Snowy Day Recipe for You AND Your Kids! (or just you)

On snowy days like today, you can fight off boredom, give your kids an interactive and fun activity AND enjoy a tasty treat that will last you days with the following recipe.

They are Homemade and Healthy Granola Bars that use only the ingredients pictured here. That's it!!! I didn't even have to run to the store! I had this all in the pantry so it cost me NOTHING! If you were to buy these ingredients, it'd probably cost you about $10, but it would give you ingredients to make several other things or several batches of granola bars!

These are way cheaper, healthier and tastier than store-bought bars. Here's how you do it. Oh and **PARENTS** please let your kids do this. They can and should get their hands dirty with this recipe! Also, this is just a base recipe-make it your own. Mix in things you love to enhance and change it to keep it interesting!

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas-use what you've got, but they need to be soft so they can be mushed

2 cups of old fashioned oats-they can be rolled or steel cut JUST NOT QUICK

shredded coconut

dates, pitted and chopped

vegan chocolate chips (or if you dig regular ones use regular)

walnuts, chopped

cinnamon

nutmeg

***Notice there is no sugar added to this recipe!! This means you and your family can enjoy the natural sugars found in the real fruits used for these bars. Refined sugars are bad because they cause blood sugar level spikes that can make you tired and hungry faster, when you actually aren't. They also offer little value nutrition-wise but cause you to pack on pounds. With fruit, you get the natural sugars packed with nutrients AND fiber which allows you to feel full, absorb the nutrients and flush out (pun intended!) the toxins in your body. Win-win here!***

The above picture is of pitted dates. You find fresh dates in the produce section of your grocery store. They are a fruit, so they come with pits. Make sure they are somewhat soft to the touch when you buy them because then they are more easily incorporated. These will be your most expensive ingredient. If you don't want to use them-simply substitute a little applesauce (with no added sugars or weird things in the ingredients) to keep the sweetness up. Dates are great for any recipe, smoothie, whatever, where you need to add sweet flavor without sugar! In my eyes, a pantry staple!

Method

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Put all ingredients in a large bowl. Mix them up, by hand, until all the oats are coated with the banana. It should be a mushy, wet-ish mixture. See below.

Then spread into a casserole dish that you would use for something like brownies. You'll spread them in the pan as you would brownies too-flat and even and covering the bottom.

Pop in the oven for about 30 minutes. The cool thing with this recipe is that there is not raw meat or dairy in it so LET YOUR KIDS LICK THEIR FINGERS! Let them eat some of the "batter" if they want. These bars only need to cook to keep them together so just when you start smelling them, check on them and they can probably come out. Mine were done today in about 20 minutes. It just depends on how thick you make them. Also note, in the picture to the right, how much cleanup work this recipe takes. WOW, washing that one bowl and spatula is going to be tough. LOL.

This is a no brainer! Once the bars come out-let them cool for about 5 minutes so they are more easily cut. But if you can't wait-go at it-they just won't be pretty. This recipe takes only 10 minutes of active work, which you can draw out with your kids if you want-but then the rest is oven time. Awesome huh?

And just for kicks-let's analyze a popular granola bar favorite that appears to be healthy shall we? Yes.


Ok so forget the Nutrition "Facts" for now because I haven't been able to chat with you about how to read that yet and let's focus on the ingredients.

The first ingredient is great-oats. Ok, then...well, sugar. Not good. Then, canola oil-a fatty, nutrient-less food. Then, corn flour-a binder perhaps? Unecessary and certainly void of nutrients because of how processed it is. Then, OH LOOK, more sugar-this time it's brown which means the white sugar was mixed with molasses.

Still no nutrients or flavor-just sugar.

At this point you can stop hoping for some type of real food ingredient because the top 3 to 5 ingredients are the ones that count-they are the ones that make up most of the food. And as we can see here, these "granola bars" are just sugar in bar form. Lovely.

Instead-how about feeding your body and your kids' bodies something nutritious that was made at home and is packed with real food like oats, bananas and dates. Worth it? Yes.

Moderation is for the Birds...

Moderation...

We hear this all the time. Someone will say to me "I just ate a cheeseburger, do you want one?" and I say something like "No thank you, I don't eat cheeseburgers but I hope you enjoy it!" I could just say "No thank you," but it is usually followed by a parade of questions so I just try to keep things simple and honest. Can you tell by my posts yet?

