Five days.  FIVE DAYS it has been since I have posted.  Unacceptable.  It seems like weekends have turned into my mad woman baking time, where I bake, bake, bake, make labels, package, and have ready to bring in to work on Monday.  This, of course, means, I am scurrying out the door at 4:56 pm, with the wishful thought that I will be on time to my 5:00 shift...

This past weekend I FINALLY got a batch of gluten-free cookies right.  I had been getting a lot of requests for gluten-free at work and had tried, like, seven times to make a batch that would not disintegrate into a million crumbles upon picking up or spread into a uni-cookie in the oven or taste like a sand-studded disc and these had none of that!

I call them "Gluten-Free Fruit and Nut Cookies"...creative, right?  I will do a later post with a recipe!  I think I will try and offer gluten-free more often (although I will not promise every week because, err, well, I've had *trouble* with GF in the past).  I'm going to attempt to make tahini lime GF cookies next.

This past week I also made non gluten-free banana split bars!  I was--and am still--really excited them.  They were my real creative vision for the week.  What they are are, essentially, dissected banana splits in bar form!  They consist of a banana layer with chocolate chips and maraschino cherries, then a pineapple filling layer, then another banana-chocolate chip-maraschino cherry layer then frosting (to take the place of whipped cream) then crushed peanuts on top!  No recipe for these bad boys though--they're top secret!

Hmmmmmm...what else.  Oh yes.  My wonderful, dear, dear friend Trevor invited me over to his place on Sunday to do yoga, watch My Week With Marilyn (ummm...not recommended) and, what else?!, eat! He ordered for use two "Michigan Salads" from Inn Season in Royal Oak.  Inn Season has been around for 30 years and is an absolutely fantastic restaurant, entirely vegetarian and largely vegan, too.  They support local farmers and also use many fair-trade ingredients.  They just celebrated their 30th anniversary, which is a real testament to their success.

As for the salad, it consisted of mesclun lettuces, sunflower sprouts, pecans, carrots, lentils and balsamic vinaigrette.  It was delicious!  Gobbled that whole sucker up! Trevor also purchased two desserts for us--carrot cake and cardamom cake.  I liked the cardamom cake much better.  The carrot cake was a bit dry.

 Yes, sir (or ma'am), I ate ALL of that.

 Carrot cake is on the left, cardamom, right.

Don't let the glaze fool you--the carrot cake was dry : /