I made these cookies because they don’t have flour in them, which I realize is a little like saying I made my own homemade deodorant this weekend (which, yes, I did—recipe here), in that I’ve probably lost about half of you who are now thinking, what is with this girl? why make cookies without flour in them?

Well, I’ll tell you why.

1. I hadn’t done it before. Generally speaking, if I haven’t done something before, it’s a good idea to give it a shot (cue sweet potato brownies, whole wheat pastry flour, homemade deodorant again). And it’s not just true with food of course. What would my life be like now if I’d never tried starting a blog? Or throwing a party? Or going antiquing with my mom like she likes to do? I’ll tell you how it’d be: less. Less than it is.

Also, 2. I love cookies (you know I love cookies) and so naturally, now that I’m staying away from white sugar and white flour, I wanted to make a cookie without all-purpose flour, but the version I’d tried with spelt flour had been a bust (flat as pancakes), and therefore a cookie sans flour, especially one that closely resembles my favorite, favorite cookies of all time, well, it had my attention.
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These days, I wake up naturally an hour before my alarm. Every morning.

My eyes open, I blink in the early sunlight and I reach for my alarm clock, hoping against reason that it won’t be what it always is: bright blinking numbers signaling 6:30 (or worse, 6:15). Understand, it is not the time that bothers me, but the timing, a full hour or more before I need to wake up, a full hour or more before I need to have my eyes open or my arms reaching for the alarm clock. It’s a matter of waste, really, a waste of precious sleep. At this point, I have two basic choices: I can get up, and I do sometimes, or I can try to go back to sleep, laying there, awake, beneath the giant white cloud that is my down comforter, and I can close my eyes and wait—for sleep to come or for a more decent hour to arrive. In either case, when I do eventually rise, I’ll have to wait for other things. I will go to the shower, waiting for the hot water to come; to the kitchen, waiting for the bread to toast, for the water to boil; out on the roads, waiting for the light to turn green while I drive to work.

A lot of life is waiting, have you noticed that? And I don’t just mean with the small stuff of alarm clocks and commuting and morning kettles. We wait for graduations. We wait for job offers. We wait for proposals to be made and babies to be born. We wait, many times, for people. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and here is what I want to know: If so much of life is waiting, how can I get better at it?

You hear people say things all the time about enjoying the journey, and I think that’s good. I want to enjoy the hour I have to relax before getting up, especially since there are a lot of tired moms who would wish for exactly that (am I right?). I want to redeem my morning commutes, with the radio, with talking to the One who never leaves me or forsakes me, and when I drive home, with gratitude for the way the sun streaks across the sky at 5:45 PM.

And, on those mornings when I end up dressed and ready to go a good 30 minutes before I should head out the door, I want to sit at the table, and I want to eat toast with homemade Nutella® on top. It is a simple pleasure, but trust me: it’s one worth savoring. …Continue Reading This Post!

Every now and then, someone asks me what I like about blogging: Is it the pictures? the food? the travel? And I always say the same thing, that while it is, of course, partly those things, it is much more something else. I like blogging for the people.

People like Jacqui and Caitlin. The three of us met up in Madison Saturday, because it’s only a 2.5-hour drive from Chicago and because Caitlin finds herself there every other weekend, visiting her fiance.

We did important things together—you know, like talk photography, both at brunch and at a local shop with the super nice staff that chatted with us about meeting famous people and calling 1970s cameras vintage and seeing the beauty of film:

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You know what food trend I’ve never fully understood? The one about the hidden vegetables. The puree-something-your-kids-won’t-eat-and-bury-it-in-brownies! Add spinach to chocolate cake! Sneak cauliflower in pasta! Do whatever you can to trick them into eating nutrition!

I mean, I think I kind of understand it, or at least the premise of it: if you can add good-for-you foods to what someone normally eats without them noticing, then you get them to eat what they should while also eating what they want. Everybody wins! OK. But the problem is your kids still don’t like vegetables; they like chocolate cake, a chocolate cake that’s lying to them. Maybe I don’t get it because I don’t have kids? You can feel free to tell me what I’m missing.

Anyway, that said, you’ll see the irony in the recipe I’m about to give you, for what else but sweet potato brownies. Yes, they’re exactly like those crazy sneaky recipes I don’t understand. Yes, they use a pureed vegetable in the middle of a normal dessert. But, I made exception for them and baked them for two reasons: 1) The recipe already called for whole wheat pastry flour, and I like using whole wheat pastry flour in baking, and 2) I was curious, I’ll admit it, to see what a pureed vegetable could add to a chocolate brownie.

(Plus, bonus reason! I had a lone sweet potato in the fridge, begging to be used.)
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