kale smoothies and flaxseed kicks

Lately Dano and I have been trying a little bit harder to eat healthy.  A lot of people associate healthy eating with eating less, but we are trying to eat more!  More beans, nuts, grains, etc... And with that we have been trying to make these smoothies a couple times a week along with a fried egg and toast-it's a pretty complete breakfast!

The original recipe to give me the idea is on the Joy the Baker blog

I like to make it however with...

Makes 2 servings:
about 8 frozen blackberries
1 banana
handful of kale
handful of spinach
1/4-1/2 c vanilla unsweetened almond milk
1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed
Lately too I have started throwing in some frozen shelled edamame for protein which is pretty good too!

(It's hard to take an appetizing picture of a kale smoothie...)

I've also been making my own granola and taking a small container of it with an added sprinkle of ground flaxseed to work with some vanilla greek yogurt!  I use this recipe, but majorly scaled down.

Mine turns out to be about:
2 1/2 c oats
3/4 c chopped almonds
1/4 c pumpkin seeds
1/4 c sunflower seeds
1/4 c sesame seeds
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c maple syrup
drizzle of agave nectar
1/8 t sea salt
1 t vanilla
1/2-3/4 c raisins

It's a lot of ingredients and I am lucky to live in hippie-ville and can easily find all these things at an affordable rate with bulk bins at the co-op.   But the plus side of this recipe is that it is healthy and once you have everything it is very easy to make!  The original recipe also calls for rice syrup which I could not find... so I just kind of left it out and added a little more oil and some agave nectar. 

About once a week I grind flaxseed in my blender and keep it in the fridge... then I add it to my granola for lunch and my smoothies! 

Yep, I bought honey just so I could have this bear jar...

Hope you give some of these a try!  

Whoopie!

Last week for bookclub I finally decided to embark on making whoopie pies.  I printed out the recipe from epicurious probably 6 months ago but figured they would be kind of time consuming and continued to put it off.  Well, it really was not very hard and they were totally worth the work!

(sorry my pictures are worse than usual, with the weather being so dismal it's hard without natural light!)
I pretty much followed the recipe as written, but for the filling I used about half shortening and half butter.  A lot of people complained in the reviews about the filling being too messy so I made the filling first and let it sit in a pastry bag upright in the pint glass in the fridge while I made the rest.  The frosting seemed kind of gritty at first but after it sat for a while that totally went away!

I just cut the bottom off of a pastry bag which made filling the pies super simple... it was fun! 

to a healthy 2012?

Hey ya'll,
I haven't posted in a while, hope everyone had a great holiday season!
Now it's back to work and attempting to adhere to our New Year's resolutions....
in honor of those I have a couple healthy ideas to pass on:
#1. roasted red peppers

I love red pepper, but roasted red pepper is especially delicious!  They are super easy to make too, just cut out the stem and seeds & flatten them onto a piece of aluminum foil on the broiler pan.

 I check mine about every 5 minutes and move them around if they aren't blackening evenly.
They should look close to this when they are done.

The entire skin should be wrinkled and mostly blackened.  If you still have smooth red areas, they need to stay in longer.  At this point, use tongs to place the peppers in a ziploc or tight sealing container and let them sit 10-15 minutes.  After being steamed, the skin of the pepper should just slide off and they are ready.  I made wraps for my lunch last week with hummus and my roasted red peppers-yum!

My second recipe is spring rolls.
At the local sushi place, I had honey-Sriracha sauce for the first time and fell in love.... it's dangerously addicting, I should warn you!  So that's what I make first so it can sit and stew for a little bit--simple ingredients:

I put them both in a small saucepan and it's up to you how hot you want it.  When the sauce seemed pretty uniform I transferred it to a bowl while I made the rolls. 
For the spring rolls, I chopped up spearmint, thai basil, and cilantro.  I have made spring rolls before and skipped the mint and basil, they were really bland--you need the herbs!  I slightly boiled some red pepper and carrots strips until they were just softened.

The name of these rice papers cracks me up!  They are really easy to use though, I just fill a pie pan with boiling water and drop them in one at a time.  Transfer the paper to a cutting board and fill them up with your herbs, veggies, cellophane noodles (which after they were cooked I juiced an entire lime over them....), and some bean sprouts!

Needless to say, there were no leftovers!