Old habits die hard, right?  Well, people don’t really stop bad habits, they merely replace one habit with another — hopefully a good habit rather than bad.  If someone stops biting their nails, they start cracking their knuckles or if someone stops smoking, they may start eating more, or if someone stops cursing they may begin gnawing on their lip.  You get the picture.  Well, a bad habit of mine was baking — baking goodies with refined sugars, refined flours and vegetable oils.  My family enjoyed my habit because it resulted in goodies for them but now that I have stopped using white sugar, white flour and vegetable oils, I have drastically cut back on baking.  My family has suffered.  If you can call it that.  Maybe, in actuality they were suffering before and didn’t know it because they were not nourishing their bodies with my baked goods.   However, they still tasted good and I know my family misses the yumminess.   Over the last few months I have tried experimenting with blueberry muffins, banana bread and brownies in hopes to recreate the familiar taste with more whole ingredients.  I have had some successes and some complete failures.  Today I wanted to embark on a more wholesome chocolate chip cookie.  My previous habit was to follow the recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip package.   Therefore, I needed to replace that habit with a new one — with nutritious ingredients.  I am thoroughly intrigued with the use of honey and maple syrup as sweeteners in just about anything and also the use of the ever-awesome coconut oil in whatever I can.  It seems like every day more good news come out about the consumption of coconut oil.   I found a recipe that indeed used honey and maple syrup as sweeteners so I knew it was possible.  The cookies turned out very thin, they spread a lot — probably because of the coconut oil — but they taste really good.   My one son grabbed one off the cooling rack and took a bite and said, “yum, these are good!”  I think he was surprised because it tasted very similar to the cookies I made before my change of habits…

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1/3 cup raw honey
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup of spelt flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• dash salt
• 3/4 cup of dark chocolate chips