April Healthy Recipes

It's true that life is absolutely crazy right now, for a lot of us and not just some. The one thing we all share in common right now is quarantining and having to stay at home unless essential responsibilities pertaining to work or family call us out. For the past month I've been able to work from home, which has allowed extra time to devote to school, assembling our home gym and mostly healthy eating. I've become very spoiled with freshly cooked food as opposed to the packed meals from my lunchbox! I picked out some of my favorite recipes from this month to share with anyone who's curious about the deliciousness I keep posting in my Instagram story :)  






Vegan Recipe




-Sweet Potato Wedges


One of my frequent favorites is this one right here. Sweet potato can be made in so many ways whether it's sweet or savory but I happen to prefer making it savory most of the time. This healthy carb pairs perfectly with any lean meat of choice, I prefer fish since I follow a blood-type diet.
Once a week I meal prep for everything I'll eat that week, breakfast lunch and dinner so I'm mindful of which healthy foods can be stored and kept in the refrigerator for several days. I'll typically buy an entire bag of potato's from the store and spend my Saturday afternoons peeling and chopping and baking.


With my potatoes, I prefer that they reach a harder, crunchy consistency. I set the oven to 375 and bake these small wedges for 35-40 minutes just depending on how small I've cut the wedges. They are usually small so after 35 minutes I open the oven and peek in at them and see if any are burnt.

Wedges are made by slicing the rounds into quarter pieces. I've made sweet potato fries by cutting them long ways too!

Once all pieces are chopped, I place them into a large bowl and pour a generous amount of Olive oil and stir until all pieces are soaked. From that point you can flavor according to taste. I love using salt, onion powder and garlic powder. If I'm in the mood for something sweeter, I've used cinnamon and baking Stevia! So yummy!

A whole bag of potatoes fills several baking sheets so if you meal prep like I do, make sure you have a few large containers to store them in.

Healthy, wholesome and delicious!

Protein Powder Recipe
-Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Cookies


Got some flavored protein powder in your pantry that you want to get creative with? I got on Pinterest and starting pinning some ideas of different things that I could do to consume my protein in a few different ways. If you follow my page you may begin to notice that chocolate and peanut butter are some of my favorites!

I was really nervous trying these because lets just say, if burning cookies was a sport I would be an Olympic athlete! Also, baking with protein can be tricky because of how easily protein powder burns in comparison to baking flour. Not sure of the reasoning behind this, but it's a tried and true fact for me at least.

I decided to substitute the palm sugar for baking Stevia, always looking for ways to cut corners on the sugar and it's much easier to find at the store. The protein powder that I use is the Thorne Chocolate Vegan Protein. My particular diet is based on my blood type and since I'm an AB negative, I usually try to stick to plant based food options. This protein is naturally sweetened and has zero artificial flavorings. Very tasty and I highly recommend it! Now back to the cookies!

The recipe is really simple, just combine all ingredients into the bowl and mix well together until moist. If it's crumbly, add a little more peanut butter to soften.

Once the mix is prepared, roll into balls and flatten just a little. The recipe also says to bake for 10-15 minutes so I baked these for 12 minutes.

Always be careful when baking with protein powder, for whatever reason it burns very easily so with this in mind, I stayed very close by while these were baking.

So Good! Although they were just a tad dry when they came out but I'll do more research on baking these the next time I whip up another batch :) Even still, a warmed up protein cookie paired so deliciously with a protein shake after a good sweaty workout!

Healthy sweets


- Protein Whip
 
Craving something just a little sweet but you don't want to have too much temptation left over? Protein whip is a great quick fix that won't make you feel guilty!

With this recipe you have the option to add toppings. The one I found on Pinterest calls for chocolate chips but I skipped out on it to spare on sugar. Maybe next time I could use almond slices for topping?

The recipe calls for 1 tbsp Peanut Butter, 1 small container of Plain Nonfat Greek yogurt, 1 tbsp Honey, 1 tsp Vanilla Extractn (optional) and 1 tbsp Chocolate Chips.

Now simply stir, mix and enjoy!

Stuff from the Blender
-Two Ingredient Banana Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Bites


The weather is starting to warm up and that makes me crave one sweet in particular, ice cream! A summertime favorite of mine is Halo Top since it's low in sugar and high in protein, but for the sake of making a blog post I wanted something to make at home :) This recipe only calls for TWO ingredients and the results are more than pleasing!

I decided to make this just a little different due to the fact that my husband loves bananas and hates chocolate! So I wanted to make it in a way that he could enjoy too. My banana bites are made with white chocolate chips unlike the stock photo above.

For this recipe I used six large bananas and one bag of Ghiradelli Classic White Chips. First step is to cut bananas into small slices and arrange on a baking sheet. Using this many bananas filled up almost two baking sheets. Once they were arranged on the sheet I popped them into the freezer for 3 hours.

I decided to freeze them for just a few hours since I have a weaker blender. Cuisine Art has been great for my fruit/veggie smoothies everyday but it struggles on blending hard frozen items.

Once all the slices were blended up, I added a cup of the white chocolate chips and blended once more to make sure the chips were mixed in well with the bananas. From there I used a muffin tin to divide the mixture up. Two muffin tins are the equivalent of one whole banana!

I let these freeze for the rest of the afternoon and I really liked how they turned out! Let's just say, if you don't like the flavor of banana you may not like these. I did notice though that the tangy/sweet of the banana changed a tad after they froze. My imagination maybe? Not sure, but this would easily satisfy my cravings for ice cream since it mimicked the texture of soft serve. Also, once this thawed out the individual cups popped right out! One last takeaway, I might try adding vanilla extract to this on the next batch to give it more of a sweet flavor without adding any calories and sugar :)

Finding healthy/fit foods that are equally delicious may be my calling in life :) Time to go back to Pinterest to find more recipes to experiment with!

Keep on smiling <3