peanut butter chickpea cookies

Something vegans love doing online is making ordinary things extraordinary by adding beans to them. Lackluster salad? Toss in a couple of kidney beans for an added boost of protein. Taco Tuesday? Skip the Gardein, just use some damn beans. The holidays are coming, you say? Hell, one time I watched a vegan make an entire turkey dinner out of lentils, which was actually very impressive in its own right. The practice defies the laws of physics at that point.

Today, we will be carrying on this legacy of excellence with my take on something you're all about to get real familiar with: chickpea cookies, of the peanut butter variety. They're fast, delicious, nutritious, and, most importantly, very affordable for somebody like me who doesn't have a fucking job.

This specific combination of ingredients is sort of my own invention, but I am far from the first person who's ever made a cookie out of chickpeas. There are many people on the internet peddling their own version of this type of thing. Experiment. Take a look at what's out there. Find the one that works best for you.

one cup of cooked chickpeas, ready and waiting

four choice medjool dates

one teaspoon of vanilla

one quarter of a cup of shelled pistachios

a bit of stevia

two packets of peanut butter, stolen

Crush the pistachios. Use the blender-cup. After that, you can get the ball rolling by soaking the dates. Nuke a cup of water and toss them in.

I got these dates at a market I'm still not totally familiar with and they were unexpectedly dry, so they took a bit longer than usual to soften. If your dates are very moist and decadent already, you can probably skip this step. I'm just fussy, and also not great at picking out produce. Sue me.

After about ten minutes, your dates should be ready to go. Use your silly pink spatula to scrape the peanut butter out of their tiny plastic tubs. Put that and the rest of the team into the food processor. Peanuts would have probably been a more desirable nut choice, but I didn't have any, and these things really do well with a little bit of crunch factor. Using the pistachios also saves us the trouble of adding that extra bit of salt. I'm on a fucking budget. I'll skimp where I can.

After a bit of pulsing, you should have something luscious and beautiful like this. I'm going to be honest, if I make these when I'm drunk, very little of the dough makes it past this point. One time I was doing it while multi-tasking and didn't catch myself before realizing that I had maybe four tablespoons of the stuff left in the food processor before they even got to the cookie sheet. It's like the most incredible bean dip ever created, only instead of dipping crudités into the bowl, I dip in my fingers. Pinkbelly.

Press them out onto a sheet of parchment paper. Give each of them a cute fork lattice, grandma-style. Light up your oven. Once it reaches 350°, their time has come. Get those little fuckers in there.

After about twenty-five minutes, they should start turning that beautiful golden brown color we all know, love, and have learned to expect. That's when you know they're ready to come out of the oven and join the world of the living. Free them.

You will never catch me without a jar of chickpeas soaking in my fridge. I'll always say they're going to be used for hummus, but that's a lie. The reason they're there is so I can make these on a moment's notice at any given time. This is one of those snacks that I find so immensely satisfying, mostly because this cookie is made out of all five of my favorite foods simultaneously. I wake up in a cold sweat at three AM craving these things; their seductive allure is all-consuming. And the fact that there's no flour involved almost makes me feel like they're health food, which is definitely dangerous. This is why I'm still fat.

Through this cookie, we all learn something very valuable: just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you don't deserve to gratify yourself with a tasty treat sometimes. It's nothing anybody's ever told me out loud to my face, that's a lesson I taught myself.

Take the extras and stick 'em in your cookie jar. They're keep you warm during those cold, lonely nights out at sea.