Healthy sugar cookies

My kids love this recipe. In fact, they like to eat the dough raw (I omit the eggs, as the flaxseed is an egg replacement anyway, when I know they will have access to the raw dough).

Play with the cooking time, as you want to pull the cookies out while they are still a bit raw. Once they cool and set, they will be moist inside, but not raw. You might want to do a couple of test runs the first time you make this, with just one or two cookies on the sheet. Let the cookies cool, and if they are too dry or too raw, adjust the cooking time by 30 seconds to a minute. Cooking time and testing for doneness are an art in lower fat and whole-grain baking, but it is very worth it, once you get the hang of it.

Low-fat, whole-grain sugar cookies
2 cups of spelt flour (you can also use whole grain wheat flour, but it isn't quite as good. You can buy spelt in bulk at Winco). (about 800 calories, 4.5 grams of fat)
1/4 ground flaxseed (140 calories, 10 grams of fat)
1 tsp baking powder (0 calories)
1/2 tsp baking soda (0 calories)
1/4 tsp salt (0 calories)

1/2 cup sugar (360 calories, 0 fat)
3 tbsp unsalted butter (softened) (300 calories, 34.5 grams of fat)
1 egg and 1 egg white (90 calories, 3.7 grams of fat)
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract (0 calories)
2 tbsp milk (about 10 calories, 0 grams of fat)

Mix the dry ingredients together
Mix the butter and sugar together
Mix in the eggs
Mix in the vanilla and milk

Mix wet and dry ingredients together
Chill for an hour before rolling out and cutting into shapes of your choice

Bake at 400 degrees for 6-10 minutes (really depends on how thick your cookies are and on your oven)

About 1500 calories, and about 53 grams of fat for the whole batch. You can divide up how many cookies your batch makes to determine how many calories for each cookie. Of course, if you decide to frost the cookies, they will have more calories and/or fat depending on the frosting that you use.

A workout for busy people

If your workout needs a face-lift, try this for a change: Get on a cardio machine (or run stairs in your house, or run around the block, or jump rope) for 5 minutes, working as hard as you can. Then, do 20 push-ups and 20 tricep dips. Repeat this cycle a total of 5 times, beginning and ending with the cardio intervals. You'll end up with 30 minutes of intense cardio and an upper body workout targeting every major muscle group. Top it all of with crunches (twist side-to-side to target the obliques as well). Do 100 very slow crunches, and then 100 quick crunches.