Hurray for summer! Because summer means farmer’s markets. If you’ve ever seen the curly green onion-looking things at your market called garlic scapes, BUY THEM and make this pesto. It’s a nut-free pesto recipe made with garlic scapes, basil, cheese and olive oil. Simply blend the ingredients together and you’ll have the most amazing and budget-friendly pesto.
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Oh cheese. How I love thee. Especially in the form of fresh mozzarella. I got these portobello mushrooms from the Green City Market in Chicago and made these Roasted Caprese Stuffed Portobellos for an appetizer when my sister came over for dinner. The flavors of balsamic vinegar, garlic and olive oil are roasted with the mushrooms, then topped with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and fresh basil.
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If you have yet to try chia seed pudding, I think now is the perfect time to start! I’m tellin’ ya … it tastes very similar to pudding and is gluten-free, paleo-friendly, and all around a healthy breakfast, dessert, or snack. My Banana Chia Pudding was so popular that I decided to create another summer flavor – strawberry shortcake! Fresh strawberries add an amazing fruity flavor while the vanilla almond milk and honey make it sweet enough to taste like one of my favorite summer desserts.
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Potluck Tortellini Pasta Salad is the perfect potluck recipe because it’s easy to make, travels well, and it’s a true crowd-pleaser!
Do you remember the first thing you ever cooked?
Although I’m sure there were countless times I helped my mom brown ground beef or chop vegetables for dinner, one of my earliest memories of actually making a dish myself was when I made tortellini pasta salad for a block party.
Perhaps it sticks out in my mind because, at the time, I didn’t know eating tortellini cold with Italian dressing on it was a “thing.”
I do, however, remember getting multiple compliments on it, which was pretty neat to a little girl who barely knew how to boil water.
So when I had to make a dish to pass at my family reunion last weekend, I immediately thought of tortellini pasta salad! It’s a great potluck recipe because, chances are, nobody else will bring the same dish.
Oh, and not to mention IT’S DELICIOUS.
Direct quote from my cousin: “I could eat this every day for the rest of my life.”
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These Paleo Sweet Potato Pancakes are made using mashed sweet potato to create moist, fluffy grain-free pancakes!
For once I’m going to avoid rambling and just tell you the facts:
1. These are the best paleo pancakes I’ve made to date.
2. They’re stinkin’ easy to make and can even be reheated in the microwave or toaster.
3. Go make them right now because they rawk.
Fluffy, cinnamon-y, sweet paleo pancake recipes are not easy to come by, but using sweet potatoes to make them must be the secret trick!
Just microwave the sweet potato to get it soft enough, mash, mix in the ingredients, and pancakes away. It really couldn’t get much easier to make grain-free, gluten free pancakes!
These babies are delicious with maple syrup, peanut butter, or even just cinnamon on top.
I love that this is a paleo pancakes recipe with coconut flour, sweet potato, eggs, and additional ingredients you probably already have on hand.
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I did a bad thing. But it’s not my fault! Sometimes, on a Saturday night, the time comes when you just give in to all aspects of health …… and you order Pizza Hut. Now before you go thinking that’s not the worst thing I the world, you should know that we didn’t JUST order Pizza Hut. We ordered The Big Box, which includes two pan pizzas, five breadsticks, and eight hot wings. And it was just for two people. And we drank beer with it. And binge watched Orange Is The New Black. Thank goodness calories don’t count on weekends, right?
So as much as I love Pizza Hut, these zucchini pizza boats really are a close second. And they won’t even leave a greasy residue on your fingers! I, for one, have a love-hate relationship with zucchini. I don’t care for it when it’s simply sautéed in butter. I only like it if it’s spiralized then tossed in a mound of spaghetti sauce, or baked into bread, or made into fritters. Of course when I saw this recipe for pizza stuffed zucchini boats, I knew I had to give it a chance. Because zucchini disguised as pizza had to be good, right?
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I’ve always wanted an iron skillet, and when I got a baby skillet from the BlogHer Food conference, I knew it was going to be primarily used for one thing … dessert! This paleo-friendly skillet chocolate cake is just big enough to feed two or three for dessert. Oh and … it absolutely is as good as it looks.
I adapted the recipe from Running to the Kitchen to use almond flour instead of tapioca since that’s what I had on hand. To my pleasant surprise, it turned out just as well!
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Sup? You work out?
I do. Which is why I need some protein to help rebuild my (ever expanding) muscles! Ha. But seriously, this is my go-to protein smoothie recipe that I crave every time after a tough workout. Maybe someday I’ll switch it up, but not until I get tired of this one. Which doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.
You don’t need any extra sweeteners because of the banana and almond milk in this recipe! Pro tip: blend the kale with a little bit of water before adding the rest of the ingredients so it gets blended finely enough. You won’t even know it’s there! You can even trick your friends or kids with this and I bet they won’t know they’re eating kale.
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Waaaayyy back when I was a kid and I could eat anything I wanted without thinking twice about calories or sugar or nutritional value, I was very choosey with my desserts. I didn’t like cookies unless they were oatmeal raisin baked by my sister, I didn’t like cake unless it was funfetti flavored, and I didn’t like pie unless it was banana cream pie. Now that my sweet tooth is … more refined … of course as irony would have it I completely devour anything classified as dessert. But since I no longer run around like a crazy person most hours of the day and my metabolism decided it was getting old too and slowed to a jog, I have to choose healthy versions of my favorite childhood desserts.
This Banana Chia Seed Pudding is no My Mom’s Banana Cream Pie, but it’s a good-for-me alternative I’d take any day of the week. If you haven’t tried a chia seed pudding recipe, you’re grounded. Just kidding you’re not grounded. Because if you were you wouldn’t be able to go to the grocery store, buy the ingredients, make this chia seed pudding, and fall in love with it like me.
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It’s official. I’m re-entering the world of crossfit. Three months after moving to the city and adjusting to actually having real world expenses, I have committed to spending all of my shopping money on a 4-month membership at Bucktown Crossfit. Now, I’m not one of those fitness junkies that thinks, “You can’t put a price on good health.” You can, in fact, put a price on it. And I’ll probably be complaining about that price for the next 4 months.
Okay, enough about how cheap I am.
I actually do love crossfit and have not found any other workout regimen that produces such great results. Saturday was my first class at Bucktown, and while it was a miracle that I dragged my butt out of bed at 8, the fact that I completed (eerrr, half completed) a workout called the “Filthy 50” on a weekend without puking all over my trainer was a personal accomplishment I made sure to brag about for the remainder of the day. To give you an idea of the “suck” I endured, here’s the workout: With a partner, complete 50 each of these moves for time: Box jump, Jumping pull-ups, Kettlebell swings, Walking Lunge, Knees to elbows, Push press, Back extensions, Wall ball shots, Burpees, Double unders. Whew. “Difficult” is an understatement. “I wanted to die” is more accurate.
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