Howdy all!!! We have had some conversation this week about eating better and improving our health problems. Each of us does something different and that is just so neat that there are so many ideas out there to help in some way. I have a couple of things to post today that just fit the bill and maybe an idea that can help with baking. I know we have some cooks out there, that have been doing this for ages. Many are new at things.
I saw this idea on a FB group that I belong to and thought it was a pretty good idea.
Great idea for those eating mainly vegetarian!
Love the idea that it has so little sugar. Heck I would probably use my Stevia.
It is also getting to be major salad time! All the garden goodies will make some wonderful salads during the summer.
So many ideas to have yummies without all the calories and sugar. We can all get a bit creative and try new things. They may be keepers - then maybe they won't. It sure is worth trying and it's fun.
Enjoy eating better with what you have at home!
Have a great day!
Interesting way to make brownies! The Farmer and I think that the key to better health is to eat more fresh fruit and veg and to ditch the sodas/pop/cokes.
ReplyDeleteHarvested our first turnip yesterday and it was huge. Need to check the rest of the bed today. Also cut two of the broccoli heads, used one in a stir fry and gave one to the neighbor. Think there are about four more out there.
Enjoy this beautiful day!
I am addicted to fresh fruit!
DeleteYAY on the harvest!!!! I love raw turnips with salt! Fresh broccoli is so yummy.
I have made the sweet potato brownie many times. To my taste, I find it does benefit from a few handfuls of nuts ( of any type) added in. That fruit bowl looks delicious. Louise
ReplyDeleteNuts would be a great added feature! Thanks.
DeleteThe bowls do look yum don't they? Such a great way to eat well and get fruits and veggies without extra calories.
There's something to be said for homemade vs. store bought or even packaged mixes. There are so many additives in boxed mixes, in particular. It really doesn't take that much time to make something from scratch. And you can always measure out ingredients in advance and store it in a jar or other container, adding refrigerated items when making it. And much healthier, too.
ReplyDeleteYes indeedy!!!!! Scratch is quite easy - and the idea of having things pre-measured and ready to go is the best.
DeleteLove all the healthy ideas and comments this week.
Thank you, Cheryl. I've made brownies using canned, pureed pumpkin, too, and it works. Recently I've been researching making my own yogurt; has anyone made frozen yogurt using homemade yogurt? You know I've been making crock pot jams. I do that, because recipes for (regular) jam call for as much as 5-6 cups of sugar! Slow cooking the fruit with much less sugar--or sugar substitutes, as I do--intensifies the flavor and sweetness of the berries. I've made stove top jam many times. This is my preferred method now.
ReplyDeleteThose bowls look delicious! In the hotter months of the year, we do many more salads, sandwiches, breakfast for dinner and grilling outside. I think in warm weather we all just eat healthier with the abundance of fresh produce, don't you? --Elise
P.S. Mixes can be your friend when you're busy or have trouble being on your feet for long stretches of time. Homemade is great, but if you read ingredients on boxes mixes, you'll find there are brands without a lot of additives. It's down to what works best.
I have added a container of frozen yogurt to homemade ice cream - but never made yogurt or frozen yogurt.
DeleteYour jams sound wonderful.
I think (I know) I eat healthier in the summer. Lighter meals and more fresh foods.
Only accidentally have we frozen the homemade yogurt. The camper trailer refrigerator does not moderate the temperature like the full size at home. So it sometimes freezes stuff. We just let it thaw, stirred it up and ate it.
ReplyDeleteEllie
We don't have a problem with ice cream, but since it's hard to find the vanilla yogurt our pups love (each gets a small spoonful 2X per day), I've thought of making my own for them. I found a recipe that makes several cups with 2 T. vanilla and 1 T. sugar. Thought it might make a good frozen yogurt, too. --Elise
DeleteEllie I have accidently frozen yogurt - it is good!
DeleteElise - that sounds smart for the pups - keeps their bellies well!
Cheryl, doggie flatulence is potent; we discovered giving them a little yogurt (live cultures) prevents gas. We also found that when you buy big bags of dry dogfood with probiotics (expensive), it tends to go bad by the end of the bag (even in airtight storage) and makes Blue sick to her stomach. Yogurt it is! And they get all excited twice a day, thinking they're having a special treat. --Elise
DeleteP.S. Since the yogurt, Blue's itching has nearly disappeared.
