This recipe is a huge cop out. Like, I don’t even know if it’s considered a recipe. But here we go.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been in a HUGE food funk. These overnight oats are what I have for breakfast, followed by some sort of toast with hummus for lunch and leftovers for dinner. I’m just not feeling food. It’s too hot here! Add to that the fact that the kids are now on summer break so I no longer have all afternoon to myself and there goes my cooking time! I did try to make some M&M cookies last week with the kids. The M&Ms weren’t vegan but I had leftovers from when I was making cookies for the kids’ teachers. The results were these colorful, flat-as-crepes cookies. Yeah…one of the kids put 1 1/2 c. of flour in instead of 2 1/2 c. of flour. Whoops.

So basically, my cooking time slot has been narrowed down to the 30 minute reading time I force upon the kids each day. Well, it’s supposed to be 30 minutes but after taking out the 10 minutes I spend telling them to “focus” and “stop talking” and “stop making faces at each other” and “stop kicking each other!” and “Oh my gosh if I have to tell you one more time to read your book…!”, it’s usually only about 20 minutes. That’s why this recipe is perfect. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare, you pop them in the freezer and the result is a little bite sized cold, chocolately/salty treat that you can grab in between activities. It’s hot here so they are perfect as an alternative to bites of ice cream. As for those in colder weather, they may be a healthier alternative to munching on holiday cookies?

Either way, I thought these were a great little treat for myself but silly me, I made them in full view of all three kids. Which means I had to share. And they loved them. Which means they didn’t last nearly as long as I thought they would.  I don’t know if that is a good thing because they were clearly tasty or a bad because now I have to use my precious 30 20 minutes of free time to make a much larger batch tomorrow.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bites
from Nom! Nom! Nom! Blog
serves 1-2, but can easily be doubled

1 banana

1/8 c. of peanut butter, approximately

1/2 cup of vegan chocolate chips

Line a baking sheet with wax or parchment paper and set aside.

Cut your banana so you have round discs that are about 1/2″ thick. Top the discs with peanut butter.

Melt your vegan chocolate in the microwave or on the stove with a double burner. I prefer the double burner method but whatever you find easiest. If your chocolate isn’t melting smoothly, add a little bit of shortening. Once your chocolate is melted, remove from heat. Dunk your banana into the chocolate. I found the easiest way to be with a fork. Pierce the side of the banana with the fork, then dunk it into chocolate. Use another fork to slide the chocolate-covered banana off the first fork and onto the wax paper.

Freeze until the chocolate hardens. Remove from wax paper and place in a baggy or container and return to the freezer.

I feel like the directions for this are really wordy. It could also read “Cut banana. Put PB on top. Dunk in Chocolate. Freeze.” 3 ingredients, 10 word instructions, and we’re done!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go secretly make another batch of these and hide them where the kids can’t find them. Why can’t they just be satisfied with messed up, flat M&M cookies? Sheesh!