I have cooked up many a low-fat, plant-based dish that looked pretty enough and filled us up but lacked flavor. These dishes might also have an unusual texture or taste a tiny bit too herby. If I relied on this type of meal too many days in a row, we would surely venture from our plan and back into cheese, fat, meat land.

One such meal I cooked the other day. I made it in a hurry, so Lee could eat before going to work. I sautéed a little onion and celery in the saved liquid form the turnip greens. My aunts use to call this liquid “pot liquor.” I spiced it up with salt, pepper, garlic, parsley and a little cumin. Then I added the remaining two cups of turnip green stock and a cup of dry quinoa. When almost done, I added about a cup of chopped broccoli and a cup of chopped cauliflower. Like I said, it was pretty, somewhat tasty and filling. It was also very, very boring.

There was plenty left for dinner, but I had no desire to eat it again. I did have two poblano peppers, though. I sliced them in half and scraped out the seeds. Then I took the leftover lunch and added a bit of red pepper flakes, a small chopped tomato and about two tablespoons of parmesan cheese I found in the back of the frig. I stuffed it all in the pepper halves and baked for about half an hour. Maybe it was the peppers. Maybe it was the forbidden cheese, but it was no longer boring. It was delicious!

This is the before baking picture. You can see the tiny bits of shredded parmesan in the mixture.

My other recent experiment was gingersnaps. Lee and I love to eat them in the morning. We dunk them in our coffee and before I became ill, we were on a quest to find the perfect gingersnap. The one we finally had settled on was crisp, held up well in the coffee and had a nice spicy bite to it. The only problem now, of course, if the fat content. Well, that and all the other added stuff in them. So I’ve set out to bake the perfect spicy, crispy whole wheat, super spicy gingersnap.

My first attempt wasn’t bad, but not perfect. It was super easy though and only took about 30 minutes from start to finish. I didn’t even pull out the mixer.

Whole wheat flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, chili powder, pepper, baking soda and salt added to 1/4 dark brown sugar, 1/8 cup molasses, 1 jar baby prunes, 1 tsp vanilla and a little bit of soy milk, just enough to make the dough moist. I rolled the first cookie sheet full into little balls. The second, I sliced into very thin wafers. Despite all the spices, I’ll add even more next time. In my efforts to keep the calorie count down, they really aren’t quite sweet enough, so next time I think I’ll add more molasses or maybe a little honey. To have no added fat though, they aren’t bad at all. About 1 1/2 inch round, 6 snaps have 132 calories and no measurable fat.

Except for the green peas in the dog treats, and their obvious dog bone shape, they look alarmingly alike.