Elis it is neat that you have figured out a low cost way to care for the pups and they love it too.
DeleteI've got big hopes for the sweet potato brownies. Gluten free and a vegetable! All the ideas are great, Cheryl!
ReplyDeleteEllie
You'll like this recipe, too, Ellie. It uses avocado for brownies. No flour of any kind. Simple ingredients. Just use your food processor. https://detoxinista.com/avocado-brownies/
Delete--Elise
I love the idea. I am not a huge sweet potato fan - but could sure devour them this way!
DeleteThose bowls look delicious. Sweet potato brownies sound interesting. It's chocolate so how bad could it be, :)
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY my thought!!!!!!!!!!
DeleteI'm glad Elise mentioned using pumpkin. I still have butternut squash from last summer I'm trying to use up before I get more. I use it for all my pumpkin recipes. Going to try it in these brownies.
ReplyDelete~margaret
I think it will work wonderfully. It is nice having new ways to use things.
DeleteMy friend told me about a South Beach diet recipe many years ago. We both liked it a lot for a dessert. It's ricotta cheese, cocoa powder, and Splenda to taste. We'd add about 10 mini chocolate chips as a topping.
ReplyDeleteAnother friend used to make banana splits without ice cream! She'd slice half a banana in half (did you follow that?!). Top it with cottage cheese, chocolate syrup, real whipped cream, fresh strawberries, nuts, and even a cherry.
I saw frozen chocolate banana slices at Trader Joe's. I think they'd be easy to make. I love frozen bananas, especially with sliced almonds on the chocolate.
And there's always the faithful smoothie. Never fails to please!
Smoothies are wonderful and I do those often in the summer. Light as you choose and cold!
DeleteBanana slices are a breeze to make. I have done that.
You had me until you mentioned cottage cheese!!!!! LOL! Blah - can't do that stuff at all! I'd use yogurt instead.
Oh those sweet potato brownies sound so good! I will try those using stevia instead of maple syrup...Usually anything with sweet potatoes turns out moist and good.
ReplyDeleteOur youngest daughter made some really good cookies yesterday, she just put half coconut flour and half almond flour, a couple of eggs, stevia, vanilla and peppermint and they were very good.
I love yard eggs too, you can do so much with them. You can bake them in the shell at 350 for 30 minutes or so...I put mine in shell in the instantpot for 3 minutes. It makes a good snack or meal addition to have on hand. I'm a veggie girl so this is great.
One thing about baking soda is it does have more sodium than baking powder, and I just bought some low sodium baking powder, one of our daughters makes homemade baking powder and I need to try that... and sometimes I make flat breads, all of above with my trusty almond flour. : )
You can serve roasted veggies with onion with a little olive oil or avocado oil over things like brown or wild rice, quinoa, barley etc. It's really good too.
Thank you so much for sharing these great ideas Cheryl! I enjoyed reading the "Dawn" comments and will have to go back and see them all. I wonder if my off brand blue Sam's Club brand is the same pretty much, it does *seem* to work the same on my dishes on tough jobs. I use lavender natural dish soap most the time.
Have a sweet rest of the day! ~Amelia
Amelia, I use almond flour for most baked things. Have you ever looked at Elana's Pantry.com? Great almond flour recipes. We love her chocolate chip cookies that are egg free and are sweetened with maple syrup. She also has a great banana bread recipe that is only sweetened with 1 Tbsp of honey, which is a staple in our home. Cookie
DeleteAmelia I bet the cookies were great. People are just so creative - I love it.
DeleteMmmm roasted veggies! They are good with anything.
I have never used almond flour - need to try that one of these days.
Thanks Cookie for that site!
Thank you Cookie! I will definitely check into that site! Yes, our daughter who lives here at home likes raw honey, I have to watch sugar grams but we always have honey on hand too as well as stevia. Can't wait to find some good almond flour recipes! Thanks again! ~Amelia
DeleteGood evening Cheryl! Yes, I do think you would like almond flour. Our grocery store in smalltown is carrying it now too in their storebrand so I'm so glad to see that! Our daughter's mint cookies were in the shapes of the stereotypical tooth, and big toothy smile shapes! lol She was so excited yesterday after her very bad experience at the dentist a couple of weeks ago to have her invisa-line put in place by an orthodontist she likes yesterday, *and* it is *already* correcting her pretty, wide smile back to normal and widening her air passage a teensy bit, she's super excited after feeling depressed over the whole tooth situation and her smile. So she presented everyone with the mint flavored cookies to celebrate...She started to drop little drops of green dye to go with the mint flavor to make them green and then stopped when she remembered these were "tooth" shaped! lol
DeleteOh how cute on the tooth shaped cookies. A reason to celebrate. I have often thought the invisa-line braces. Hmmm - good info to know!
