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Ingredients Archives: All-Natural Peanut Butter

Better than the 70’s: Healthy Peanut Butter Fruit Dip

By on September 9, 2016 in Guilt-Free Treats, Healthy Snacks, Holidays

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I clearly remember New Year’s Eve growing up. We’d get together with my BFF’s family (no, seriously. We’re in our 30’s now and we still talk multiple times weekly). The adults would do horribly boring things (like chat about things other than Barbies and tutus) and the kids would run around all night. A few weeks before, we’d order a bunch of those super junky toys from Oriental Trading. We would play with those toys all night, or until they broke 20 minutes later. The most memorable toy was an ice cream cone with a trigger. When you pulled it, the ice cream part shot off the cone part. Yep. My childhood rocked.

We always had a ton of awesome food too. I’m sure there were cookies and meat trays, but the thing I remember the most was my mom’s fruit dip. I know that seems strange for an 8-year-old to have a hankering for fruit dipped in a sugary substance over a chocolaty brownie, but it was just so good! It was straight from the 70’s complete with a tub of cool whip, cream cheese and a crap-load of sugar. Nothing says “Happy New Year” like a sugar coma.

I was thinking about said dip and my ice cream cone shooter the other day and became sad that I can no longer live in ignorance about the unhealthy reality of my beloved fruit dip. That’s when I went on a mission to create a new fruit dip. A fruit dip that would put the 70’s fruit dip to shame and wouldn’t give you diabetes.

I wanted it to be easy, so I decided to keep the ingredients to a minimum. Instead of the cool whip portion, I used a full-fat Greek yogurt. It helped the dip have the same creamy consistency without all the artificial ingredients. I found this fabulous Greek yogurt at Sprouts. Make sure you pick one without a lot of added junk.

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Instead of cream cheese, I used peanut butter. I mainly did this because peanut butter is just awesome, and has the ability to make things feel sweet without adding sugar. Since we nixed our artificial sweetener by removing the cool whip, we needed a little flavor. The peanut-butter made it PERFECT!

To bump up the flavor, I just added in a little vanilla and cinnamon. The dip isn’t overly sweet, but since fruit has natural sweeteners, the combination of fruit and dip gave this the perfect sweetness. If you want a little more sweetness though for a special occasion like a New Year’s Eve party complete with awesomely-cheap toys, feel free to add a little honey.

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So now not only do you have a fruit dip free of sugars and artificial ingredients, but one packed with protein and healthy fats. It’s good enough to have for breakfast!

Hopefully this dip will help my children make as many awesome memories as I had as a kid. But I need to find the ice cream shooter to ensure that.

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Granola Bars with Ingredients You Can Pronounce

By on October 9, 2015 in Healthy Snacks

Even though I really do feed my kids regular meals (Really! I swear!) My kids constantly proclaim to be starving. When i try to explain to them what it actually means to be “starving,” they look at me like I’m crazy and then once again profess that if they don’t get food soon they’ll surely die. This means, we need a lot of easy snacks in our house. The problem is, fast and easy often means processed, junk-filled food I don’t particularly want my kids eating. So while the solution is homemade snacks, as busy moms, we don’t always have a lot of time.

These homemade granola bars are extremely easy to make, very healthy and make me feel like Mother of the Year when I hand one to my kids. That warm feeling last all the way until they start fighting in the middle of the condiment isle of the grocery store and break a bottle of salsa. Small victories really do count.

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Let’s compare the ingredients in our homemade granola bars to the very popular Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The Quaker peanut-butter chocolate chip bars contain artificial coloring, corn syrup, sorbital, artificial flavoring, and several other ingredients I can’t pronounce. In total, these bars contain 7 grams of sugar each and have over 30 ingredients. My granola bars have no added sugar (aside from the small amount in the dark chocolate bits) and contain 9 ingredients, all of which you’ve likely heard of.

Start by combining the oats, coconut, ground flax, almonds, dark chocolate and cinnamon in a bowl. If you can’t do almonds, just up the flax or coconut. No big deal. You can also replace them for another nut or seed you like better.

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Once you mix this together, stir in the coconut milk, peanut butter and vanilla. I finally gave up with the spoon and went in with my hands. It may be a git gooey, but it saves a lot of time. This just goes in a 9×13 pan and into the fridge to set.

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Even after I cut these into bars, I keep them in the fridge. They stay fresh and and stay set that way. But I will take one out, wrap it in plastic and put it in my purse for a trip to the grocery store. They will stay set for an hour or two without refrigeration.

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Try them out. I guarantee you’ll have that Mother-of-the-year feeling.

 

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Healthy Diary-Free Chocolate Peanut-Butter “Milk” Shake

By on August 21, 2015 in Guilt-Free Treats

For the most part, a healthy lifestyle is easy to maintain. The hardest part is when people are eating dessert. I can usually resist, but there’s always part of me that wants to grab the milkshake out of their hands and chug it down. But then I remember how horrible I feel after I binge on sugar and talk myself down. Rather than cheat and feel like death after, I try to come up with ways to have a treat without loading my body with processed, sugary crap. This healthy take on a classic milk shake was a huge success.DSCN0174

I bring this all together with my immersion blender. This is one of my favorite tools because it creates way less cleanup than using a blender.

Combine coconut milk, a frozen banana, protein powder and peanut butter with an immersion blender. I use this protein powder.  It tastes great and doesn’t have all the bad stuff some protein powders do.

This is so thick you’ll need a spoon. See! Eating healthy doesn’t mean you can’t indulge.

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