This type of conversation usually ends up with the person wrapping things up by saying everything in moderation...blah, blah, blah.

I have a HUGE problem with this ambiguous word. What does it mean to you? Probably something different than what it means to me. And it would be no big deal except that we seem to be killing ourselves with moderation.

Let's use an example here shall we? We shall. Say you drink 3 diet cokes a day and eat a breakfast of eggs and bacon, a turkey sandwich with chips for lunch and a dinner of steak and a baked potato with maybe a veggie. Seems like a pretty standard diet for a lot of folks, folks I know...folks who are even in my family. So moderation to them may mean cutting back to only 1 diet coke a day and having cake once every month. Ok-so where does that leave them? STILL with high cholesterol, blood pressure and an increasing waisteline. YES? Yes.

Because the bottom line is that if you have a fundamental problem with your eating habits and you only make surface level changes-you will only see surface level changes if anything at all. Eating a diet rich in sodium, cholesterol, fat and sugar is still a diet rich in all those things whether you only eat cake in moderation or not.

So I say SCREW MODERATION. Yes. screw it. Instead, if you are looking for serious change in your diet, and consequently your health-you need to make fundamental changes in what you eat...then moderate.

For example, if you eat a diet rich in fruits, veggies, beans, nuts, seeds and grains you have a healthy base of meals to work from and are protecting yourself against many of the chronic diseases plaguing America today (obesity, Type II diabetes, Heart Disease, etc.) on a daily basis. Therefore eating a cheeseburger, piece of cake or, in my case a chicken finger sub, once a week or so probably won't kill you. Eating that stuff daily probably will. This is healthy moderation if you want to call it that. Making sure that 23 of your last 25 meals are healthy so you can enjoy the taste of a cheeseburger on your cheat day.

Don't settle for moderation or try to justify your bad eating habits with one word. Instead, understand your self worth and try to rise above moderation's mediocrity. Pretty please?

Vegan Lentil Burgers are a Hit!

I love getting requests for blog posts, so I was super happy to oblige my friend Kate in making and posting a killer recipe for vegan burgers. The key to making vegan or veggie burgers is to make them hearty and flavorful while NOT trying to get them to taste like meat. Because most often, the yummiest part of the burger is the stuff on the meat.

This recipe cost less than $20 and feeds 8!!! Hello-I told you eating healthy could save you money! ;) It also only took me 2 hours to prep, cook, eat and cleanup after this meal. So worth it! Recipe is below and please post comments if you end up making it! Or let me know if you have questions! Enjoy this whole grain, veggie-packed, nutrient-rich dish!

Ingredients
For the burger:
1 cup uncooked lentils
1 cup uncooked brown rice
4 cups of low sodium veggie broth (or just use water if you don't have this)
1 1/2 cups carrots, finely grated
1 1/2 cups uncooked rolled oats-pulsed in a food processor
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp (ish) of low sodium tamari
dash of cayenne

For the bun:
obviously whatever type of bun you want to use, just make it whole grain for added nutrition
horseradish mustard (1/2 cup dijon mustard + 1 Tbsp horseradish)
tomato slices
avocado slices
butter pickles
lettuce

Method

Put lentils and rice in a medium saucepan with 4 cups of water or broth. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Once boiling, turn the heat down to low, cover and simmer for about 40 minutes. Stir every now and then to keep the stuff from sticking to the bottom.

While that's cooking, saute the onions in a saute pan for about 3 minutes. Throw in a bowl. Then add all the other burger ingredients to the bowl. Make sure you do puree the oats beforehand in a food processor. It makes the difference between adding oatmeal versus breadcrumbs to your burger! Keep in mind you can use this "oat-technique" as a substitute for breadcrumbs for a ton of things!

Set aside.

While the lentil mixture is still cooking on the stove, I recommend you chop the tomatoes, avocado and anything else you are adding to the burger once it's finished. Set aside.

When the lentil mixture is finished, add to the bowl of burger ingredients. Mix together well so all the wet and the dry are combined. Let cool.

Once the mixture is cool enough to touch with your hands, start shaping it into burger patties. It should make about 8! Then take those "burgers" and cook them on a griddle or in a sautepan sprayed with cooking spray for about 5 minutes per side to just brown them and give them a crust that will really hold them together.

Once they are browned you are ready to build your burger. What's great is that you really don't have to worry about cooking the burger all the way through to the middle because 1) it's already sorta warm from when you cooked the lentils/rice, 2) it's not meat so you don't have to kill off nasty bacteria, etc., and, 3) it will taste just as good cold!

