Because a large portion of my google/pinterest/cookbook searches include the word pumpkin, I’ve tried many healthy pumpkin recipes. Here are a few of my favorite sweet pumpkin recipes.
Tag Archives | healthy
Why You Should Eat Pumpkin
Because it’s November, pumpkin should be consumed regularly. Pumpkin is an amazing vegetable with several benefits. Here are 10 benefits of eating pumpkin.
Creamy Cauliflower Soup
I love to trick my family by adding healthy things to their food. I add beans to their brownies, avocado to their frosting and now cauliflower to their cheese soup. I gave them the soup, listened to them “ooh” and “aah” and never said a word about what was in it. Mwa ha ha! I love the small victories.
Start by steaming the cauliflower. I got this lovely steaming basket at Ikea years ago. It’s one of my favorite kitchen tools because it fits in any pan and is dishwasher safe.
While the cauliflower steams, cook the onion and garlic in the butter and avocado oil. Do this right in your soup pot. Add the salt, pepper, almond milk and chicken broth and heat this all together.
Add the steamed cauliflower and puree with an immersion blender. I love my immersion blender for the same reason I love my veggie steamer. It’s extremely versatile and dishwasher safe.
Add the cheese and continue to cook the soup until the cheese melts.
Top each serving with green onion, turkey bacon and more cheese.
10 Weight Loss Myths Most People Believe
When it comes to health/weight-loss, there are numerous myths society has taught us over the years. Today I’m going to help debunk 10 of these myths.
No-Bean Chili
I don’t like beans. It’s not the taste or the texture; it’s the after effect. The night I eat beans, I’m groaning on the couch, my stomach churning. The problem is, I love chili. I love it on chips, I love it on fries, and I love it in a bowl with avocado and sour cream. But every no-bean chili I’ve tried is usually just glorified Sloppy Joe meat. So I decided we needed to come up with a healthy no-bean chili that still has that great chunky chili texture. Here is what we came up with.
Start by cooking the meat and onion, just as you do in every chili.
The great texture comes from a bunch of vegetables. Add a chopped carrot, red, green and yellow peppers and a can of diced tomatoes.
Then add the great flavor with your seasonings. Stir in your seasonings and flavored liquids and let this simmer in the slow cooker for 6-8 hours.
Eat this in a bowl with your favorite toppings or spoon it over hot dogs, sweet potato fries or veggie chips. Better yet, freeze half and reheat it to use in a fun, new way.
Healthy Snack List for Kids
The second my kids walk in the door from school, grocery shopping, playing or even going out to get the mail, they want a snack. To make our lives easier, we made a list of “approved” snacks and put it on the fridge. Here is our list of 30 healthy snacks for kids.
Chicken Avocado Lettuce Wraps
My son has activities on Monday and Wednesday nights. We have to make dinner in advance so we can eat right when we get home. This leaves us with three options: crock pot, salad or sandwiches. This can get old, so we’re always looking for something to mix it up. These chicken avocado lettuce wraps are fabulous because we can make them in advance and they’re super yummy. Plus there’s usually enough to have leftovers the next day for lunch. As a busy mom, those are always my favorite kind of meals.
Start by cooking some chicken breasts. I always poach them because it’s a fast way to cook chicken. You can also use store-bought pre-cooked chicken. Then work some magic. Put the cooked chicken in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.
Turn it on and… VOILA! Yep. That just happened. Since I learned this trick, I never used two forks to shred chicken.
Then add the avocados, lime juice, cilantro, salt and pepper and mix again.
I like to serve this in a lettuce leaf. I generally use green leaf lettuce, but romaine or even iceberg would work fine. If you really don’t like lettuce wraps, serve it in a whole wheat tortilla. I personally love the crunch the lettuce gives.
13 Healthy Halloween Treats to take to a Party
While I love Halloween, I don’t love sugar crash my kids get after every Halloween party. I’ve decided this year, I’m going to do my part to eliminate that. Here are 13 healthy snacks to take to a Halloween party that still have a festive twist.
Clean Maple Pumpkin Cheesecake
It’s Fall!! The air is crisp, the leaves are red, the occasional sweater makes an appearance and the best part of the season shows its lovely orange face: PUMPKIN! I firmly believe pumpkin should be a part of everything I eat whenever possible from October 1 to December 31. It just feels right. Basically, this is me:
The problem is, a lot of those delicious, gooey pumpkin desserts are chock full of refined sugars, processed flours and hydrogenated oils. Because I am not willing to give up my pumpkin desserts, I needed to come up with a healthy pumpkin pie. And not just a normal pie, but a CHEESECAKE! Now listen. Eating healthy doesn’t mean eating “healthy” treats every day. And to me, it doesn’t mean depriving myself of treats for the rest of my life, because that sounds like the worst life possible. What it does mean is eating healthier treats in moderation. We have dessert every Sunday night. We had this last Sunday and the whole family gave it two thumbs up, including my son with sensory eating issues. That’s always a huge win in our household.
I started with this coconut cookie pie crust by Plated with Style. I’ve made this crust for several pies and love it. Why reinvent the wheel, right? I left the crust raw and baked the filling and crust together with great results. I used a regular pie dish and greased it with coconut oil, which I highly recommend.
This cheesecake easily comes together in a stand mixer. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use hand beaters.
I’ve heard of several clean-eating cheesecakes that require soaking cashews and then blending them…. I just stick with cream cheese for this. The sweetness comes from maple syrup, vanilla and fall spices like cinnamon.
The batter will be very thick, so don’t worry it’s wrong if it’s not really pour-able.
The pie bakes for 30-35 minutes. The middle should be a bit jiggly, but not sloshy. I’m not ashamed to say, I teared up a bit pulling this out of the oven because it smelled SOOOO good. It’s like a perfect package of fall.
Once it reaches this state, let it cool before refrigerating at least four hours. I made this on a Saturday night for a Sunday dinner and left it in the fridge overnight.
You can eat this plain or top it with whipped coconut cream. Happy pumpkin season!!!
Granola Bars with Ingredients You Can Pronounce
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.
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.
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.
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.
Try them out. I guarantee you’ll have that Mother-of-the-year feeling.