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Author Archive | Ami

No-Sugar Grilled Pineapple Rings

When we lived in Utah, we had a Brazilian neighbor. Every time she saw us, she’d invite us in for Brazilian food, which happens to be AMAZING! The meat and veggies were delicious, but my favorite part was the grilled pineapple. As it heats up, the sugars caramelize and the juices come out. It softens but somehow stays crunchy. It’s one of the most satisfying things in the world. The only problem was, it was covered in sugar. I was so sad to learn that she made it by covering it in brown sugar.

Fast forward to now. One day I had a hankering for that sugary, warm, juicy grilled pineapple. I decided there had to be a way to make it without the brown sugar. After all, pineapple is naturally sweet, so there’s no reason to add more sugar.

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The key is to start with a fresh pineapple. Canned rings just won’t do the trick. You need to start out with firm, crunchy rings to keep the nice crunchy texture after you grill them.

Then all I did was melt some coconut oil, add cinnamon and salt and brushed it on the pineapple rings.

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Then I passed them off to my manly husband to cook on the bbq grill next to some juicy steaks. Since this is both healthy and sweet, it works as a side dish, or a dessert.

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This is not hard

Read This Before You Do the Whole 30

One of the challenges I’ve done is the Whole 30. If you’re unfamiliar with the Whole 30, it’s a challenge that requires you to eat Paleo for 30 days. Paleo basically means you get to eat meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds for 30 days. Not only does this help clean out your body […]

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Guilt-Free Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits

As a kid, I always got excited when I heard the ice cream truck. Since it was summer, I was generally in my black and rainbow striped swimsuit running through the sprinklers with half the kids in my neighborhood. We’d hear the music and run toward the truck with all our might and quarters. Aside from that, there was another truck that brought joy to my heart: the Schwan’s truck. We’d get so excited when the “Schwan’s man” would come each week. My mom always bought two things (she bought more but I wasn’t really interested in raw chicken breasts and salmon patties). One, push-up ice cream pops. Remember those? I can still taste of that delicous peach ice cream combined with the taste of plastic and cardboard as I licked the tube trying to get every last drop. The second things she always got; cinnamon raising biscuits. These things were so addicting. Many a Sunday morning, I’d wake up smelling those delicious biscuits. The fact that they came with a tube of frosting made them that much better.

Maybe I was feeling nostalgic because it was close to mother’s day, but a few weeks ago, I was craving these biscuits, but didn’t want to eat something that I’d regret later. Then I realized, since I know how to make healthy biscuits, I could easily recreate these!

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I started with my healthy drop biscuit recipe. To them I added cinnamon, vanilla and raisins. As with the drop biscuits, I was way too lazy to roll and cut them, but you certainly could if you had the motivation. Since I wanted them to have that round look the ones from my childhood had, I rolled them and shaped them with my hands.

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We ate these before I could get a picture, but to simulate the frosting, we drizzled a bit of coconut butter of the top of a few of them. These were so good, I considered putting the black and rainbow swimsuit back on and running through the sprinklers eating one. But then I’d be the neighborhood freak. Oh well. They tasted just as delicious as they did when I was 7.

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A Cheap Way to Add Color to Your Kitchen

We recently moved into a new house. And while I love my new house, there is one thing about the house I can not stand for. This is the most beige house I’ve ever seen. Luckily I found a way to accommodate a big punch of color in the kitchen.

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The Healthy Wendy’s Frosty

Girls’ night in college usually involved my roommates and I going to a movie, getting dessert at midnight in a restaurant, daring each other to do something really stupid and then dancing until 2 a.m. when someone would suggest making cookie dough, which we’d do, and then eat the entire bowl before falling asleep on the couch about 4 a.m. Now that I have a daughter, we do regular girls’ nights. Though these days, they usually involve painting nails, watching Angelina Ballerina and making a treat together. I have to say, I prefer these girls’ nights.

Last Friday after our nails were sparkly turquoise and Angelina was having a dilemma about being jealous of another mouse ballerina, we decided it was treat time. Giving my daughter loads of sugar right before I send her to sleep does not make for a happy ending to girls’ night. Instead, we made this healthy version of a Wendy’s Frosty with only 3 ingredients, all of which are healthy and easy to pronounce.

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Just throw the frozen bananas, cocoa powder and a milk of your choice (we went with almond milk) in a blender and you’re good to go! I really want to make some sweet potato fries to see how they taste dipped in. Come on. You know you used to dip your fries in your frosty.

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B&W Kiss

The Truth about Marriage

Last Saturday afternoon I was pulling weeds in my garden. I felt a tickle in my ear. I thought it must be sweat, but then the tickle turned into a flutter… inside my ear. I quickly realized, there was a bug in my ear. Oh! My! Gosh! I ran to the house in a panic and […]

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Backyard BBQ Foil Potatoes

Last weekend, we grilled burgers for dinner. We wanted potatoes with our burgers and decided to make them on the grill. Maybe we wanted to feel like pioneers (with our propane-fueled, electrical-started grill??). I’m not sure, we just decided we needed to make the potatoes on the grill. The experiment went really well.

My husband likes red potatoes, but the kids and I like sweet potatoes. My son, only like sweet potatoes seasoned one way and the rest of us are a bit tired of it. That was the first big plus with making the potatoes on the grill. We could make as many different kinds as we wanted.

We ended up with three different variations of potato packets.

The first:

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  • Red potatoes
  • Butter
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Italian Seasoning

The Second:

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  • Sweet potato
  • Butter
  • Season Salt
  • Cumin

The Third:

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  • Sweet potato
  • Butter
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Cinnamon

Just cube the potatoes and top them with seasonings and butter. I double wrapped the sweet potato packets because sweet potatoes release a sugary syrup when they cook. The red potatoes were fine in the single wrap.

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25 minutes on the grill and we each had our own delicious version of potatoes. These would also work really well on a campfire. Maybe that would make us more like pioneers.

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