy balls and the cashew butter energy balls were obviously now contraband. Which I should have known, but as I am blessed not to have an allergiac in my house, I am lazy about this particular precaution. Apologies to those whose life depends on my attentiveness and concern for other beings.

However, I did borrow this recipe from someone on Facebook, on the Pemberton Moms page, and wrote it down, but forgot to attribute it properly, and now it’s in my recipe box as “Pemby Moms Power Cookie 350F”.

And it’s awesome.

Healthy. Tasty. And quick to whip up.

(Although my child turned his nose up at it, so once again, back to square 1.)

Your child might be more amenable?

But now I have a healthy snack for me, which is actually quite a good thing, because in all the lunchbox prep and snack making, all these years, I never remember that I too need to eat.

So thanks Pemby Moms for having my back.

Pemby Moms POWER COOKIES

Preheat oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit.

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup quick oats

1 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup spelt flour

3/4 dried cranberries

1/3 cup pumpkin seeds

(Recipe also called for 1/3 cup sunflower seeds and 1/4 cup hemp hearts, but I didn’t have those.)

2 eggs (or flax eggs, which I needed because I was eggless, and this is rather cool… you can whisk 2 tbsp flax seeds with 5 tbs water to create your binding agent. Mine didn’t do much upon whisking, so I got out my version of a power tool, the hand blender, and dang if that wasn’t satisfying, apart from the flecks of flax in my eye.)

1/2 cup maple syrup or liquid sweetener

1/4 cup melted coconut oil

1 tbs vanilla

Mix the dry. Add the wet. Combine into a sticky batter.

Shape into balls and place on parchment paper. (I also threw some into an 8×8 pan and cooked them as a slice, because I was suspicious about the flax egg but the cookies did manage to hold together perfectly, even though they were sketchily crumblesome when I put them on the parchment.)

Back for 10 mins as cookies or about 15 as slice.