The key to the flavor-wow in this dish is the garnishes. The pickles and the sauce really bring it home. So on a whole wheat roll, spread the horseradish mustard. Then layer on some pickles. But not just any pickles-be careful what you buy! See below.

I'm not a fan of dyes and chemicals and pretend ingredients in my food-are you? Clearly they are not necessary to make a good pickle-so why do you think company's add them...? Let's vote with our forks!!!

Continuing with the bun-building, pile on the cooked burger, followed by the tomatoes and avocado. Serve and enjoy!!

I ate my burger with a freshly baked sweet potato that I threw in the oven right as I put the lentils on the stove. They take about the same cooking time and you don't have to think about either! Nice way to boost the nutritional value of the meal while adding a side that isn't chips!

And if you ever have any recipe requests-just let me know! Post a comment below or on anyone of my posts and I'll hopefully be able to come up with one! Happy Eating!

Don't Feel Bad Asking...

Often times I encounter people who don't know what kind of meat is in their sandwich or where it comes from.

I offer this piece of advice. If you eat meat, I would strongly encourage you to ask what the meat looks like or where it comes from before eating it. Over the weekend, I went into DiBella's Subs in Rochester to get a veggie sub. I saw they had a new sub on the menu called the "Buffalo Chicken." It is my go-to thing on cheat days so I wanted to check it out for future reference. When I asked the guy to show me the chicken he used, he pulled out something like this...

...and told me he just dumped it in buffalo chicken sauce and put it on the sub. Um ew. What's in this stuff? I wish I could tell you without going to the store, but Tyson won't post the ingredients on their website! It is, however, listed under "Chicken Products" so I'll assume there is at least some chicken in there. Think about it though-how do they get it to stay on the shelf for so long AND what does that do to your body?!!

So by taking two seconds to ask the sub guy if I "could see" the chicken he would use on the sub-I saved myself the disappointment of eating something that wouldn't taste good and also kept potentially harmful additives and preservatives from unknowingly going into my body.

It's our job to know guys-our job to know what we put in our mouth and our family's mouths. (yes i realize that you can giggle about the above statement but also please take it to heart!)

So if you are like me and one day desire a chicken finger sub, please make sure your chicken fingers come from actual chickens and are made in-house with real ingredients. They'll taste better and be healthier for you! This goes for all food! :)

Stay tuned for tonight's post! I'll give you a killer recipe on how to make vegan lentil burgers! Yum!

When You're Hungry for a Snack...

On a day where you don't feel like leaving the house (in my case because of my snow) and you are having people over, or you just plain need a healthy snack, you can still create this pretty, yummy and nutritious treat for cheap!

I also bring this to parties a lot because it looks a whole lot better than just bringing a plate of veggies with some hummus. The picture to the left is actually from one of my Healthy Eating Supper Clubs that I hosted at Whole Foods Market in Fort Collins, CO. I served this, to rave reviews, as an appetizer. The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

1 english cucumber

1 package of oil-free roasted red pepper hummus (or if you can't find it, make it yourself with recipe below!)

1 cup of raw cashews (toasted if you are feeling ambitious!)

NO JOKE THAT'S IT! I'll tell you how to assemble below and will also give you my recipe for homemade hummus that's to die for, in case you want to keep the "homemade and healthy" thing going on. I highly encourage this because then you can make your hummus without oil.

Method

Wash the english cucumber and cut off the ends. Then peel the cucumber so the skin looks like stripes! Slice into 1/2 or 1/4 inch rounds and spread on a plate. Spoon a heap of roasted red pepper hummus on top of the cucumber slice and garnish with a cashew. Serve! This yummy dish is fresh, healthy and balanced with all the components that make a dish taste great! Try for yourself!

WHY skip the oil?

Because if you look at the label here for Spectrum Olive Oil (it will be pretty much the same label for any olive oil you get), you'll notice that the serving size is only 1 TABLESPOON, and that in that one tablespoon there are 120 calories-all from fat!!! So if you are adding, say 1/4 cup of olive oil to your hummus-that's about 4 tablespoons equalling 480 calories all from fat!!! And you don't even feel full from those calories!

