When is it okay to give your kid a cookie for breakfast? When the primary ingredient of the cookie is a vegetable, that’s when.
The Bear’s end-of-year performance in her 1st grade classroom was recreating scenes from Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, a Zimbabwean tale that was part of the school’s Cinderella-across-the-world reading and cultural program this Spring. She wrote a pair of original lines to say during the in-class show, wore flowing white garb with a string of beads across her brow, and I baked these cookies. Not my usual, jaw-droppingly delicious chocolate chip cookies, but a traditional sweet treat from the African nation of Zimbabwe – the primary ingredients of which are raw sweet potatoes and lemon zest. Much to my surprise and delight, the gaggle of 7-year-old kids ate ’em up!
This morning the Mouse had a leftover cookie for breakfast and I didn’t even blink. Not a great habit to get into – cookies for breakfast and all – but as a way of getting some sweet potatoes in her, a veggie she dislikes on her dinner plate, I’m more than okay with it.
The Zimbabwe cookies are easy to make and, obviously, quite yummy. Try ’em for yourselves!
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