DeleteSo far the invisa-line is great. It's amazing what they can do with those! She had a pulled tooth over to the side (not seen really but she knew it) and would not smile fully and they put a "tooth" there built into the invisiline until she can get an implant in a year or so after invisiline does it's job.
DeleteP.S. You may also like brown rice flour too Cheryl, if you can have grains it makes great gravy! I use it a lot for that. It thickens wonderfully!
Thanks for the info!
DeleteThanks for sharing those good ideas, Cheryl. I love the site that Elise mentioned (detoxinista). She has a delicious recipe for bean free hummus which is great for us since we don't eat beans because of their histamine level. We also love the zucchini pie and many other of her recipes. One of the things we do is to freeze bananas and then put them in the blender with a little bit of unsweetened cocoa, a drop or two of stevia or monk fruit without erythitol and Voila -- chocolate icecream. We do this with other fruits as well, not letting them get to the smoothy stage. For baking if it's for hubby and me I almost exclusively use maple
ReplyDeletesyrup , coconut sugar and/or monk fruit without erythitol in it. Hubby still likes to have occasional sweets made the conventional way and I will bake them for him, for our friends, and for gifts. There was recently a recipe on the Today Show that was 2 cups of melted chocolate chips mixed with a can of pumpkin and then refrigerate in cupcake size bowls or foil cupcake holders that looked interesting to me and is on my list to try, Cookie
I will have to check that site as well. I am anxious for zucchini - hundreds of way to fix it. I just love me some zucchini!
DeleteYou are all so creative and have made so many neat ideas being careful of your restricted diets. That is just so neat.
So my Hawaiian pizza and pop tarts are not making this cut?
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh, Kim. Love me some Hawaiian Pizza and have been known to eat a pop tart now and then.
Delete:-D --Elise
Come and sit by me and share your pizza ‘n tarts. I’ll eat them.
DeleteLouise.
LOL - that is funny. I am not a Hawaiian pizza person - more traditional here. BUT I have done a pop tart or two or three in my day!!!!!!
DeleteHawaiian pizza makes every cut in my book! That was actually the first piece of pizza I ever tasted. I was 18. It's been my favorite ever since.
Delete[edited] Alright you convinced us... Hawaiian pizza it is for dinner tonight (Hub's game night). Domino's 1/2 off makes it $7.99. He's ordered chicken wings for himself, too. LOL!
DeleteKim, I'm very grateful to you for lightening things up.
I love main dish salads in the summer and always try to have at least one a week. Usually can stretch it to a couple of days of meals for Hubby and I.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Hub's favorite is taco salad, Jackie, and we have it often throughout the year. I've just figured out how to do the Arby's Chicken Pecan salad, which can be a sandwich or on salad greens:
Delete1 large, roasted chicken breast, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup sliced celery
1 apple peeled, cored and chopped
1 cup halved, seedless grapes
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
2 T. lemonade
mayonnaise (as you like it)
Put everything in a big bowl and mix well. Use as much mayo as you prefer: some like it creamy, others drier. Keeps refrigerated for a day or two.
--Elise
Jackie - I love salads too. Salad doesn't have to be just lettuce in my opinion - there are so many options!
DeleteElise - thanks!!!!
Cheryl, you recently mentioned meatloaf burgers, which I think would be very tasty w/o a bun. Yesterday I used 1/2 of the sale priced ground round to make 4 doz. meatballs, and today I'll form and freeze meatloaf burgers for the grill with the rest. Imagine them with sides of a tossed green salad, sliced tomato and avocado on a warm, summer night. Yum! --Elise
ReplyDeleteThat is how I eat them - never with a bun. I just call them burgers because they are 'like' a burger in size and made on stove or grill. I love them and it is perfect for one or two people - no great big meatloaf to eat on for days. It all sounds yummy!
Delete