People will argue back and forth about the potential health benefits of olive oil. I'm not here to talk about that. Whatever you believe-fine. HOWEVER-no one can disupte that olive oil is 100% fat and if you are trying to lose weight or be healthier, it is not ideal because again you will be getting calories that won't fill you up. Instead I recommend ditching the calories and getting your fats from whole plant sources (not the extracted ones in this case) to fill you up with nutrients, fiber and the like. You'll see a real difference once you stop cooking like Rachael Ray and Paula Deen. Really! It can be simple if you let it be.

Homemade and Healthy Hummus (no oil in this recipe!)

Ingredients

1 can no-salt-added garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed-some of the liquid reserved

lemon juice (from a real lemon, not that funny lemon-shaped squeezie bottle)

1 tbsp horseradish (the kind from the store that doesn't have preservatives)

2 tbsp tahini (which is just crushed sesame seeds-good, healthy fat)

fresh ground pepper

dash of low sodium tamari

dash of cayenne

dash of cumin

dash of paprika

dash of coriander

(add a few roasted red peppers from a jar if you are making the hummus for the dish above)

Directions

Blend all ingredients to taste. You can used the reserved bean liquid to thin out the mixture with flavor (to replace the oil). Remember, taste along the way. Add more spice if it needs it. Enjoy!

Let's Play "Guess the Hidden Ingredient"

Can you see it? Do you look at labels and ingredient lists? I hope so! If not, it's never too late to start. As evidenced here in something as simple as a package of turkey polish sausage-ingredients are often very complicated when they don't need to be!

In this case, Hillshire Farms has added "Monosodium Glutamate" or MSG to its polish sausage to enhance flavor. That's all fine and good if you want an added salty, potentially carcinogenic, mess in your food. It's up to you whether you do or not, just please make it a choice, not a surprise. :)

How About Some Vegan Stuffed Shells?

This recipes comes from my need for comfort food! Especially on a day like today in Upstate New York where it's snowy and gray-you really want to feel the warmth in your home, belly and heart. So why should you have to sacrifice your health and waistline?!

I came up with this Vegan Stuffed Shell recipe to satisfy that particular issue. Hope you enjoy and would love to hear what you think!

Ingredients

For the shells:
1 box of large whole wheat pasta shells or whole wheat lasagna noodles if you can't find the shells or brown rice lasagna noodles if you are gluten-free
2 cups macedemia nuts
2 cups cashews
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (you can find this in the bulk section of your grocery store and it is just yeast but looks and tastes like cheese when added to things!)
1 can of artichoke hearts, drained and diced
dried basil
dried oregano
black pepper

For the sauce (OR buy a low-sodium sauce instead):
2 or 3 cans of no-salt-added diced tomatoes
red wine-something you like
onions, diced
garlic, minced
red pepper flakes
dried basil

Directions

**Do ahead**
Put macademia nuts in a bowl filled with water about an inch above the top of the nuts and let soak overnight (before you go to bed) or for 8 hours (while you are at work).

Put cashews in a separate bowl filled with water about an inch above the top of the nuts and let soak overnight or for 8 hours.

**At Supper Time**
After the nuts have been soaked, drain them and blend them in a high powered blender separately. The macademia nuts should resemble a ricotta cheese when blended. Add water or lemon juice to keep your blender from overheating and to get the right consistency. Then once complete, throw in a bowl. Do the same for the cashews and throw in the same bowl.

Now add the basil, oregano, pepper, yeast and artichokes until well mixed. I didn't put amounts for the spices because you should taste it to see what you like. Add small amounts at first, mix, then taste. If it doesn't taste flavorful yet, add more spice because it certain won't change while baking!!

Then cook the shells or noodles in a pot of water until al dente, about 4 to 6 minutes. Drain, separate and lay flat to cool. Stuff with the "cheese" mixture and set aside. (If you are using lasagna noodles just dollup a little "cheese" in the middle of the noodle and roll it up!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To make the sauce, heat your onions in a hot stainless steel skilled. You don't need oil if the pan is hot enough because the onions will release their own juices! Saute for about 2 minutes, then add the garlic, red pepper flakes, basil and other spices you might like! Saute for 1 minute and add a bit of red wine to deglaze the pan. Then add the tomatoes and simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes until the sauce thickens and reduces.

Spread a little of the sauce to coat the bottom of a cassorole dish. Then add the stuffed shells (or the rolls) to the dish. Then coat with another layer of sauce, making sure each shell is covered. Throw in the oven for about 40 minutes and serve. YUM!